I completed a very special item on my "bucket list" - summit..
Added 2023-06-30 06:52:50 +0000 UTCI completed a very special item on my "bucket list" - summiting Half Dome in Yosemite! We woke up at 5am to get on the trail by 6:15am. The Merced River is 260% fuller than average this year and as a result the falls were spectacular - though I was also soaked in them! (I packed extra clothes!) After climbing miles of stairs past Vernal and Nevada Falls (with the rainbow in the video!), we then walked through Little Yosemite Valley to start the long slow climb up the Sub Dome... After getting our permits checked by the ranger, there were more stairs grading into rubbly granite slopes to approach the final step - the infamous cables. You don't need mountaineering gear to summit Half Dome, but you do need to go in summer when the steel cables are up for the season, and you need good weather (even light rain can be deadly), and I'm very glad I brought gloves - because you need to pull your body up the cables, sometimes on vertical sections. Photos didn't prepare me for the actual experience of going up. I'm so grateful to the strength of my body and for my foresight for bringing gloves! And then there's the peak. The views were incredible. You can see for miles and miles. Raging rivers all around trace back and back into the wilderness. The valley below looks like a toy set... While going down the cables was much easier than going up, my body struggled with the overall descent. The last four miles back past the falls were brutal. All my muscles in my legs were sore and shaking. I got a few blisters. But damn....100000% worth it!
