I was about a quarter of the way up the cables when I lost my
nerve.
My hands, enveloped in roomy ‹ too roomy ‹ work gloves, ran
slick with fear-sweat, and my bowels went watery as they rumbled.
This would not be a good place to make a mistake, I thought.
I contemplated getting a sense of where I was ‹ to push myself
to the finish line so far into the race. I tried to turn my head to
the side, but found I could only stare at the back of the person in
front of me. And I wasn¹t even half-way done yet.
Yeah, my trip to Yosemite was awesome, thanks for asking. We¹ll
rejoin our imperiled hero after this flashback!
We had come, on the hottest weekend of the summer and the latest
sunset of the year, with one goal in mind ‹ hiking Half Dome, the
most imposing, awe-inspiring, excretion-motivating,
muscle-straining, brain-scrambling, sweat-inducing and all-around
butt-kicking single-day hike in California. You can put yourself
through more, but it requires rock-climbing, wilderness camping
gear, a healthy respect for our neighbor the bear and quite
possibly all three.
Since a revelatory moment a year earlier at the top of Upper
Yosemite Falls, my girlfriend Kimra and I had talked a lot about
Half Dome, an insane, hook-peaked crag overlooking the Yosemite
Valley. Named for the missing half that should be where the sheer
face of rock looming over the valley is located instead, Half Dome
is the step between casual hiking and lunacy. Actually, it¹s
solidly in the lunacy camp. To perform the full loop, from camp at
Curry Village to the summit and back, using both the John Muir and
Mist trails, requires, and I swear I am not making this up, an
18-mile trek with a vertical rise of more than 5,000 feet ‹ a mile
up, basically.
But we had talked about it, and as the hiking season got going
in mid-April this year (the rain really kept us off the mountains
for several weeks beyond the usual cut-off), we resolved to reach
for the top. It was a wonderful moment, and I was excited for the
challenge.
Then I saw pictures online of The Cables. I capitalize both
words, because they deserve the honorific. Just 900 feet from the
end of the trail, the ascent of the granite mountain becomes too
severe to cut steps into, the surface to slick to reliably walk on.
Some visionary decided to just throw a couple of steel cables up
the side, threaded through a series of nowhere-near-stable-enough
posts. It¹s like a staircase without steps held together with a
pair of wet noodles.
I was ready to give up, and I was sitting at home on the
computer. How on earth would I ever get close enough to be too
scared to climb the cables? I would soon learn.
After a series of hikes as rigorous as we could find throughout
the greater Bay Area, including Mt. St. Helena, Mt. Tamalpais and
Mission Peak, I felt as ready as I ever could for a hike twice as
tall and long as any I had ever attempted.
As Sonoma County temperatures surged above 105 degrees in late
June, I was in a car filled with sandwiches, bottled water, Propel
fitness water, energy bars, Bold Party-variety Chex Mix and two
very tired prospective hikers.
We set off from the Curry Village parking lot, as close as a
private car will take you to the beginning of the hike, just before
7 a.m. Operating on four hours of sleep and an empty, though
nauseous stomach wasn¹t doing me any favors. After a flat
three-quarters of a mile stroll along an access road, passing
playgrounds, sleeping campers and over a bridge, we hit the
trailhead. It wasn¹t named the ³Half Dome Trailhead² or some other
such name. It was named Trailhead. And so we began. We would not be
back this way for another 16.5 miles and more than 13 hours. Take a
nice, long look, kids.
Months of anticipation (and hours more cable-anxiety to go) had
me absolutely wired. It was already getting hot in the valley, so I
was anxious to get vertical. We took the steeper Mist Trail and
climbed more than 500 granite steps, carved yards from the main
path of Vernal Falls, which was raging following this winter¹s
heavy snow fall, to reach the top of the falls, 1.3 miles across
and 1,000 feet up.
The name Mist Trail is an understatement. Apparently,
³Underwater Trail² was already in use. At minimum, they should
rename it ³Mist Trail ‹ You Will Get Wet.² In order to prepare for
this section of the hike, befriend a firefighter and ask to have
the hose turned on you while attempting to scale a roof with a tall
peak. You¹ll get the idea. I was absolutely sopping and shivering
not 30 minutes after hitting the trail. Despite this fact, I
couldn’t drink enough water, and took frequent swigs, though I
feared running out along the way.
We took some unenthusiastic photos overlooking the top of the
falls and got moving again. We had another waterfall to hike up,
and then we would be one-third of the way to the top. Staying put
means not making it on this hike. No matter the pain, the obstacle
or the fear, you just need to keep walking. Or staggering, as is
often the case.
Winding along a cliff-face, we continued to climb a rugged set
of stairs carved from the bedrock. The sun dried my clothes
quickly, save for a part of my lower back covered by my pack that
would remain soaking until I got home. Rot didn’t set in, if you
were wondering.
But just as I had dried off, I got wet again. Though not quite
as drenching as the Vernal Falls stretch, the second leg of the
Mist Trail to the top of Nevada Falls is also quite damp. Through
bits of forest and occasional spectacular views of the waterfall,
we made our way to the Little Yosemite Valley, a high-elevation
region dominated by the Merced River. In only two hours, we had
climbed 1,960 feet while traveling 2.5 miles. I had another energy
bar and drank more water as I observed my fellow Half Domers.
Two frat-guy types in muscle-tees were refilling their
Camel-Baks, hilarious water-filled backpacks that allow their
wearers to drink water as they walk without the use of their hands.
It¹s like the foam baseball hats you insert beer cans into to free
up your hands for catching stray pop flies in the bleachers. They
had an elaborate filtration system that they used to purify their
supply.
A large extended family, including a fit but tired looking
mother in her 50s, were joking about the climb ahead, clearly
sizing one another up to see who among them would make it and who
would be left behind.
It¹s one heck of a Darwinian way to spend the day. Rising, we
began on the trail again, winding through the Little Yosemite
Valley with ease. Almost too much. Though it¹s refreshing to have a
flat trail after such a severe climb, it¹s also frustrating to be
wasting strength on a hike that doesn¹t bring you any closer to the
top. This was just about the only portion of the day where I
managed much in the way of conversation. On the Mist Trail, I was
underwater and making comical Aquaman noises, while the steeper
portions in the sun were characterized by winces, whines and
panting … much like college, really.
After a mile or so of flat-land, the trail veers into a forested
slope, and a sharp series of switchbacks are more draining than
they first appear. I was taking way more breaks than I meant to.
Take a close look at Half Dome before you start up here ‹ you won¹t
see its distinctive peak for another couple of hours after you
leave the little valley.
Eventually, the trail gets a bit wider, the trees more sparse,
the sun more intense. You come up a little rise and it¹s there ‹
the entirety of the Yosemite Valley, with Half Dome crowning it
all. You¹ll have hiked more than five miles, and it¹s still
infinitely distant. Oh, and you can see ant-like people pulling
themselves up dental floss cables on an entirely vertical side of
the whole mess. I think I ate half a sandwich at this point to calm
myself.
After a good rest, we entered the penultimate phase of the trek,
known as ³The Stairs,² because it consists of hundreds of granite
steps carved from the mountainside. Many of them are in switchback
form, at odd angles, with chunks missing. It¹s the most deceptively
exhausting hiking I¹ve ever done. There¹s no shade, it goes on
forever and it¹s a little slippery.
And then they just stop, as you learn to scramble up granite, at
least the kind that isn¹t literally vertical (More about that soon.
Honest.). We clambered over the top of the shoulder of rock to spy
a tiny saddle connecting the slope we¹d just finished to imposing
monolith before us. We were there. The Cables.
I think we sat and talked about whether we could tackle the task
or not for 15 minutes. It looked hard, there¹s no good way to give
up and so on. But I had come too far not to try, and so had Kimra,
so we donned our value-priced garden and work gloves and grasped
hold of our (quite literal) lifelines. If you don¹t bring your own
gloves, there is a pile almost knee-deep of successful hikers¹
pairs left behind at the start.
Following on from the lead to this piece, here is what you
should know about The Cables before you begin them: Nothing. You
shouldn¹t know how tall they are, how long it takes, how many
people have died (none that I¹m aware, but have you looked at the
pictures yet?), what your strategy should be, any of it. Go in
ignorant, with good upper-body strength, decent gloves and the will
to finish, and you¹ll be fine.
I know I was, and Kimra was, too, though we both had plenty of
moments of terror on the high-wire. The worst, if you want to know
the worst, is the waiting. Since the designers of Yosemite National
Park were sadists, there is a single set of cables, used for
ascending and descending from the summit. It¹s two-way traffic on a
one-way street, only there are buff lunatics passing you on the
sidewalk, as well. So in addition to being in need of a change of
pants from the singularly terrifying elevation, grade and surface,
you get to experience gross inadequacy and have to think about the
whole thing.
But you¹ll get through. There are planks at almost every post,
and the cables are crowded enough that people will make sure you¹re
OK. In fact, on our descent, an older man going down himself passed
out in the middle of the line. Six brave and, presumably,
steroid-using men picked him up and carried him down the remainder
of the slope. He was fine.
And the feeling when I finally got off The Cables, six hours
after I hit the trailhead, was like none I¹ve ever felt. The air
was thin, but the view was beyond anything I have seen in my entire
life. The summit itself is approachable, fun to run around and peer
over the edge of. You could probably stage a concert up there and
comfortably seat 1,000 or more audience-members. There was even a
snowfield for high-elevation shenanigans.
Shortly after I summited, Kimra took her final strides up the
cables and made it. We were at the top of the world. We spent an
hour up there, including time on the always terrifying ³diving
board,² a lone spit of rock that sticks out over the valley floor
5,000 feet below. I’ll always have those memories, and I will
always treasure the pictures.
But I¹m never doing it again. As I got down from the cables
(which is about as bad as going up), I became retroactively freaked
out and began visualizing myself falling, to an almost
uncontrollable degree. In the car headed back west, this sense
continued, analyzing all that might have gone wrong. It¹s not
something we¹re meant to meddle in.
Half Dome is a must-climb for any self-respecting hiker. But you
only ever need to do it once. Best of luck in your own pursuits and
just remember to keep looking at the person in front of you.
They aren¹t going anywhere.
