Half Dome and Clouds Rest

After a few weeks without a blog entry, I am finally able to post some more pictures. Together with Cindy, Aritra, and Kartik, we went to Yosemite to meet there an Austrian friend of mine and his brother. We arrived at midnight at the North Pine campground and luckily found the two guys who already reserved the camping space.


The next morning, we starting hiking up to the Nevada fall. I started about 40 minutes later, because I waited in line before the campground reservations to get a campground for the next night, but even though I was there 30 minutes before it opens, we only got onto the waiting list. After hiking very quickly, I could catch up with the other guys at the second waterfall. On the picture above you can see from right to left Benedikt, his brother Simon, Karthik, Cindy, and me. Below is the profile of our trip. The number of kilometers for the trip was probably even higher than shown on the profile using Garmin MapSource.


So first, we went up to Half Dome. Below you can see Cindy resting on a stone at about kilometer 13. In the background you can see the impressive shape of Half Dome.



Soon Karthik and I realized that the other guys were pretty strong hikers. Finally we found out that they were mountain bike professionals. Damn it! We should have known before... Just before approaching Half Dome they gave a short impression of their skills, giving me a hard time to follow. It was also incredibly hot, which made hiking very hard...


To get to the top of Half Dome, one has to use a rope to pull yourself up with your hands. Otherwise even climbing would be difficult, because of the steepness. We were not alone as you can see on the picture below. Half Dome is one of the most famous mountains in the Yosemite National Park, so there was some kind of a traffic jam at the ropes.

The top gives a perfect view of the valley. Below you can see me standing on the edge of the wall going down into the valley, trying to calm Cindy ;-) In the background you can see El Capitan with The Nose.


After Half Dome, we decided to try to do Clouds Rest on the same day and hike on to Tenaya Lake. Fortunately Karthik volunteered to go back to the valley and pick us up at Tenaya Lake with his car, which is actually a 1,5 hour drive in one direction. Doing Clouds Rest meant however doing another few thousand feet elevation gain... Below you can see Benedikt, Cindy, and me at about kilometer 22 with Half Dome in the background.


While the other two guys seemed to be fresh the whole day, I had to fight hard to complete the hike. At the top of Clouds Rest, I was pretty much at the end of my strength, but there were still more than 12 kilometers to go...


At 8 pm, after about 12 hours, we reached Tenaya Lake. Fortunately Karthik was still capable of driving, so we went home on the same night. We had dinner at 2 am at some iHop in San Jose...