The first day of summer vacation our church group took a trip to Yosemite to hike Half Dome. I would give you a whole summary of the trip, but this is much quicker.
Trail head, but you have to walk to get there.
1. About 18 miles total
2.You finish more than 1 mile above sea level (you go up abotu 4000 feet from where you start)
3. It’s definately not a walk.
4. Half carved granite stairs on the side of a cliff to hike.
5. You mean we get dripping wet walking past mist falls? I didn’t want to get wet!
6. Squirrel!!
7. Oh, more stairs…
8. Bathroom!
9. Oh, more stairs
10. Deer, Deer, Deer!
11. Thunder
12, Ok, the ranger said we should turn arond now before the thunderstorm, but we don’t know where our group is.
13. Stairs, really?
14. Squirrel!
15. Is that thunder?
16. Is that lightning?
17. I’m going to hold onto this tree until I can stand up again. (repeat 20 more times)
18. Is that Half Dome?
19. Ok, I’m going to go up these barely carved giant steps and scrabble up this granite slope that doesn’t even have handrails.
20. A member of our group twists his knee right behind me.
20. That’s definately lightning,
21. I touched the poles! I reached my impossible goal!
22. Storm coming, get down, get down!! Where’s Bill? He’s still on the cables to go up.
23. Our group member is still on the stairs, with 2 people helping him down.
24. It’s raining on top of half dome and we are slogging along.
25. What do you mean this isn’t the trail?
26. Ouch!
27. The ranger takes our injured member and tells us to get down before dark.
28. Waterfall!
29. Wow, I didn’t know my knees could hurt this much!
30. Yeah, we’ll wait for the bus.
Now for the awesome parts.
I never ever thought I would be able to do a hike like this, It was incredible, inspiring, exhausting, painful, and something I will be able to talk about the rest of my life. Big thanks to Bill, who encouraged me the whole way up, telling me I just had to keep taking little steps and knew I could do it even though I didn’t.
Our group was awesome, hilarious, and in some cases, terrified of heights. We literally banded together to get our friend down the hill, faced crazy weather, and the majority of us made it all the way up and back down. For our friend who had to stay with the rangers and really injured himself we had a collection to help pay for the doctor visit and the horse ride back down.
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