Late Night Lightning

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The unfortunate circumstance of camping on a mountaintop is the lack of water sources. So, when I rolled out of bed at 5:50am for a beautiful sunrise (not nearly as awesome as sunset the night before, tho), I had a choice- drink the last of my water... or make coffee. Ofcourse I chose coffee. C'mon, like that's a choice!

I enjoyed my delicious cup of coffee, cold, because we didn't feel like dealing with the jetboil for just my coffee- also it wasn't very cold outside. As soon as the sun rose, it warmed up fast. We ate our cold lunches instead of cooking because of our shortness of water. Then we packed up camp and headed down the mountain to find some water. We headed for what I hoped would be "the saddle" on the map. I didn't quite hit it unfortunately. However, fortunately, we ran into the end of the creek we had crossed the day before. Had we descended the mountain and ended up 100ft more the right, we might have missed it completely. And it would have been a good hour before the next water source. So, we filtered water and had a glorious brunch of water, coffee and powdered juice! Goddamn, water never tasted so good.

After that, we switchbacked up "the saddle" of Mt. Watkins and then over towards a ridge facing Tenaya Canyon. We spent the rest of the morning trekking along the ridge towards Olmsted Point. Our plan was to cook lunch (what would have been our breakfasts) at Tenaya Lake. So, when we got to Olmsted Point we rested a bit and ate our snacks before continuing on.

Around 1pm we hit Tenaya Lake, FINALLY. We were also starting to see more mosquitoes unfortunately. The Sunrise trailhead water crossing had been under 3ft of water with a current as of two weeks ago. This was one of my worries because I really didn't think I could carry a 30lb pack over my head, across the water, safely. However, when we got there, it was down to 18in! No current, clear water. We took off our boots and walked across barefoot before heading left to the lakeside. We cooked our lunch, filtered more water and dunked ourselves in Tenaya Lake. The boys were literally scrubbing themselves. The water felt SO GOOD on my aching feet!

About 2pm or so, we packed back up and started up towards the Clouds Rest junction. I wanted to trek as far as possible towards Clouds Rest that day. I figured we'd be exhausted by the time we got to the junction, though, since it was a 1000ft elevation gain on switchbacks. Up we went, back and forth, slow going. Chris sped ahead, determined to get it done with- he ended up finishing nearly an hour before the other three of us. Day hikers from Clouds Rest kept zipping past us down the mountain. One girl had the audacity to try and coach Joy on breathing- "When I have trouble, I just focus on breathing in through my nose, and out through my mouth." Excuse me, one pound pack bitch- try carrying 30lbs up the goddamned mountain and shove it! I wanted to knock her over the head on Joy's behalf, who took it with calm annoyance. Seriously, the girl maybe had a pound of water in her tiny pack!

Near the top, we found the first patches of snow. We'd see lots more patches the next couple days. We were all exhausted, as expected, at that point in the day. So, we headed down the trail towards Clouds Rest in search of a campsite, somewhere flat enough to camp. Joy looked incredibly spent, so I was worried about finding a spot sooner rather than later. About a quarter mile later and after ducking under a log, I spotted a flattish area to the right. Chris and I headed that direction to scope out a campsite. We found ourselves on a series of granite shelves overlooking Tenaya Canyon towards Yosemite Valley. The view was incredible and unexpected. What an awesome place to camp the night! After searching for 20min, we found a decent area to set up tents. Chris and I put our tent on the flattest shelf we could find, which unfortunately still had a slant to it. So we oriented our feet downhill. Billy decided to hammock the night away in a small group of trees. Joy set up her tent in the open on a shelf like us.

We were tired so we quickly cooked dinner as the sun was setting and crawled into our tents as the light disappeared. I read a few pages in my book until it was too dark to read. The sky was clear when I initially lied down. The stupid slant we were camping on kept causing my sleeping mat and sleeping bag, and me with it, to slide down. So I was waking up frequently to push myself back up in the tent. Also, our tent was starting to fall over. I checked the sky at one point and remember noting there were clouds appearing, blocking sections of the stars. This wasn't crazy or unusual- they were just wispy things. Around 1am, something woke me up. It took a moment before I saw it again- a flash of light. It was another few moments before it dawned on me what I was seeing flashing periodically. "Chris... Chris. There's lightning." He woke up easily and admitted he thought he saw it, too. "Billy!" I called over in his direction, "Did you see that?" Billy was also apparently awake, since he immediately responded, "Is that lightning??" Me, "Yeah! Not good! This is really unsafe!" We had to move. We were out in the open on granite, a crazy big "no-no" in Yosemite.

I hopped out of the tent. The good thing was we didn't HEAR lightning. So, it was in the area but not immediately close just yet. For all we knew, it could be heading past us but we couldn't count on that. Chris, Billy and I huddled by his hammock to problem solve. We needed to move the two tents under trees. Billy's hammock was just fine where it was. We also reasoned we could hang up our second hammock if need be (Chris and I brought our double hammock). So, we started scouting in the dark with our headlamps for nearby trees with some flat space under them. I found one within a few minutes 50ft up the slope. Joy was half awake by now but still super confused. "What? Lightning? But I checked the weather!" she protested sleepily. It was actually adorable but I was too anxious to laugh at the time. "Ok, get all your heavy stuff out of the tent. We're moving your tent with all the light stuff in it." I was using my mommy voice. She and I tossed out the heavy stuff, and then me and the two boys lifted the tent and carried it intact up the slope just as it started sprinkling fat water droplets. We placed her tent under a good sized couple of trees, and she went back to arranging stuff to get back to sleep. Then the three of us ran back down the slope to our tent. I didn't think we should be out there with the water falling. Finding a new spot for mine and Chris' tent was out of the question now. So the boys quickly set up the second hammock while I grabbed our sleeping bags, warm clothes and other discarded equipment that had been left out in the open. I didn't want to wake up to soaking boots.

While sleeping in a double hammock wondering if lightning would get us was uncomfortable, it certainly was better than sleeping on the granite slope in our tent. Go figure. Our hammock sagged so that our butts were hitting a cold rock beneath us. The hammock didn't insulate at all so I eventually wiggled all the way into my sleeping bag. I shifted constantly trying to stay comfortable. I did manage to dream on three separate occasions the rest of that night, so I reasoned I had gone through at least a few sleep cycles despite the circumstances. While we did occasionally see more flashing light, we never heard thunder and the rain stopped. The storm had moved away from us. I vowed to never make such a stupid error in picking a campsite again. After the fact, someone pointed out that camping under trees was dangerous. I looked this up online later and learned that camping under solitary trees in a lightning storm is dangerous. Groups of trees or the forest is safe. So, Joy's tent probably wasn't safe under the one or two trees if lightning had struck above her. I can say that we weren't at the highest point on the slope and there were several trees scattered about so we were probably going to be ok had the storm come directly overhead. Shrug. These are my musings after the fact. Lesson learned and sleep lost, though.

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[D MJ Binkley]

National Parks system
One of our treasures.