Kiss My Royal American

When the group I was hiking with decided to go into Yosemite Valley, one of our big planned stops was Half Dome. A bit of a touristy thing to do, but if it weren't good, it probably wouldn't be touristy.

The thing is just a giant piece of granite sticking straight up in the middle of a valley. One side is sheer cliff face, straight up a few thousand feet and the only way to get up it is to rock climb.

The back side, the easier side, has stairs cut right into the face and you can see the scars where the workers cut into the stone with jack hammers or claws or whatever rock cutting tool they used to build the thing. No fine finish on this one.

There's a nice false summit a few hundred feet below the actual top with some gorgeous camping spots that we had planned on using until a thunderstorm rolled in.

The weather on this trip had been nothing other than the epitome of good weather. Blue skies, sun, mild temperatures. Probably what you'll get if you make it to heaven, but last time I talked to god he said your chances are looking pretty grim.

First damn day of summer and the sky looking one way is blue, smattered with fluffy white clouds, and the other is a black and gray ceiling of about-to-rain.

It looked horrible, but we kept trudging up and up and up, climb all the way to the false summit, pick out camp sites and then we watch a single bolt of lightning strike way off in the middle of the woods somewhere.

If we had actually been at the good campsites (we stopped 100 yards short and didn't see them until later), we would have stayed. Flat, big and protected by trees. About as good as you can get for storm protection up there.

But without said information, we chose option B and dropped down a couple hundred feet. Sure enough when we got to our spot (off the trail to the left and surrounded by trees) it started raining. None of us were completely set up, but we did our best and pulled everything inside our tents before the worst of it started. It really wasn't that bad of a set up and it was actually enjoyable relaxing and listening to the rain.

So there we are, all five of us cozy in our tents, some sleeping, others reading, journaling or some other activity that we turned to because we pitched so early.

I end up having beef jerky, peanuts, cookies and peanut butter M&Ms for dinner while reading about John Muir's adventures in the Sierras.

After a while Slider calls over to me, "Hey Thrust, what's the sky look like?" It had stopped raining, but I figured it was probably still crappy out so I never bothered to look until he asked. Wouldn't you know, back to normal. Clear and blue.

As soon as I told him, Slider started gearing up to make a climb to catch the sunset and figuring that since who the hell knows when I'll be back in Yosemite, I decided to go up too.

I said that the easier side has steps cut into it, and that's true, but once you reach the top of the steps, you climb the slope of some uncut rock up to a flat area, at the end of which you make the final push to the top.

Back before Half Dome had ever been summited, people thought it was literally impossible to climb, and truthfully I could see why. But in 1875, some guy went up there with a bunch of metal poles, cut one hole after another, inserting the metal poles into them and leaning against the one he had just inserted while he cut the hole for the next. And he did that all the way to the top.

I don't know how the guy did it. First of all it was pretty scary walking up even with cables to hold on to. I couldn't imagine sitting there chipping away at some rock leaning against a pole hundreds of feet above the approach below. And that's if you fell straight down. Go to either side and it's thousands of feet to the valley floor. Have fun!

One tip: don't try to climb as fast as you possibly can. The summit is higher than you think and if you're thru hiking, it's the first time you've really used your arms in months. Suffice it to say I was a bit out of breath at the top.

There were maybe five others up there waiting for sunset and two of them were lovely ladies who had apparently just finished posing naked. At least that's what they said we'd find if we checked out their camera, which unfortunately they didn't let us see.

One was American, the other Swedish and they met in France while they were both working in Paris. They talked to each other in mixed French and English with Zsa Zsa Gabor accents. Funny for a minute, very tired after that.

"Dates la fromage?"
"Ya. Ova here, dahling."
"And where are you from, dahling?"
Slider: "Connecticut."
Me: "New Jersey. Where are you guys from?"
"She is from Sweden, ya, but soon she will be Americain."
(Laughter)

And with that, I had had enough of them. You couldn't get a straight answer out of them over anything. Jokes, laughing and crappy accents were all that left their mouths. The one woman's husband served as their interpreter, giving us the old "You see what I have to put up with? Heh heh heh."

But they did offer us some of their dinner - chicken and rice - which made them a little more okay in my book.

I took a modest spoonful, not wanting to take advantage of the guy. Next thing I look over, the guy has his head turned and Slider is shoving a spoonful in his mouth so big that food is falling off.

That's also when I noticed the wine-filled Nalgene that was three quarters empty. So maybe they weren't annoying by nature only, so I guess I can excuse them a bit.

It would have been smart to bring a headlamp for the way down being that we were going up to watch the sunset. Naturally I had nothing and had to rely on my godawful eyesight and Slider's headlamp in front of me which was almost as good as my no headlamp.

Going down - much scarier than going up. Pretty easy to ignore danger when it's behind you, but when it's staring you in the face all the way back to the bottom, that's another story.

It would have been nice to bring some water being that it's a bit of a climb and we were bound to get thirsty. Naturally we brought nothing.

There was a daypack sitting just off the trail the first time we went up, still there when we went down, same going back up the second time and more of the same the second time we came down, evidence enough that it had been abandoned. So like divers to an unexplored shipwreck, we went treasure hunting. Bandaids and a nice unopened bottle of water. I knew there was a reason we didn't bring our own water.

We get back to camp and Gopher asks us if we actually went up there, so we start chatting a bit, maybe a little too loudly.