Half Dome Hike

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Just returned to work after a calf-brutalizing hike to the top of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park. Santahn took me seriously and actually put this trip together. His friend Chad found last-minute reservations for cabins in Curry Village on craigslist. We set out hiking on Saturday about 5:30am and did not return till after 9pm. It's about a 16 mile hike roundtrip.
The last stretch of the hike is a cable climb up a near-vertical stretch of rock. Going up, someone spilled water making the rock extra slippery. A woman almost slipped away. Three guys grabbed her. We stood for long stretches, clinging to to the cable in a kind of mountain traffic jam.
The top is a bit windy and the landscape looks like the moon.
Coming down, the water bottle in the side pocket of my backpack got caught in the cable and tumbled away down the mountain. Not having water made the remaining 5 hours of the hike a bit hallucinatory. We were all out of fluids and had to resort to splitting an orange four ways. I ate the peel.
But at least we had lights. After about 3 miles on the return trip down the mountain we lost the sun. As we made our way down we came upon several groups of people who either had no lights at all, or had them but could not find the trail. Those who had no lights were simply sitting beside the trail in the dark, waiting for people with lights to come along !
Our group grew to about 20 people... a long line of tiny lights snaking its way down a wooded mountain trail... like elves.
The prevailing sentiment seemed to be "amen" as large quantities of pizza and beer were consumed after our safe arrival back to Curry Village.
Click here to see a slideshow. (You don't need to be a registered user of Kodak Easy Share...)

UPDATED

I am converting this site over to a blog so I'll be able to add posts and new info easier. Should be able to add text and photos directly through the web now. We'll see how well it works...