My Trails

If you could go up in a New York City skyscraper – say, to about floor forty – open a window and fearlessly step out on the ledge, you may be a canidate for the cable climb to Half Dome in Yosemite. I am not.

I’m a little disappointed but I have no regrets. Carrie and I made it about a third of the way up and then decided this climb was not for us. It takes a tremendous amount of arm strength to pull yourself up the cable, and footing on the sixty degree slope is sketchy because of all the people scrambling and polishing the granite over the years. One slip and it’s all she wrote!

Even with our objective falling short we still had a good time. On the first day we carried full packs from Yosemite Valley 4.5 miles to a backpacking campground in Little Yosemite Valley in order to get an early start at the climb. We were on the trail early the next morning with small daypacks and renewed energy, eager and confident to do our best. We climbed another 4000 feet over wild rock slabs and narrow steps, scaling the formation they call Sub Dome, and eventually arriving at the base of the cables stretching 400 feet seemingly straight up the wall of Half Dome. We gathered our courage and started up.

Almost immediately you are struck with the fact that it is thousands of feet down in almost every direction. You focus on the cable you desperately clutch with all your might. The climb is done mainly with arm strength, feet scratching for traction until you reach a small board placed every ten feet or so where you can rest for a minute

We made it about a third of the way and decided to go back down. My arms and shoulders were shaking from the tension of holding on and the altitude was already making me light-headed, a sure prescription for disaster.

Some people wear a harness that lets you clip onto the cable for safety and I would suggest that everyone wear one. We talked with a rock-climber on the hike down that said they could not make it up the cables, so that made us feel a little better.

It helps to be young and fearless to successfully climb Half Dome. Even then there have been several deaths from falls from the mountain and other places in the park. Yosemite is a Mecca for climbers and foolish tourists playing to close to the waterfalls. Sometimes things happen. The Mist trail by Vernal Falls was closed for a while while we were hiking to the backpackers camp for a “body recovery “.

We have some disappointment. Carrie had a lot of friends pulling for her and that sometimes makes it hard because you feel you let them down, but I’m glad we realized our limitations before we got into serious trouble. I wouldn’t want to pay for a helicopter rescue off the top.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 6th, 2013 at 5:38 pm and is filed under Adventure. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.