Half Dome by Night

I'm just back from a night ascent on Half Dome together with Harald. Californian weather can really suck. While the sun was shining as always in the Bay Area, the Yosemite National Park was haunted by rain on the exact night we wanted to do our hike. So we started off the Bay Area at 8:30 pm and arrived at the trail head at 0:30 am. We started off with our head lights, you can see Harald on the picture below...

It was a pretty cool experience hiking all alone in the dark compared to the masses of tourists that are there during daylight. At first, there was not much rain and it was actually pretty warm. As we came nearer to the top, the rain intensified. At 4:30 am we were at the bottom of the cables... Btw, I'm wearing my new favorite South Park fan T-shirt - Craig rocks ;-)



Going up the cables turned out to be a lot more difficult than last time as water was running down the stones and made them slippery. So it was more or less all on your hands to pull you up, which was quite exhausting. On the top it was 5:00 am, and we still had the hope that after sunrise, the rain might end. And we were pretty tired too, so we decided to stay a while. The rain had intensified, so we had to look for the best shelters we could get up there, which were holes in rocks. Although it didn't hold off all of the rain, at least it was better than just sitting on the plain surface. We could actually sleep for a bit more than an hour. After that we felt very cold and totally wet and realized that the rain wasn't going to stop any time soon. Below you can see the peak photo made short after I woke up ;-)

Now it was getting light pretty quickly, but the sun would not show up. Below you can see Harald after going down the cables. Going down was a bit easier as you "just" had to slide down. Beside him you can see masses of hand gloves ready for tourists to use for going up the slopes. I decided to use just my plain hands as this seemed to give a better grip.


Now the landscape was a totally Austrian experience. Water just everywhere. It was totally different from the last times I visited the place. With all the wet clothes it was also pretty cold.


After hiking down to the Nevada Falls, things were getting a bit better as the rain was not so strong any more and the temperature was higher. We could take some nice pictures of the falls.


The following picture shows the lower part of the Vernon Falls.


After three hours from the top (the wet clothes really made us quick ;-)) we were back at the car and happy to enter a dry environment. Notice again the "real" car on the left... At about 2 pm, we finally made it back to the apartment.

Morro Bay

This weekend I did some relaxing hiking with Christian in the Morro Bay area, which is half way between Los Angeles and San Francisco. There are so many beatiful beaches, but there is only one problem...

The whole summer not a single shaft of sunlight is seen here as the fog covers all. Well, but we were here for hiking and not for swimming anyway ;-) And pretty soon we were above the fog limit:


And also pretty soon we were at our first peak as mountains are here rather about 1.400 feet instead of 14.000 feet high - you would not think what difference such a single digit can make!

After the hike, we explored the cliffs at the coast, which was a bit dangerous because of the big waves and the slippery stones.

In the evening we checked in at a "Motel 6", but we still wanted to go to the top of "Morro Rock", which is a 500 feet high volcanic mountain. We were very disappointed when we found the following sign:
This is very typical: They built a large parking lot and a broad street around the mountain, but they do not think of building a trail to the top. That's real nonsense! There were some other very interesting warning signs at the beach:

"NEVER Turn your back on the Ocean" - are you supposed to walk backwards when leaving the beach? Well, we stayed at the beach to watch the beautiful sunset...


The next morning we started another hike in the area of the 1500 feet mountains. After a while we came to the following sign:
"Not a through trail"? or "A tough trail?" - we decided that we nevertheless give it a try. But this was one of the signs that actually have a meaning. Well, only if you presume that the following signs that we discovered after about a mile:


We had to backup but finally reached the destination "Hazard peak". It was very hot that day and the trail was partly pretty sandy. As a horse campground was nearby, we met a lot of people riding horses.


This day we also took a trail to the beach, which was very nice as there was nearly no one there!


We got some refreshment in the Pacific. The water wasn't so cold. But the wind on the beach!


After spending some time at the beach we got back to our car. There was another car parked beside it. Well, probably compared to this real CAR you would not call my Ford Focus one...

There was still a short hike to a local peak on our list. There we could again see that we are not real Americans. We parked the car on what we thought was the trailhead, but in fact after gaining most of the height to the peak we found the real parking lot... We should've really known in advance that there must be a parking lot near the top of every peak that has a trail! Afterwards, we finally earned our meal at the Burger King where I ate a "Triple Whopper" - 1230 calories ;-)

Split Mountain (4.285 m / 14.058 ft)

This weekend was just awesome! I was on the top of Split Mountain - my first mountain above 4.000 meters. We started on Thursday evening and spent a night in Sonora. On Saturday, we went over the Sonora Pass. The high plateau east of Yosemite National Park was amazing. There were a huge number of cows, as you can see on the picture below...

At about 2 pm, we finally reached the trail head (2000 m) with our SUV and started off towards Red Lake (3188 m).

We had quite good conditions and after a bit more than 4 hours we reached the lake.

Where we were keen on getting a refreshment...

... and then suddenly very keen on getting out as quick as possible ;-)

The next morning we got up at about 7 am. The view of the lake and the peak was really great...

We tried to get ready for the ascent as soon as possible. In the background of the picture below, you can see part the stone fields we had to climb up. There is no official trail from the lake to the peak, but on several places one could see tracks.


At about 3500 m, we had to cross a snow field, which was quite fun...


Then it became a bit difficult as we had to climb a few hundred meters high and pretty steep stone slope. You had to check every stone twice before you could safely put your weight on it, even the big ones. Below you can see Ben climbing in the lower parts of it.

Once we reached the ridge, the path became easy again. But now we were at around 4000 m and the height could be felt strongly. Every now and then we had to stop hiking for resting and breathing heavily. At around 12 am, we finally reached the top...


The feeling was pretty good and the exertion of the ascent were all forgotten, below you can see me with my Sun shirt...

The view was incredibly. Below you can see a shot to the west side, where you can see a lot of major peak of the Kings Canyon National Park.

The Split Mountain registration box...

We enjoyed the time at the top, but I was also glad when we started the descent, as I felt now some head ache because of the height. A bit below the peak, we had a wonderful view of the lake...

After taking a short rest and another bath at the lake, we put down our tents and went for the car. It was already getting dark, below you can see Split Mountain casting a huge shadow onto the landscape.

Harald and me reached the car before the sun was completely gone. The other guys were not so lucky, but they had good flash lights, so they could easily hike in the dark.


After the strenuous hike, we wanted to sleep in a motel in Bishop, but we had bad luck. There was no vacancy within a few hours drive, so we had to sleep at a campground this night. After getting a good meal at Jack-in-the-Box, we put up our tents at 11 pm at a local campground. The next day, we had an easy but long drive back to the bay area. So far this was probably my best weekend here in California...