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Published: September 17th 2006
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Half Dome
This was taken from Glacier point, with the sun in my eyes! After a overnight stop in the middle of the Nevada desert we reached Yosemite National Park. This is somewhere I'd always wanted to go as I have seen so many beautiful pictures of it.
We were staying in a hostel about 35 miles from Yosemite Valley. The nearest town to it was 7 miles away. We arrived on a Saturday night and the cafe there had a band on in the evening. They served really good food too at reasonable prices, something we haven't had too often in Amercia. We ended up playing Scattergories (a board game) with some Irish guys and American girls before standing around the open fire pit before bed.
We drove into Yosemite the next day, the previous day we had driven through the park's high ground, but today we were going to go to Yosemite Valley which is a dramactic glacial valley. Although not the best time of year to visit, as a lot of the waterfalls are dried up, Yosemite Falls for example (the highest in N. America) was dry, we did get to see water running down Bridal Veil falls. It was creeping over the edge then blowing in the breeze as
Getting some sun
Taking a break before the last steep bit! it floated down.
We got good views of El Captain, the largest granite monolith in the world, and Half Dome, a dramtic looking mountain that is literally half a dome! We then drove up to Glacier point to get some really nice views down the valley and also some a great viewpoint for Half Dome.
The following day I planned to hike up Half Dome, 8836ft high. It is a 17 mile round trip and the recommended time spent to do it is 10-12 hours. Matt decided he didn't really want to do it so he spent the day with Perry driving to some lakes. We had to get up really early, 7am, that's very earlier for us, in order to get to the start of the trail early enough.
I started walking at around 8-30 am and realised by this point that most people hiking up Half Dome had started much earlier. I was walking pretty fast though and soon caught some people up. First there was a climb up the side of Vernal falls, a 600 step path, which got me up about a 1000ft. Yeah, only another 4000ft to go on this trail! They say
Going up!
The small chain to the left you can see is how to get up this thing. Cables help you get up the 50 degree angle slope, also there are gloves to wear luckily! not to walk alone because of bears and mountain lions (none of which I saw) but there were plenty of other people on the path so I wasn't too worried. I got talking to a guy who had done the walk 3 weeks earlier as well and he said on the way down he saw a big bear. It came running through the trees and onto the path. That made me a bit more wary when I was walking through the forested area alone!
The second point I reached was the top of Nevada Falls where there was quite a lot of water coming down these falls. It was starting to get hot now, and I saw that the maximum temperature for the day would be 31 degrees C. However I was making good time and when I passed a sign saying 'Half Dome 4 miles' it was only 10:20am.
The path started to get a bit steeper and wound it's way though the trees. I stopped and checked my lunch which I had got made by the hostel in the morning. They had packed me some salad, but it had become all soggy and wet so I
Going down!
One false slip and I would take down a few other people with me.... ate some of it (not all as it had pickles in) before wrapping the rest in a tissue so it didn't soak into my sandwich. Eventually I came out of the trees and for the first time could see the huge granite rock in front of me that I had to climb. The path zig zagged very steeply up the first nit of granite to a level section. 'Nearly at the top' I thought! Well I was, all that was left to do was a 400ft climb up a 50 degrees angle smooth granite slope with drops off 4000+ ft each side. Luckily the national park had put cables into the rock to aid people ot get to the top. There were two parallel cables on posts running up with some wood planks between the posts to rest at. Also there were a big pile of gloves before the cable section, and believe me you needed them! If you had lost your grip then it would have been pretty impossible to stop yourself sliding down as there isn't much grip on the granite.
It took a while to get to the top as there were also people coming down
At the top!
Standing on the tip, there's a big drop below! the cables with really only enough room for one person between them at a time. I looked down between my legs as we were climbing up and realised just how high this was. I got to the top where it is quite flat and big and ate my lunch as it was now 12 o'clock. I then saw some of the people I had passed on the way up.
Then some guys started to open up a huge Amercian flag at the top. Oh, I hadn't realised but it was September 11th and they were from the army and displaying the flag as a tribute. There was somebody on the other side of the valley taking photographs and I helped lift the flag up so it could be seen better. All that was left was to get down. It was actually much easier going down the cables than up, gravity helping. I also manged to get a good shot going down to.
Some river stops on the way down to cool off helped before I got down at 5pm and went to the meeting spot. Matt wasn't there as we said 6:30 so I hopped on a free
Flag on Half Dome
It was the aniversary of 9/11 so some guys from the army had carried up this flag to display from the top. Thats me 4th from right wearing the white t-shirt. shuttle bus to take me to Yosemite Village where I got a well earned beer to wait. I was then getting back on the bus to go to the meeting point when I randomly bumped into him so we headed back to the hostel for dinner.
The next day we drove to Bakersfield for an overnight stop before heading back to Santa Barbara (where we started our road trip) after over 7,000 miles of driving!
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grandma
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wow, gary, what a trip
wow, gary, what a marvellous trip, why did I have to be born too soon, I missed out on trips when I was young, too busy having a family, now its too late, i really do envy you, keep on having a good time and writing about it