And the answer is....

For all of my faithful followers (I'm up to two now that my wife has the link), I'm back home after a SUCCESSFUL climb up the cables. Woo-Hoo! I did it!

View from the Sub-Dome, minutes before heading up

This turned into such an amazing, and very weird adventure that I decided to break this into multiple posts in the following order:

1. The Arrival - a brief posting on the trip out, the luxurious accommodations at the 'Yosemite lodging formerly known as Curry Village', and a few more things to worry about. 
2. Stairway to Heaven - a step by step description of the ascent, and some of the really stupid things I did which I paid for on the way down. 
3. The Long Way Back or why I did not get ice cream, beer or dinner - when you hike 9 miles with 4400 feet of elevation gain to get to the top of Half Dome, you then have to hike 9 miles with 4400 feet of elevation loss to get back to camp. If you screw up on hydration and food intake, you may wind up calling for search and rescue, and may not get back in time to have a victory celebration.
4.  Simple Acts of Kindness - how Saint PB&J saved the day for me. And thoughts on why you should avoid sitting on the dirt, late at night, with a headlamp. There are many creepy, crawling things out there.
5. Final Thoughts - a few brief words of wisdom for anyone interested in giving Half Dome a try. This will probably be of interest to anyone over 55..or maybe 60. 

And away we go....

The last entry until August 2nd, unless I can post from my phone from the bar at Half-Dome village (I think they may have one). Either way, I'm packed for what seems like an expedition to K2, and awaiting the arrival of my friend with his mini-van, complete with 26 cup-holders (those may come in handy), to head off to Yosemite.

My next post will hopefully have summit shots, links to videos from my GoPro of the harrowing ascent and even more harrowing descent on the cables, and the wine and beer fest back at the camp. I may be hooked up to a IV drip of Pinot Noir. Really good Pinot Noir.

NEXT ->

Mercury mining, coastal wildfires and a nice hike

I did not have much to do this Sunday - too hot for yard-work, but too nice to stay home and do what I normally do ….  E-mail, documents and project work. I decided to break my new hiking shoes in with a long hike instead. One more training hike could not hurt.

The South Bay (I’m assuming most anyone reading this is from California although there were some viewers in Germany and France who probably found this by mistake) has a lot of really nice hiking trails, some of which are not overly crowded. There is a really nice county park in Almaden Valley, Almaden-Quicksilver, which has some great hiking and biking trails, excellent views, wildlife (wild turkeys, quail, deer and a predator or two) and some very interesting historic sites scattered throughout. This used to be the main source of mercury (quicksilver) during the gold and silver mining days, and there were mining towns and mills scattered across the hills. There are miles and miles of trails as well, so you can get a good workout, and learn something about the mining history of the area. You can find all kinds of sites on the history of this area, and there is an excellent museum in New Almaden at one of the entrances to the park. Worth seeing. Just don’t lick the rocks.

http://www.newalmaden.org/AQSPark/

Nice views of surrounding hills

Rotary mill, used to separate mercury from the ore

I wandered up and down trails for a while, getting in over 6 miles and about 1500’ elevation gain. I also added some weights to my pack to make it more of a chore. I was pleased that; 1) the new hiking shoes were very comfortable on steep trails, up and down; 2) I was able to go 2 miles up-hill without a break. I may make it next week.

One sad note - there is a huge wildfire along the coast, near Carmel. It must be getting very large, since you can see the smoke spreading East and along the Hwy 101. That is such a beautiful area - I hope they can get that under control soon.

I was sorting through gear this weekend - my formerly unused water filter works great. I cannot vouch for the filtering though, so I won’t get too excited about it for now. I found all the parts for my GoPro (a miracle in my house), and best of all, I found my headlamp which will be needed when we hit the trail. Not only did I found a headlamp, I found three. I remember buying the second one when I could not find the first, but somewhere along the way, I must have misplaced both and bought a third. REI just loves me.

An electrifying experience....

One week to go (almost). I'm through training other than my usual long walks, and work-outs in the gym. I'm as fit (or unfit) as I'm going to get.

I have had been thinking about a new / specialized pair of shoes to wear on the granite, something that sticks like spiderman’s feet. Rock climbing shoes! I used to have multiple pairs for different types of climbs, and the ones for steep slopes were great. I once did a free (unroped) pre-climb up a 50 degree ramp, relying on my sticky shoes for a few hundred feet of vertical. That would work for Half Dome. So, off to REI again to use my $20 bonus coupon from buying the new pack. One thing I did not count on though - changes in technology and shoe sizes in the decades since I gave the sport up. I tried on a few non-aggressive pairs in my own size, and my feet immediately cramped. Climbing shoes were always uncomfortable (painful really) but these were much worse than I had encountered in the past. I considered a pair of approach shoes which can be used for smearing on steep slopes, but $250 for hiking shoes. Really? I think not. So, I opted for a new pair of hiking shoes to replace my Keens’s, which are a bit worn out, and which have a newer Vibram sticky sole (“megagrip”). Comfort and a bit more grip sound like a good combination.

The problem with the Park Service lottery, is that you submit a bunch of dates that might work, and then hope one of them is picked. I picked a bunch of dates in July, and one in August in an attempt to hit it during the dry season. Of course, I was awarded the one in August, but I figured I’d be safe since it was early in the month. Not having anything to worry about now that I have conquered all of my hanging fears and bought all the gear I need, I started looking at the long term weather forecast for Yosemite. Sunny skies, warm, 0% humidity until the 29th. We then go from party cloudy, to scattered thunderstorms with a 50% chance of precipitation….until the 3rd. Crap. I can now worry about hiking 8.5 miles to the start of the cables, and getting getting a big thunderstorm role in. I have had enough lightning experiences in the Colorado high peaks, including close encounters of the electrical kind where everything is sparking, and the granite starts humming. Really, it happens. I've also been stuck on a rope when a lighting storm rolled down the canyon, half-way up a climb, with lots of metal climbing gear on a sling around my neck. I levitated the last pitch. 

So the thought of holding onto a steel cable in the middle of an electrical storm, does not resonate with (or through) me. Hopefully, if we start early enough, with our trusty headlamps shining brightly, we can get to the top early enough to miss any storms. That and the weather forecast keeps changing. I'm not going to worry, I'm not going to worry....I'll keep repeating that until Monday night.

One more entry before I leave.

How to scare yourself out of going...watch Youtube videos

The problem with the Web, is that you can find just about anything about anything, and what you find may not be what you were hoping for. For example, I enjoy tormenting (well deserved by the way) a co-worker with links to very graphic videos of the surgeries I have had the past few years. He no longer opens e-mail that have a subject line of “You gotta see this!”.

When I bought my pack the other day, the very nice and knowledgeable person at REI mentioned that the Park Service frowns upon hikers clipping into the cables, so I did a search on that. I found one helpful site which said to definitely clip in, citing all the possible ways you can die if you don’t. Great. Then I found a NPS video clip on hiking Yosemite, which was created I think, to scare the bejeebies out of most people considering the hike.

https://www.nps.gov/media/video/view.htm?id=F891355F-F836-4D0A-7305CFA1E09D497A

It did nothing but reinforce my plan to use a harness and clip my way up and down the cable. It is my life after all. I then found a video from a group that did clip into the cable - much safer, especially going down. Built up my confidence after the first video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFdA58m-AWw

But Youtube has tons of videos taken on the cable route, thanks to GoPro (I plan to use mine, with a new chest harness that I bought). This last video is probably not the one to watch at all for anyone planning the hike since it describes a woman’s miraculous survival of falling out of the cables, and bouncing down until she hit a vertical rock which kept her from falling the rest of the way to the valley. She had to be rescued via helicopter, in really bad weather.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GarBqz_Kfo

I watched one more clip from a guy who did a video of going down (his first audible comment other than sounds of hyperventilation was “Holy Sh*t”) - really, really steep, but survivable if you hold on tight. Incredibly steep - it is definitely 5th class on the rock climbing scale, something like the 3rd Flatiron in Boulder which I’ve done a million times. But always climbing up, not down. The two free hanging rappels from the 3rd look much safer than sliding down the steep stretch.

So the bottom line is - wear very good gripping gloves and the heck with the rangers, I’m clipping to the cable both ways. Better safe than paste.

Gearing up and other things to worry about....

Funny how fast summer goes by. There are only 28 days left until Half Dome Day (HDD? Sounds techie). No hikes this past week, but a lot of long distance walking, and workouts - they have a cruel machine at the gym I belong to, a Jacobs Ladder trainer. Five minutes on that get’s you about 400 feet worth of pain, in all the places you get on steep trails. My goal is to get to 1000 feet without tearing anything (muscles, tendons, not clothing).

With less than a month to go, I have started stressing about gear of course. I always need to stress out about something, and I’m an admitted gear junky. I had to have all the latest, weird chocks when I used to rock climb, some of which did not work too well but looked really cool. I bought every size of Friend when they first came out. I was a living lightning rod when I was on the lead end of the rope.

In this case, I was concerned about the size of my day pack (no Donald Trump jokes here) - really nice for short hikes, and holds a 3 liter water bladder. But with my camera, food, water filter (more on that later), clothing, climbing harness stuff, two bottles of champagne and flutes (just kidding about that), the pack was getting a bit over stuffed. A perfect excuse for heading over to REI to buy a new pack! Which I did. I now have a REI Traverse 48 pack - perfectly fitted, hideous rust/orange color,  with room for all kinds of gear. Lot’s of adjustment straps, which all the latest packs have. It will give me something to waste away time in the cabin tent. Oh boy.

The new pack + odds and ends

Speaking of water, liquid is the heaviest part of the load for hiking - you really do need to drink a lot of fluid, especially at higher elevations. There is a lot of water along the trail in Yosemite, but for the past few decades, we have been warned about the dangers of giardia, a nasty parasite

which wildlife poops into the water (too many things to remember in the wilderness - don’t eat the yellow snow, and don’t drink the water either). I’ve never known anyone who had it, but the description sounds a lot like the stomach flu or the what stuff you drink before a colonoscopy does to you...same effect. Luckily, I found a compact water purifier I bought a few years back when I was still fantasizing about backpacking - never been used, and it will be perfect for the trip. We can refill our bottles and bladders (the plastic ones in our packs, not the other one which I guess will be filled as well - what goes in must go out). Saves a lot of weight in the pack.

Finally, the best news of the week is that we have another adventurer for the hike - another retiree who is an avid hiker and who has done the cable route before. It will be good to have someone who can keep my ex-boss from pushing me over the edge...I still worry about that.

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Training in luxury ...hiking at the Ritz

My training for the past few weeks has been limited to long walks at lunch time or on the weekends, and a “hike” up the trash hills along the South Bay trail. Good for fitness, but not quite enough to get me up and back on an 18 mile round-trip, up a 8800’ peak. Lucky for me, my wife (aka the saint) wanted to go to Lake Tahoe for her birthday - lots of trails, and lots of 8-9000 foot peaks to hike. We had three full days, not a lot, but I reserved one morning (not on her birthday of course) to get some miles and elevation in.

We stayed at a hotel situated at 6800” - not a bad start to get used to elevation again. Plus the hotel (Ritz-Carleton) is at the base of a ski area (Northstar), just out the back door, with lot’s of trails open for hiking. I tried my luck on an easy trail first - really boring, and I found myself huffing and puffing at the onset. I was really concerned with that, until I realized that we had made a critical mistake when checking into the hotel. We upgraded to the club level - free drinks. Really good drinks, and after sitting in traffic for 6 hours on Friday, having a few really good drinks seemed like a really good idea. It was, but not for hiking the next day. Chalk that one up as something not to do again.

After chatting with some of the wonderful staff at the hotel, I decided to take one of trails a short drive from the Ritz, which go along the Tahoe Rim Trail. The hike starts on Brockway Pass, and runs up to the rim trail with a number of relatively high peaks along the way. I had limited time, and did not want to push it too far, so settled on Martis Peak - a nice 10 mile (round-trip) hike, up to almost 8700’.

Once again though, the Club Level and my wife’s birthday dinner forced me to imbibe a bit more than I had planned on. You absolutely need to have a good bottle of wine with a good steak (really good wine of course). And if the restaurant offers free champagne for the celebration, you cannot turn it down. And as the evening winds down, you of course need to have an after dinner drink (I really do not do this very often). At any rate, I still managed to get out early, and hit the trail at 8:30 with only a slight head-ache.

The hike was really excellent - not too steep, nice long stretches with easy elevation gain, and just a few points with elevation loss. Plus, when you hit the open areas, the views of the lake are awesome.

The view from the top, looking back at Northstar was not too shabby either.

The odd thing about hiking in this area, is that there are roads criss-crossing through just about everywhere. For this hike, there was a road that runs up to the fire tower on top of the peak, which branches off to another road that parallels the rim trail for quite a ways. When I had finally trudged up to the top, there were a number of pickup trucks and SUV’s there. Slackers! I did think about hitching a ride back down but only for a moment since that would have been cheating - this was a training hike. The other fun part about hiking around Tahoe, is sharing the trails with mountain bikers. Not a problem going up (they were passing me of course) since they are going slow, and the biker can call out a warning. Going down was another thing, since most of them were careening down at high speed - not much warning. Listening to music could be a fatal mistake.

Overall, I was pleased with the results - I did not have any issues with the altitude, and I managed to avoid tripping on anything this time. No falls. My pace was not great though, over four hours is pretty slow, but then again, I had a lengthy interrupt from a couple of ladies who were arguing about which trail they were on, and must have thought I knew where I was going. That, and I did stop for quite a few photo opportunities. I’ll be doing that in Yosemite as well, so need to work on walking at a faster pace.  

I’m hoping to get a few more hikes in next month, but it will be impossible to get to the Sierra again, so I’ll be working on distance and steep inclines instead of elevation. I think I can handle the altitude now. Maybe I still have a few extra red blood cells from my decades in Colorado.

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