Summiting Cloud's Rest

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I woke up with the sun again, swaying in the double hammock. I realized Billy was wandering around outside. I asked how he slept after the lightning excitement, and he recounted the story of his hammock ripping. He tried to get by with a broken hammock and then just ended up taking his sleeping bag and sleeping on the ground next to Joy's tent. I nudged Chris to see if he was still alive. He had a headache. I was worried he'd get a migraine so I got up, dug out ibuprofen for both of us and set about cleaning up our camp while he tried to sleep off the headache some more. I felt hungover from such little sleep. I knew I must have gotten SOME sleep because I had no memory of Billy's hammock ripping, or him getting up, and I had three sets of dreams which must have meant at least three sleep cycles, I reasoned. I made myself a cold cup of coffee, too. This ended up being normal for this trip- we ate our cold lunches for breakfast, and then ate a cooked breakfast for lunch. I'll probably keep that up on future trips.

After an hour, I woke Chris up again. He wasn't sure he wanted to go up Cloud's Rest. I was determined to go, even if it was just me. We all ate breakfast to see how we'd feel after, and Chris and Billy decided to go, too. We all just felt so crappy after such little sleep. At first Joy decided not to go but then she changed her mind as we were just about to head out. So we finally set out close to 9am for Cloud's Rest. It'd be a 9mi roundtrip hike from our campsite. We left our packs and bear canisters (secured in boulders) at the site. First we had to filter water at the nearest stream, though. Our plan was to get more water on our way back after the hike so that we'd have some for the afternoon trekking to the next campsite. We found a stream within a quarter mile and filled up. We made it probably another quarter mile, just starting to go uphill, when Joy decided she actually was too tired to make the summit. Her legs were wobbly and I think she was just as tired as us. Her pack was on the heavy side, too, this trip which was giving her trouble overall on her first backpacking trip. So she headed back to camp to rest until this afternoon.

The three of us continued up the trail for four miles. A good chunk of it was level. Had we had the energy to keep going yesterday, we would have found plenty of great camping spots. We passed a few other groups who had taken advantage of the terrain for the night. We walked by a small, still lake, too. Alot of the lakes are full of mosquitoes right now so they're not super inviting. We wore our mosquito nets a good chunk of the time during the level areas. There were a couple of climbs but nothing as steep as yesterday coming up from Tenaya Lake. Our first closer look of Cloud's Rest happened just after the next junction. Only one other guy passed us on his way to the summit on our way there. He also passed us again on his way down, telling us there was no one at the summit and to enjoy it. We hiked past another couple of guys near the final scramble towards the Knife Edge- they were packing up camp. We stopped and asked how they slept last night. They laughed and said they had been camping up closer to the summit when the lightning started. It scared the crap out of them and they scrambled down from the summit to tree cover in the middle of the night. I was glad we weren't the only ones with a midnight misadventure.

The final climb to the summit is all granite and giant hunks of rock. I'd seen this part in videos when I was researching and planning for the trip. Usually pictures and videos don't do reality justice, and the ones I saw prior to the trip were quite scary. I'm afraid of heights but I still managed to get up and down the Half Dome cables on two separate trips. I'll probably never do it again. It's still the scariest thing I've done in my life, and that beats skydiving, rappelling and now Cloud's Rest. So when I say walking the Knife's Edge towards the Cloud's Rest summit is terrifying, I absolutely mean it. On your right is a solid 4000ft drop down to the bottom of Tenaya Canyon. On your left is maybe a 1000ft drop into the treeline and granite- if you're lucky you'll end up dead instead of crushing every bone in your body. Just glancing towards Tenaya Canyon would cause my knees to wobble instinctively and my heart to race faster than the adrenaline already pushing me forward. At one point, the Edge narrows to maybe 4ft across. It wasn't windy up there- in fact, it was quite still just like the other peaks we'd been camping on this trip. But there was a slight breeze... and with nowhere to divert my eyes from the sheer drops, it was too much. So there was a good five feet forward I had dropped to my hands and knees and crawled. That way all I had to do was stare at the granite in front of me and not see the falls in my periphery. I never froze up there, though, and I'm pretty proud of that. That being said, before my crawling, I had posed for a few minutes for Chris to take a bunch of pictures. That was also scary. I made it to the summit, though! It was just us three at first. We took even more photos, and when we were joined by the two campers we'd passed, we posed for a group shot, too. Half Dome looked so small from up here. The views are the BEST views I've ever had in Yosemite. 360 degrees of snow-capped granite peaks and wooded valleys.

We only stayed on the peak for fifteen minutes. There were angry clouds rolling in, and we weren't sure if they were big enough for more lightning, but we didn't want to wait to find out either. We skirted back across Knife's Edge and down the granite boulders to the treeline, passing by groups of backpackers and hikers along the way. I silently thanked our good luck for clear skies when we were summiting. I wondered if these people would be dumb enough to leave the tree cover with the ominous clouds about. It started to sprinkle about 20min into our descent, just brief periods. We filtered water again on our way back so we'd be able to cook lunch and have enough for our afternoon trekking. We were exhausted the last 30min of hiking. I figured it must be low blood sugar- we were utterly wiped out as we slumped into camp. I sat by Joy's tent, feeling pretty dead, wondering how I was going to get through 3.5miles of backpacking over the Sunrise Mountains the next few hours. Coffee and a cooked meal turned out to be the cure. Once I'd refueled, I felt 100 times better.

Joy packed up her camp as we ate, and then we set out about 2pm for our next campsite for the night. Most of the plan today was just summiting Cloud's Rest. We only need to move a few more miles towards Tuolumne Meadows so that our last day would only be 7.6mi of trekking. Most of the trails were easy to follow on this trip. Every once in awhile we'd come to places where we weren't sure where the trail went. We'd just screw up our eyes and look ahead of us like a Magic Eye picture, trying to detect anything that didn't naturally make sense, like a line of rocks or patch of dirt more beaten down than the rest. I busted out my map at the first of three Sunrise Lakes. Turned out the trail was to the left instead of the right of the lake. We crossed a log bridge over lake run-off. Then we ascended and ascended up and over the mountains. We passed by two more pretty lakes, and a long slip'n slide waterfall over granite, connecting the 2nd and 3rd lakes. We were beginning to enter the region of the High Sierras I was most worried about encountering snow. I had read in past weeks of hikers losing the trail. A few groups even had to be rescued by rangers on their way up to Clouds Rest. But we never encountered snow patches large enough to make the trail disappear! Near the saddle, I saw the treeline was disappearing and mentioned it to Joy. "I dare not hope," she uttered, exhausted already, even though she'd been resting all day. I think backpacking at altitude was tougher on her than she expected yet she was toughing it out each day of the trip like a champ, zero complaints.

The top of the Sunrise Mountains was level and dotted with trees and snow. Then it was time to descend for a bit towards Long Meadow, a long, gorgeous swatch of green. At the bottom is where Sunrise High Sierra Camp begins. It, and all the other High Sierra Camps, were deserted this summer. There was too much infrastructure damage to the upper campgrounds, Tuolumne Lodge and the High Sierra Camps for everything to be repaired in time for the summer crowds. Once we hit the meadow, we were attacked by more mosquitoes than I'd ever encountered in my entire life. Swarms and swarms enveloped us. I changed into long pants, double layered my top and mosquito netting back on my head with a hat. I still had a solid 30 bites by the end of the day. I had been hoping this area would be good to set up camp for the night but it was apparent that wasn't the case. We booked it north through Long Meadow, trying to escape the pests. We didn't stop to take pictures or enjoy the scenery, which was gorgeous. Joy got far behind us. When we hit the north end of the meadow, we waited a long time for her. Then we filtered water at the next stream. I wasn't sure that once we completely left the meadow we'd find level enough ground to camp on. So we settled with just heading away from the grass into the trees. There were half as many mosquitoes but still a crazy quantity.

We set up camp, cooked and ate dinner as carefully as possible while being under several layers of clothes and then dove into our tents for the night. It was only 7pm but we were done in for the day. Three of us took a benadryl because we were so itchy, and we were all passed out before the sun even went down. It was the best sleep I'd gotten out of all three nights. Probably not the safest to be taking an antihistamine out in the wild but I was fairly confident in our campsite choice for once. And so I slept amazingly.

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