This is very odd for me. To whom am I writing? You? Who the hell are you to be coming in here perusing the only quasi-permanent storage facility for my idle thoughts without permission? No one at all, right? Some anonymous stranger. Maybe that's why people like this stuff. Are you naked, at least?
I periodically think of keeping a journal around, but I often get too lazy to write in it. I maintained one during my travels in the UK for a while, but it got stolen. I then tried to continue on with some cheap notebook for the rest of that trip, but somewhere around Cinque Terre I just lost motivation for that too. Maybe it's because real, actual writing is so time-consuming. We have become so damned lazy. And here I am taking part...
Well, I might as well update the general public on what it is that I've been doing, since you're surely dying to know. Honestly, at least get half-naked.
I have been working. I work all day long and most of that day I wonder why it is that people spend their lives this way. Don't get me wrong, I kind of enjoy what I do. Well, I enjoy the field but I don't necessarily get to do the things that I'd like to do all the time (i.e. design without a budget, sleep when I get the urge, tell one of my bosses he's a spineless douche, etc.). Regardless, in order to remain a contributing member of our little economy, I work. I was doing that way too much for the last few weeks and starting to feel pretty burned out. Around the beginning of that period my good buddy Ficken (fickenltd.blogspot.com if you're feeling particularly saucy) contacted me about heading to Yosemite to hike Half Dome. Just on a whim...Just drop everything and go. I love that spirit. We had to wait for me to get a tent, which I did about a week later, but then he was getting busy with law school (I guess they build quite a few dioramas up there), and the idea started to fade. I discovered just about a week ago that they were going to take down the poles that help you up the cables at the end of the hike today. I couldn't have that...I had to get up there before spring or I was going to lash out in some maniacal way. You know...squirt a little mustard on the bottom of my shoe, then walk around the office as if I didn't know. That'd take them hours to get out of the carpet! But I'm really not that aggressive. So I took a trip to REI, got a pocket stove and few other items, packed up the car, and headed out Friday as soon as I got out of work. Well, I cut out early. By 11:30am I was on the freeway and looking forward to a refreshing adventure.
Seven hours later I arrived at the gate to Yosemite and asked about Camp 4, where I intended to stay. It was full since all of the government employees and hippies have a three day weekend, so I had to stay at Wawona. No big deal, it's just 30 minutes from the valley floor. So I get in there, find a spot, set up camp, get dinner in my belly, then head to bed. When my alarm went off at 4:00am I felt totally energetic and was still raring to go. I broke down camp, hit up the bathroom (a quarter mile away), and was back on the road by 4:45am.
After a little searching in the dark I found the parking lot at the trail head, then got my pack together and a flash light handy and started out. At 5:45am I was one of about ten people hiking by flash light towards the trail.
Over the course of the next four hours I went up some incredibly steep and rough-hewn granite steps, monstrous switchbacks, a little nice, flat path, and then the infamous cables at the top of the climb. At the end I met up with a guy and his dad who were just ahead of me, and we went up the cables together. This was at about 9:20am and there were only four people on the cables at that point, including one guy who almost slipped and died and was just kind of frozen in the middle. Once we got to the top I admired the space for about a half hour, got photos (to be posted next time) and just enjoyed the fact that I had to work my ass off to get up there and it was mostly deserted once I did. That was sure to change about an hour later, as I probably passed 100 people just in the first 30 minutes on the way down. I was surpised to hear one of those people call out my name as I stared at my feet to find decent steps back down. Shannon, a girl from my landscape architecture program at Davis, happened to be on the trail the same day with her boyfriend. We talked briefly and then got back on our way. It was a cool little encounter.
I can't say enough good things about being at the top of that thing and how refreshing it was to sleep on the cold, hard ground for once. And I won't. I would encourage you all to do this for yourselves one day, because it is worth every ache and pain and then some. It ended up being about 18 miles round trip (including distance to and from the car), but it was much more manageable than I expected. Travelling alone helped out since I could set the pace however I chose, but I woudn't hesitate to do it with a friend either. In fact, I've already got plans to again.
If you ever want to discourage blog reader traffic, take a lesson. How long is this thing anyway? Oh, one last highlight: on my way up there I saw a sign for someone who was selling an acre of A.T.P. I'm sure that's a real estate acronym with which I am not familiar, but I was thinking that's a hell of a lot of adenosine triphosphate.
posted by Matthew MacLeod @ 7:03 PM
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