The Climb

Unfor­tu­nately, the first part of my video from the top of Half-​Dome got messed up, and that’s the one with me show­ing off the view from the top. Here’s the sec­ond part:

My first time using this cam­era. The video qual­ity is pretty awe­some, but I need to fig­ure out why the first part didn’t work right. Also, you can really tell that this is a helmet-​cam, because I’m the only one you can hear clearly.

Other than that, though… Half-​Dome was awesome!

It took us a gru­el­ing 14 hours to hike the slightly more than 14 miles round-​trip, but I had a lot of fun doing it, mostly thanks to Aaron L, Alex K, Derek N, Han C, Jef­frey K, Mai­lyne N, Ray­mond L, Regina S, and Wei-​Wen C. (Oh, and sur­prise meet­ing with KS Tiffany H at the summit!)

Even though not the best-​planned trip, every­thing just kinda worked out amaz­ingly well. Because of the odd weather this year, Mist Trail was EXTRA wet and the falls were just spec­tac­u­lar. I thought that the cables had been put up a cou­ple of weeks ear­lier, but it turns out they were not up until the day before our hike (June 16^th), so we were among the first to see the top this year. In fact, there was still snow on top, which was awe­some! We had a lit­tle snow­ball fight at the clear­ing before the steps. Oh, and we ended up not pay­ing park­ing fees because the ranger sta­tions were closed as we entered and exited the park.

My only com­plaint was about the wait at the cables. Next time, I’m def­i­nitely going on the out­side of them and skip past the slower folks.

I can’t wait for my next adventure!

Tags: Aaron L, Alex K, Derek N, Jeffrey K, Ron L, Wei-Wen C, Work