Yosemite Half Dome Hike

A few weeks ago some friends asked me if I wanted to go to Yosemite National Park to hike to the top of Half Dome. At first I thought I wouldn't go because of a foot problem and ongoing knee issues. After some thought however, I decided to go for it. Four of us had hiked the Grand Canyon rim to rim in 2005. With one of my friends we have been to the Grand Canyon, hiked on the Great Wall of China, and hiked in the same area with our wives in the Dolomite Mountains in Italy. So, to hike Half Dome was going to be another notch in our belts.

We flew to Sacramento last Monday and drove to Yosemite where we stayed in the Housekeeping "Cabins". On Tuesday we drove to some of the waterfalls and walked around a bit. On Thursday we started out on the John Muir Trail at about 6am. The trail is about 18 miles round trip. It took us about 12 hours of walking to gain about 4800 feet of elevation. Just before the top there's a section of the trail called Subdome. Name makes sense I guess. After hiking for about 4 1/2 hours it was a tough climb up to the saddle where we put on our gloves in order to climb up the cables.

The cables are installed in May when the park service decides the conditions are acceptable. There are two sets of steel posts placed about 12 feet apart up the side of the dome itself. On the posts they attached 1" steel cables that you basically pull yourself up to the top. That's while negotiating your way up with a whole bunch of other people going up and coming down. It's kind of a tango dance up the cables! I've never done the tango but that seems like a good visual. They also put 2 x 4 boards at each post, from post to post. I learned real quick the object is to pull yourself to the next 2 x 4 so you could stand somewhat level considering slope is at an angle of something like 60 degrees.

Anyway, 5 of our party of 6 made it to the top. What a view! 8842 feet up above the west slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. You can see the whole valley and beyond. The face of Half Dome is about 2000 feet tall. We only stayed on top for about half an hour. Thunderclouds were forming and heard in the distance. They warn you not to be on top when lightning strikes for obvious reason. As we were heading down it was pretty apparent that if lightning struck the top it could easily travel down the steel cables we were using to get back down. Turned out there were no strikes and we made it down without incidence. Someone pointed out these round potholes of various sizes on the dome. They said those holes were where lightning had struck. Hmmm.

My knee held up fine but my feet were really sore. We hiked next to two beautiful waterfalls and throught Little Yosemite Valley. What a special time taking on a rather daunting and highly popular day hike up Half Dome. If you read about the top hikes in the U.S., Half Dome is always in the top few. It is really a special accomplishment and to do it with my best friends was pretty cool. Something we'll be able to talk about for quite a while.

Out for now.

Stu

I spent this last weekend at the Rotary District 5030 (http://www.rotary5030.org/) annual conference in Victoria, B.C. Canada. Many of the 55 clubs were represented. Having been in Rotary in the same Bellevue Club for almost 33 years, this was only my 2nd district conference. The last one I went to was in the first year I joined Rotary. I was asked to speak to the attendees as I was the youngest member in the district.

On Friday my father-in-law, Don Kraft, spoke about the first 100 years of Seattle #4 Rotary Centennial, (http://www.seattlerotary.org/) which he was chairman of. It was a proud moment for Karen and I to be there to hear his presentation. The motto of Rotary International (http://www.rotary.org/) is Service Above Self. Don pointed out that it was Seattle Rotary that was responsible for the motto to be changed to the current motto. He talked about how Seattle #4 established the Seattle Central Area Boys & Girls Club, Medic One, and for their centennial project, raised over $4 million for the Family Services Rotary Support Center for Families (http://www.family-services.org/), to name a few.

There were many inspirational presentations including the Rotary Polio Plus effort to eradicate polio from the planet, Rotary First Harvest (http://www.firstharvest.org/), the Bellevue Breakfast Rotary Club’s Foster Kid program (http://www.bbrc.net/ and http://www.adoptionawareness.org/), and many others.

Special to me was the presentation my friend Rob Rose made. Rob has spent endless hours since 1997 working on kid’s projects in Nepal with his wife Gina, and now with son Carey’s involvement, Rob has leveraged hundreds of thousand of Rotary Foundation dollars to help orphans and kids that are, as Rob puts it “Differently-Abled”. The Rose’s have done amazing things to help kids in Nepal. And I am so proud of Rob for what he’s done from his home based Bellevue Rotary Club. Visit his website at http://www.trifc.org/ to learn more and support his work. And, he was awarded the Rotary District 5030 Rotarian of the Year. So, yes, I'm very proud of the role model Rob provides.



In my last blog I mentioned my involvement in the Rotary summer youth exchange program. At the conference there were 11 students from various countries who talked about their experience in the yearlong exchange www.rotary.org/en/StudentsAndYouth/YouthPrograms/RotaryYouthExchange program. It's always great to see how they grow and gain confidence in themselves when the speak. Besides the foreign students there were Group Study Exchange www.rotary.org/en/serviceandfellowship/Fellowship/GroupStudyexchange/ members from India and France who talked about their experiences and countries. What a great way to learn about the world!

There’s a lot more I could talk about, but enough for now. For you who want to learn more about how you can give back through Rotary, feel free to contact me.

Until next time,

Stu