…which took me long enough, right?  Here’s the deal: the photos you’re about to see are from our last trek.  John and the Schmit-Dog did a mini on our last day, but for Paul and for me, this was it.

This was the hike to Half Dome.  John planned an incredible trip for us, and in his normal, be-prepared kind of way, he saved this hike for last.  When we started talking about the Yosemite trip, my input was simple and limited: seeing pictures from John’s prior excursions to Yosemite, I wanted to do Half Dome.  Period.  “Jay, what do you want to do on the trip?”  “Half Dome.”  “Jay, what airport are you flying into?”  “Half Dome.”  “Jay, how’s the family?”  “Half Dome.”  You get the idea.

So Half Dome!  I’m going to post a lot of pictures.  We took over 835 photos on this trip!  If anyone wants to see the raw footage (no commentary, no identifying info), go to EdgeProximity.com.  You’ll see a banner photo and a photo labeled “The Pix”. Click there and you’re in!  The pix are in no particular order — we’re talking raw.

Okay!  Back to Half Dome!  This was another overnighter, so you know it involved a bit of hiking and an amazing view or two.  From John’s journal:  “Jay, Paul and JG set out for the “hike of hikes” in the park as far as I am concerned.  Sunrise Lake trail head at Tenaya Lake to Happy Isles by way of Cloud’s Rest and Half Dome.”

First stop — Cloud’s Rest.  Cloud’s Rest is commonly seen in the background of Half Dome photos taken from the Yosemite Valley.  7.4 miles in, a couple of thousand feet (or so) to cover going up, the hike started off easily enough.   But when the elevation came, it became brutal.

But check this out: at altitude, things change very slowly.  Stuff takes years to grow (some of the floral vegetation is hundreds of years old).  John asked us to stop to take this picture — in this exact location — because he has pictures from prior hikes that look identical.  Maybe he doesn’t look identical (since we’re talking about some hikes over 20 years ago), but the growth and rock in the background are the same.  Exactly the same.  It’s freakin’ eerie!  Since his prior pix were of him with his shirt off, this one had to be too.

From our prior posts, everyone remembers that the green stuff is trees, right?  Yeah, it’s a long way down.

Okay, so we’re on our way!  We’re doin’ some hiking.  We’re going up.  And up.  And up.  You folks that use stairmasters at the gym got nothin’ on us!  And lo’ and behold, we come to the “Dinosaur’s Back”.  That’s not it’s official name, but that’s what John calls it.  It’s the last little bit of “up” before we make it up to the top of Cloud’s Rest:

No big deal, right?  Well…yeah!  Except if you look left, it’s about 1,800 feet down, and if you look right, it’s about 2,000 feet down.  And despite what you think you see in these always deceiving pictures, it’s really, really easy to look down!  Want some perspective?

Uh-huh.  I know it looks “wide”, but maybe this will help:

Trust me on this: vertigo was definitely a part of the experience.

Okay, so we get up there.  Then what?  C’mon!  Eat something!  And more importantly, have a cigar!

Even at 11,000 plus feet, one can successfully light a cigar…

And yes, that’s Half Dome in the background.  It’s about 1,500 feet below us, but unfortunately, nature doesn’t allow for a straight, downhill hike to get there.  First you take a circuitous route down from Cloud’s Rest (losing about 2,500 of elevation we worked so hard to achieve), and then you start back up.  But before we go, group shots!

Paul on the left, John in the middle, and well…everyone knows the ugly guy on the right.  And yes, there’s a story behind the hat…

That’s the Tenaya Valley you see in the right background and it’s the same valley John posed in front of for his famous “lost in time” shot.  Yes, it’s a big valley (we started this hike at Tenaya Lake almost eight miles ago…)  You’ll see more of this valley from Half Dome.  Anyway, to many hikers, the climb up and over Cloud’s Rest looks like hard work compared to simply hiking through the Tenaya Valley.  It tempts many…

…but as John’s guidebook pointed out, the Tenaya Valley is not a place to hike through.  Many that go in don’t come out.  Quoting the guidebook, “if you find yourself in the Tenaya Valley, you’re blowing it bad…”

So!  We don’t turn right!  We turn left!  And down we go!  Down, down, down…nature is so cruel sometimes.

Half Dome in the background again.  John perched on a nice leisurely path.  Yeah, that was the “down” part…

Soon enough, we had the Ultimate Destination in our sights.  Here’s an attempt at a literal reference:

It seemed funny at the time, okay?  If you look at the tree line at the right side base of Half Dome, that’s our final destination for the day.  Our plan is to hit the base, set up camp, and then on the following morning, make the climb up to the top just in time for sunrise.  It’s an excellent plan.

Fast forward: we’re there.  End of a long day (11 miles plus of hiking with serious elevation changes), sun setting, dinner almost ready courtesy of John, and a final cigar. Tomorrow’s goal directly behind (and above) us.

If I were a better photographer (and if the packs didn’t already weigh 35 pounds each), I’d have a camera that worked miracles at night.  Because from very near the spot where this picture was taken, the view of the stars once the sun went down was incredible.  I mean…amazing!  As darkness approached, John asked me if I had ever seen the Milky Way.  I laughed and shrugged my shoulders.  “Of course,” I said.

Wrong!  I couldn’t believe my eyes!  The absence of artificial light means “dark” is actually dark.  I know most of you are familiar with the concept, and I know some of you have experienced what I’m trying to describe.  The best way I can think of to describe it was that looking into the night sky from that spot was like seeing stars (galaxies) through the Hubble Telescope (except obviously we were on the ground).  Had I ever really seen the Milky Way?  Hell no!

Daybreak!  Almost…at about 4:30 AM, and at various moments, all of us slipped out of our comatose states to the sounds of voices.  Damn!  Someone was going to beat us to the top!  That was not part of the plan!  And it was an excellent plan!  Okay.  We’re awake.  Let’s rock.

Tenaya Valley way below.  Campsite below at the tree line.  You get the feeling we’re climbing stairs?  That’s because we basically are…

…somewhere over the decades, dedicated (crazy) fans of the Park “manicured” many of the more popular trail routes.  Mountain goats (like John) have no trouble scurrying up the sides of anything, but mere mortals (like Paul and me) were thankful for the well-placed and well anchored “steps” piled onto and cut into the side of the rock face.  This was some serious vertical going, and without the help of these “steps”, we’d have been working a lot harder.

The trail goes up and up until you reach one of the coolest sights I’ve ever seen.  This was one of the scenes from John’s prior hikes that made me absolutely want to climb Half Dome.  The cables:

Like the “steps” that got us here, these cables were installed to make the ascent up Half Dome possible for those of us born without mountain goat genes.  Notice how there’s a pile of gloves on the right at the foot of the cables.  You need ‘em.  Take a pair, use ‘em, and put ‘em back when you come down.

Paul took this photo of John and me because he decided he’d climbed high enough.  What, you’re not impressed?  You should be.  But maybe the sight of the cables took him by surprise.  At least I had the benefit of seeing pictures before I saw the real thing.  If you’re thinking “what’s the big deal?” maybe you need a better look:

Still not doing it for you?  How’s this?

Or this?  From above…

Yeah, Paul is still down there…you don’t see him?  The guy in the white shirt is John.  Paul is the speck on John’s left.  (Side note of insanity: when it was time to go back down, John says “Jay, do it like this.  It’s easiest.”  He aims his head at the bottom, grabs the cables, and runs.  I did no such thing…)

Here’s a similar view in reverse.  Yeah…it’s fun.  And just one more…sorry if you’re getting tired of the damn cables…just one more for proper perspective:

So!  What’s it look like when you get to the top?  Oh, it’s no big deal…

The outcropping the person is standing on is called the Diving Board.  I’m sure you can figure out why.  Let’s put this in perspective, shall we?  Here’s a shot from the other side of the Valley (that I did not take — from Glacier Point) just so you can appreciate what you’re seeing:

See the Diving Board?  Yeah…it’s up there.  Cloud’s Rest is the “hump” just behind the left side of Half Dome.  The green stuff on the left is the Tenaya Valley.  Can anyone guess why I wanted to do this hike?

Let me show you my inspiration (this was in addition to John’s pix of the cables).  Here’s John from a previous hike…on the Diving Board…doing it as only John can…

He calls this shot “the doctor told me to keep weight off my left knee”.  This shot was my ultimate inspiration.  Here’s my attempt at duplicating his pose (note sheer terror and trepidation):

The Valley is still in a shadow because the sun is coming up.  When the trip was over, and I was lying safely in a hotel room bed, I did a little “back-of-the-napkin” math and determined that it would take between 35 and 40 seconds for one to hit the ground if one were to fall off this damn thing.

Okay!  Check out the hole to my right (your left) in the above shot.  That little cave leads to another hole directly beneath me.  That’s called “the King’s Chair”.  John showed me around in there, and then we grabbed a couple of pix:

You guessed it: that’s John hanging out of the King’s Chair.  Wanna see what he saw?

There’s the Tanya Valley again.  And yes, it’s a long way down.

A few more shots:

John snapped this of me while I was snapping shots of him.

And here he manages to catch me doing something I hate to be caught doing: staring in absolute awe…

Yeah…it was that amazing.

I’m going to leave it there.

The hike back down was tough.  It’s 5,000 feet plus down (6,000 in these pix), and believe it or not, “down” can be harder than “up”.  Once we hit town, we gobbled pizza and ice cream.  We needed it.  I lost 12 pounds on this trip!  What a trip it was…

Quick notes:

It took me forever to write this post because I was striving for perfection.  In the end, I decided I’d slap it together and forget perfection, but as you can imagine, with over 835 photos and this being the centerpiece of the trip, I wanted to do it to “right”.  As noted above, if you want to see a bunch of raw, unedited, uncommented pix, go to EdgeProximity.com.

John is trying to convince me to go Grand Teton this summer for a little rock climbing (as opposed to “hiking”…which sure felt like climbing to me).  I think I’m going to pass.  The trek involves some 5.7 climbs which are no problem for guys like John, but hanging from a fingernail while looking down at a few thousand feet of “exposure” is not in my repertoire right now.  “Jay, you might want to practice your pull ups!”  Oh, and coming down on that particular climb requires two rappels…one over 120 feet.

Plus, we’ve got some new ideas in the works that might require my undivided attention come summertime, so I’m going to be forced to live vicariously through John on this one.  Of course, when he comes home with great photos, I may well be “inspired”.  Look what happened the last time he did that…

Yosemite Three

Yosemite Two

Yosemite — Mount Hoffman and early travels

Yosemite — a taste

Back to our heroes…

John, Schmit-Dog, Paul and Jay need a rest day.  The Tuesday of our trip was planned for exactly that — rest.  But in typical mutant fashion, our organizer (John) views “rest” as relative.  What he considers “rest”, many would consider “I think I want to curl into a ball and die”…

Okay, so it wasn’t quite that bad.  As John writes in his journal, Tuesday was a planned “down” day.  “Down” meaning no plans for big, long treks, but “down” also because we ventured down into “the Touristy Valley” to see some sights.

First stop: Tuolomne Grove, home of a huge grove of Sequoia Trees.  We parked the RV and skipped our way about a mile down and into the grove to see some of these amazing trees.  How amazing?  Well, even though Smitty had experienced some powerful sights on our hikes to Hoffman and Vogelsang peaks, and even though he enjoyed views and vistas that most people only experience in books, when he looked up at his first Sequoia, the words “Holy Shit” escaped his lips for the first time on the whole trip.  Yeah…the trees are that incredible.

When most people think of “big trees”, they think “Red Woods”.  And they’d be right…in a sense.  Red Woods are taller than Sequoias, but when measured by volume, Sequoias are the largest living things on Earth.  The Largest Ever!  These big guys can grow to almost 380 feet with a 26 foot diameter trunk.  They come in at 6,100 tons.  Nothing bigger has ever lived on the face of our planet.  We’re talking “big”.

They’re also one of the oldest living things on the planet.  While the smaller bristlecone pine is older, Sequoias can be 3,000 years old while the Red Wood is a relatively young sprite (about 2,200 years old).  That’s 30 centuries folks…it’s hard to wrap your mind around that kind of age (especially when the thing we’re talking about is still living).

Here’s a young one –

So…you’re thinking “what…that doesn’t look so big.”  Right?  C’mon!  Be honest!  And you’re somewhat correct (even if you are a doubter).  The camera can’t capture the size so well.  So check this out:

That’s John standing inside of a Sequoia.  And here’s the rest of us (just for kicks):

They’re big trees!

Need another perspective?  How ’bout this shot of a fallen Sequoia –

Or John standing on it –

From the bottom side –

Want more amazing things to consider?  How old would you think the fallen tree might be?  How long has it been lying there?  I’ll leave the first question for you to ponder, but as to the second?  It’s probably been lying there for a few hundred years.  Wow, right?

After the Sequoias, we started down into Yosemite Valley.  The Valley is where most folks go when they think “Yosemite”.  Getting there is an experience in itself, and the views from the car as you look over the road sides at your pending death and destruction are more than enough for most folks to say “I been there”.  Plus, the views of the surrounding mountains and water falls are spectacular.  We figured we’d do the tourist thing…and get a look from below at the top of the very heights we planned to conquer over the next two days.

First, let’s talk waterfalls.  Most of us have been to Niagra, and we think Niagra Falls are some pretty big falls, right?  And they are!  But check out Yosemite Falls:

First, it’s important that everyone understand that we did not take this photo.  I’m sharing this to provide some perspective…this photo was snapped by someone else from the Yosemite Trail during the Spring months when the water flow is fast and furious (due to snow melt).  The water flow is just a little slower in July, and our shot was from the Valley floor:

Do the cars and the bus at the bottom of the photo give you a better idea of the size we’re talking about?  Yeah…it’s huge.  And the Falls that catch your eye are the Upper Falls.  Look lower and to the left.  Yep…there’s more…that’s the Lower Falls.

From the top of the Upper Falls to the bottom of the Lower Falls is 2,420 feet.  That makes Yosemite Falls the biggest in North America and the sixth largest in the world.  By comparison, the highest points of Niagra are 173 feet (Horseshoe, on the Canadian side).  If you think Niagra is beautiful and awesome (and it is), just imagine something as big as Yosemite.

We also hit Bridalveil Falls.  Here’s an anonymous photo (again for perspective — we did not take this):

The photographers took this photo from above.  We were at the base of the Falls.  Bridalveil measures 620 feet high — not a small guy!  And our view?  Well, we looked up –

Trust me — it’s huge.  What’s amazing is that sometimes, and usually during the summer months when the water flow is a bit slower, the wind can gust hard enough to temporarily stop the flow of water.  That’s what it looks like, anyway…what really happens is that the wind blows the water flow back up and over the top.  From below, it looks like the falls have stopped.  From above, you get really, really wet…

Want some big rocks?  Check this out: el Capitan, one of the most famous rock faces in the world…

There are actually two sides (or faces) of el Cap that meet at “the Nose”.  I have a ton of photos of el Cap, but I chose this one for a reason.  It’s actually one of the “closest” photos of one of the faces that we have.  That face is 3,000 feet from top to bottom.  And even though it’s big, you’d think that you’d be able to see someone hanging off the side of it, right?

Think again.  Look as hard as you want, but I doubt you’ll find the climbers that were on this face on this day.  Even with binoculars, they were near-impossible to find and make out.  John actually spoke to two groups of people who were lying in the field (from where this photo was taken) as they watched friends climb the face.  That’s how we knew there were climbers up there — their friends and families were keeping an eye on them from below.

el Cap is one of the favorite walls for all types of climbers.  The Nose was first climbed in 1958 — it took 47 days.  Today, free climbers (folks with no equipment) “speed climb” the Nose in hours.  The record is 2 hours 37 minutes.  One enterprising lunatic has actually climbed the Nose twice in one day (he had different partners for each climb).  Tommy Caldwell did it in 23 hours and 23 minutes.  “Did it”…as in climbed that 3,000 face twice…in under 24 hours.

How popular is el Cap?  Well, check out the back of our “base camp” (the RV):

The image on the back of the RV was taken from a point very near to where the RV is currently parked!

So!  What’s on the agenda for the final, phe-nom climb?  What lies ahead?  Check out this bad boy from the bottom…because you’re soon going to see a whole bunch of shots from the top.  Say hello to Half Dome –

And look very closely at the little outcropping on the top left.  That’s called “the Diving Board”.  Keep that in mind as we prep the next installment…

Yosemite Two

Yosemite — Mount Hoffman and early travels
Yosemite — a taste

…this trip was supposed to be documented in days…not weeks!  Life has been keeping us extremely busy, so please accept my apologies.  I won’t make any more promises, and I won’t throw out any more excuses.  It is what it is and it will be…whatever.

Just in case, I’ve included links to the prior Yosemite posts at the bottom of this one.  I’ll do that for each future Yosemite post as well.  If you need a refresher, click away and go back in time…

For now, let’s talk about Day Two.  Day Two wasn’t really Day Two…it was Day Four.  But it was Day Two from a hiking point of view, and after our Mt. Hoffman warm-up, we set out for Vogelsang.  Vogelsang Peak sits at 11,516 feet.  We started at the Rafferty Creek trailhead near/in Tuolomne Meadows (elevation about 9,000 feet give or take).  The guidebooks list the hike to Vogelsang Pass as “strenuous” — our trek would take us to the pass and then up to the top.  Good thing we “warmed up” on Hoffman.

This was a two-dayer, folks.  Full overnight gear in the packs with clothing for cold weather. We were going up.

At the start, the weather was beautiful…head fake!

Yeah…that’s me.  The Florida boy.  I brought my own little bit of sunshine with me in the form of board shorts.  As you can see, the weather at the start was incredible.  In fact, the weather for the whole hike and trip was incredible…albeit a little chilly up on Vogelsang (you’ll see…).  Paul Schmeling and the Dog are waiting patiently in the background while John snaps the moment for posterity.

Off we go!  The hike starts off relatively mild.  The elevation gain is manageable, and the views are amazing.  Here’s our goal –

Notice how jackets have already been busted out.  Yeah…it was starting to get chilly.  Oh, and check out the packs: Smitty’s is deceiving (John classified it as “dense”…don’t let the size fool you), and Paul is bringing his queen sized mattress just to make sure he’s comfortable overnight.

Up, up, up we went.  Mutants (like John) make this stuff look easy, but I gotta tell ya’ (as I have numerous times in prior posts already)…climbing UP when you’re at any kind of elevation is “challenging”.  John planned this whole trip for us, and he planned it incredibly well.  Our base camp was “at elevation” meaning we could sleep at 8,000 to 9,000 feet every night.  This makes the climbs more “doable”, but no amount of expert planning prepares neophytes (like Smitty, Paul and me) for the actual doing.  You gotta suck a lot of wind to get where you wanna go…

Check this out: one of the High Sierra camps at the base of Fletcher Peak.  Vogelsang would be to the right in this view (when you’re standing there) –

High Sierra camps are amazing.  Most of the white “buildings” you see are really tents on platforms.  The camps are very popular because campers get to enjoy the hike “to” the peaks, but they get to stay in relative comfort once there.  Obviously these camps are popular (and full).  High Sierra camps feature “real” food, bathrooms, and even showers.  None of these amenities are technically available to those of us passing through, but the good folks that staff the camps are generous with their time and any “extra” provisions.  While munching on blueberry pancakes (courtesy of Thom at the camp), we were encouraged to use the bathrooms and fill our Camelbacks with water.  I know…bathrooms and pancakes don’t sound like a big deal from the comfort of your living room.  But trust me…when you’re humping a heavy pack up the side of a damn mountain, the pancakes are a God-send and the bathrooms run a close second.

Thom was also a good source of information. As John writes in his journal, “Thom gave me some beta (“critical info” is the translation for you newbies…Jay) on the climb up Vogelsang and told us where we could camp up by the lake.  He told us to stay in the wind to keep the mosquitoes at bay, but our spot on the ledge was a bit too windy and blew away our tents just as we were setting them up.  This was a bit exciting for all of us and really got my adrenaline pumping.  We found a more sheltered spot by the lake and made camp…”

(Yeah…tents blowing off an 11,000 mountain will get your adrenaline pumping, alright.  Thankfully we recovered everything…)

The lake.  John is referring to Vogelsang Lake — the spot we planned to stay for the night.  I have a ton of pictures of the lake at ground level, but those aren’t as fun as this one: here’s the lake from up high (near Vogelsang Peak) taken the following day.  Fletcher Peak (the mountain in the background of the High Sierra camp shot) is to the right –

That’s Paul and me taking in the sights.  You can’t see it, but our campsite is way, way down on the left side of the lake.  This picture was taken after our unsuccessful bid for the top…

“What?  You didn’t make it to the top?” you’re asking…

…and the answer is ‘no’.  We got close, and it was very frustrating to fail in our attempt, but let me explain.

As you saw in the photos, despite the calender reading “July”, there’s still snow on the ground at elevation.  Our attempt at the top began early in the morning — very early.  With temps dipping considerably overnight, the snow on the ground is really better described as “ice”.  Later in the day, after the sun has had a chance to beat down on the mountains for a bit, the snow will get softer and even a bit slushy.  Soft and slushy snow is easy to navigate.  Ice is not.

So on the morning of Day Two (in trek days…not trip days), we set out to conquer Vogelsang.  And we hit ice.  Lots of ice.  Here’s John thinking “WTF?”  We’re literally about 400 feet from the peak, and we were stymied.

Getting UP the ice wasn’t the concern.  We found all kinds of plausible ways to navigate the ice going UP.  It was the DOWN part of the equation that concerned us.  Even though we were only 400 feet from the top, when it came time to head back down, one slip on the ice would mean a fast descent.  Really fast.  Really fast descents imply lack of control (getting the picture?) and lack of control means bouncing off of things that tend to be harder than one’s head (i.e. boulders like the one John is standing on).  And believe me…even though it looks like that particular boulder would quickly stop one’s uncontrolled descent (and it might), chances were good that after a good bounce, one’s uncontrolled descent would continue.  That would mean more bouncing off of things generally harder than one’s head.  In fact, we learned later (while reading the Emergency evacuation reports at our base camp) that one poor soul did exactly that three days before our attempt.  He bounced his way off the peak and down a thousand feet or so before he finally came to a stop.  Unfortunately for him, his “stop” included two broken legs.  A helicopter evac-ed him out.  Ooopsie…

From John’s journal: Thom may have thought we had ice axes and crampons, but this chute looked a bit dangerous”. Understatement!

More of the killer snow…

That’s Paul and me standing in a rare “safe zone”.  If we found a way to put padding on all the rocks, we might have continued up.

After a lot of deliberation, we decided “the mountain will be there tomorrow”.  We wouldn’t be there, of course, but that’s an old saying that keeps hikers alive (courtesy of Dave Jopp, a friend of John’s that’s even more of a mutant).  It means we can always go back another day.  The mountain ain’t movin’…

But nonetheless, were we frustrated?  How frustrated?  I don’t know…you tell me…do I look frustrated here?

Yeah…I do.  I look old too (but that’s another post).  Paul looks happy. Paul is always happy.  Sometimes you wanna throw his happy ass down the mountain, but that too is another post…

(Paul was a great addition to our group!)

So!  What was it like overnight?  Cold.  Cold!  Here’s the morning garb as we get ready to set out.

My shorts weren’t bringing any Florida sunshine, lemme tell ‘ya.

The hike took us two days, a lot of “up”, the corresponding “down” the second day (which hurts just as bad as up, believe it or not), and we covered about 20 miles.  Not bad for three rookies led by a mutant, right?

More to come!

Earlier Yosemite posts:

Yosemite — Mount Hoffman and early travels
Yosemite — a taste

]]> http://trunzo.com/2009/09/03/yosemite-two/feed/ 1 http://trunzo.com/2009/07/31/yosemite-mount-hoffman-and-early-travels/ http://trunzo.com/2009/07/31/yosemite-mount-hoffman-and-early-travels/#comments Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:34:40 +0000 Jay http://trunzo.com/?p=835 I know, I know…

Many of you were expecting immediate updates on the Yosemite trip.  I even warned you, right?  “Expect  more frequent UPDATES! in your inbox…”

Well, life has a way of imposing itself upon you sometimes, and after eight days incommunicado, I had a lot of catching up to do.  I’m even forsaking some work-related issues right now so I can write this post while enjoying a cigar.

So!  On July 10th, our crew descended upon San Fransisco airport and loaded up for Yosemite.  It’s a bit of a ride on California highways at first (traffic), and then it turns into a bit more of a ride on the mountain roads and passes leading into Yosemite National Park.  “Roads” in the Park are not like roads in the civilized world — they’re Narrow Lanes of Death.  On more than one occasion I wished that John would slow down to about 4 MPH so we might better avoid the side of the road…which amounts to about three feet of stone and then a vertical plunge a few thousand feet into oblivion.  Don’t these mountain people know what a freakin’ guardrail is?

A 27-foot RV does not handle like a sports car, but John is a mountain goat.  I guess he figures that whatever skills he uses to command his body up insane mountain sides also apply to said RV doing 45 MPH on the traffic equivalent of a balance beam.  We arrived at our first campsite alive and well.  The boys got their RV beds ready; I set up my tent.  (Hey, if you’re going to go into the wilderness for eight days, you might as well do it right, wouldn’t you agree?  I am proud to say that my tent was put to good use every night, i.e. protecting my exhausted body while it tried to recover from each day’s adventures.)

As we drove into the Park, we got a chance to see some incredible views and get a lay of the land.  Here are Paul and John playing with a small rock on a slab of granite:

Yeah…that thing was just sitting there.  Glaciers are powerful things, right?

Okay, with the first night behind us, we moved on to our permanent camp in Tuolomne Meadows.  At 8,600 feet, Tuolomne Meadows is an excellent spot to acclimate to altitude, and it’s a perfect starting point for the treks John laid out for us.

Our first hike was scheduled as an “easy” one.  John figured we’d do a “simple” day hike to get a feel for the trails and the elevation.  The plan?  Hike up to May Lake and then head on up to Mount Hoffman.  The guidebook calls this hike “moderate”.  Smitty claims the guidebook was written by sadists.

Here’s what a recent hiker posted on his blog about Hoffman:

At 10,850 feet, visitors can see Mount Hoffman easily, but for the occasional or novice hiker the trail to Mount Hoffman can be forbidding. The glacial advances over the last 1.5 million years buried this area under ice several times. The last of the retreating glaciers, about 11,000 years ago, finished the job of carving the spectacular spires and domes in Yosemite National Park. It is well known; the panorama view of Hoffman showed all the spender of these magnificent peaks.

A little quick math…let’s see…from Tuolomne Meadows to the peak of Hoffman is about a 2,200 feet gain in elevation.  Spread over 3.5 miles, this amounts to well less than 1,000 feet up per mile.  Should be easy enough, right?

Umm…right.

Here’s a view of the peak(s) as we got started:

The boys heard me repeat this over and over, but for everyone’s benefit, let me be clear:

I like to think I’m in halfway decent shape.  I run, I box, I bike, I swim, I spend some time in the gym.  Paul spent a bunch of time in the Army, so he knows a thing or two about humping through hills with a pack on.  Smitty competes in triathlons, and he once asked me to swim the Great Chesapeake Bay Swim for kicks (that’s 4.4 miles in open water, folks).  As mentioned earlier, John is a mountain goat.  All of us should be able to tackle a “moderate” hike, right?

You’d think!  But for the uninitiated, a long, uphill walk at altitude is like sucking air through a cocktail straw.  That someone bent in half.  Plus, at 9,000 feet (for example), the sun beats down on you and life feels “warm”.  At almost 11,000 feet, the wind whips around you, the altitude sucks every ounce of water out of your body, and life starts to feel “chilly”.  Standing at 11,000 feet is decidedly different than standing hillside at 9,000.  Let the learning begin…

So up we go!  Yosemite is filled with well-marked, well-maintained trails.  Rangers will tell you anything you want to now abut the trails.  But!  Trails tend to go around peaks and through passes.  Rarely do trails make their way up to the peaks, and when traveling with a mountain goat, the peaks are the destination.

Up to May Lake!

Incredible!  The lake is beautiful and crystal clear.  It’s cold too.  Hoffman is in the background, and the peak is the hump on the left.  The stuff on the right is a collection of “false” peaks.  From the lake, the false peaks look like they need conquering, and conquer them we did.  But those false peaks are the mountain version of a head fake; the real deal is the summit, and that’s on the left.

Here’s another look:

The tree line ends at about 9,600 feet.  In June, Yosemite enjoyed heavy snowfall at 6,000 feet.  The nice-looking, seemingly accessible pile of rocks is a different world.  Any plant life above 9,600 feet is hundreds of years old.  Fallen trees near the treeline have probably been “fallen” for two or three hundred years.  Nothing rots at this elevation, and in the warmer months, there’s very little precipitation or moisture to encourage decay.  When the precipitation does fall, it falls in the colder months when everything is frozen.  So…it’s like walking back in time.  An incredible experience!

Here’s a look back at our way up.  You can see the trail sticking out in the dust and granite, and this part of the hike really is a long walk uphill.  But as noted earlier, trails don’t lead to peaks.  Rangers won’t even discuss peaks.  What’s a group of hikers to do?

Follow the mountain goat, of course.  As the trail came to an end, here’s what we were faced with:

That antenna you see is the peak.  That’s where we want to be.  And yes, that’s a person next to the antenna.  We’ve come a long way, but we have a little more to go.  All we gotta do now is scramble up these rocks.  No big deal, right?

Being an efficient kind of guy, my eyes were glued to the rocks and ridge lines in an attempt to find the easiest way up.  John was scurrying around like a little kid in a toy store, so as I made my way up, he was a little below me.  I didn’t have my mountain goat guide to lead me up the side.

See that flat spot to the right of the antenna?  I chose that as my line.  I figured “hey!  Get on up to that ridge, and then it’s a flat hop, skip and jump over to the peak!”  Brilliant, right?  Check out what I saw on the other side of that ridge –

The camera’s depth of field is having a hard time rendering reality.  The green stuff you see ain’t bushes — it’s trees!  The white stuff is obviously snow.  What isn’t so obvious is that the snow and the trees are about 2,000 below me.  Straight down below me.  Ooopsie.  My “efficient” route suddenly seemed a lot less efficient.  Time to regroup.

(As an aside, on our way down, I encountered a girl bunched up in the fetal position near this ridge.  I took one look at her and said “You looked over the side, didn’t you…”  She said “yes” in a voice that came from miles and miles away.  I suggested the alternative route up that I had found, but she insisted she wasn’t moving.  Not up.  Not down.  John saved the day by escorting her up to the top so she could join her friends.  It was assistance that was offered over and over again to many a terrified soul during our travels…)

Once on the top, life was good!  Cold.  But good!  The view from the summit was the basis for the panorama I posted in the first Yosemite post.  The view from the summit is the view our commenting hiker (above) made on his blog.  The view is incredible!

And here are some views from the false peaks –

Pretty amazing, right?

And check this out — snow cups!

These guys are formed by the movement of the sun.  John can explain it in detail, but it has something to do with the depth of the snow and how it melts as the sun crosses the sky.  Here are the boys playing on some:

John is on the left, Paul on the right.  Maybe they’re not playing…John has that look in his eye.  I think he was planning the attack on the next peak.

The hike down was faster but no less work.  Going up means fighting gravity; going down means fighting gravity too, but in a different kind of way.  By the time we got back to camp, I was ready for bed.  We did a little dinner, but if I remember correctly, the sun was still up when I zipped up my sleeping bag and passed out.  It was certainly a day of firsts, and it was a day that set the tone for the rest of the week.  John is an expert, but the rest of us quickly realized that these “long walks” were going to be challenging.

Hoffman was a 7 mile trek round trip.  The next ones were going to be longer.  And higher.

Yeeee haaaaa…

Stay tuned.  More to follow.

Earlier Yosemite posts:

Yosemite — a taste

]]> http://trunzo.com/2009/07/31/yosemite-mount-hoffman-and-early-travels/feed/ 1 http://trunzo.com/2009/07/19/yosemite-a-taste/ http://trunzo.com/2009/07/19/yosemite-a-taste/#comments Sun, 19 Jul 2009 20:59:19 +0000 Jay http://trunzo.com/?p=821 Seven days in Yosemite…

I’ll be posting a blow-by-blow over the next few days, but to get things started, here’s a panoramic shot I managed to put together:

There’s no way I can post the full sized photo on the site.  It’s actually 26 individual photos “stitched” together.  If you’re so inclined, you can click this link to open the image for better viewing.  It’ll take about fifteen seconds (depending on your connection speed).  Go ahead and do it — you’ll be happy you did.

The trip was organized by our good friend John Gallen.  He’s a Yosemite veteran, and he made sure we started off slow (this photo) and ended with a bang.  I guarantee you’ll like the bang!

Our group was rounded out by the venerable Chris Smith (a fellow Georgetown alum) and Paul Schmeling (a frequent traveler to China introduced to us by John).  Paul is going on our email list until he begs to be removed…

We based ourselves at Tuolumne Meadows.  Our visit was broken down into treks: Day 1 was Mount Hoffman.  Days 2 and 3 encompassed our first overnight in the wild as we made our way up to Vogelsang and Fletcher peaks.  Day 4 was spent checking out the sequoia trees and visiting Yosemite Valley.  Days 5 and 6 included another overnight as we made our way over Clouds Rest and up to Half Dome.  Day 7 was the pack and repack day with the whole trip being bracketed by travel days.  I don’t know about the other guys, but I’m shot.

So stay tuned!  We managed almost 1,000 photos!  I’ll do my best to pull out a few good ones.  At the risk of sounding cliche, Yosemite is a National Treasure.  You gotta see it to believe it, and hopefully our pix will offer a glimpse into a place I thought was amazing.

More soon!