half-dome part 03

above vernal falls we kept climbing back and forth along the stone. we put in 2 more miles until at last we could hear the roar of another falls. although vernal is the beauty queen, i favor nevada. she makes you work harder and if you duck down close to the shore, provides every bit as good of a mist trail. august tends to produce less spectacular views of these falls, but this year with our record winter and snow pack, a seasoned visitor might have thought it still late may up here.
above nevada things level out for a while. we walk along the trail, the river to our right, and talk about the world around us. chipmunks scurry along the path and singing birds fly over head. jake and i both had these great hydration backpacks that proved indispensable even as they dispensed. as we walked along we simply moved the tubes that hung from the packs to our mouths and were instantly refreshed. i felt like paul maud' dib from "dune" wearing my stillsuit. i was a little dubious at first, thinking they might be overkill, but i can't imagine doing this kind of trip again without one.
we soon reached little yosemite campground. you never know who you will run into up here. i've seen it filled with hippies and wild youth, but this morning there were just some scouts and a few families. as we climbed on, soon needing more frequent rest stops, i began to realize that it wasn't my legs that were getting tired, it was my lungs. the air was thinner up here, and as we pushed higher into the elevation, for flat landers like us it was beginning to show. but soon we had broken out of the forest path that had shaded us and were moving into the really high country now. above the tree line. and as we continued switching back and forth we suddenly came around a corner and behold, half-dome!


as we continued toward our goal i watched the activity of the climbers on the cables. they looked so small, like so many ants scurrying along the hot rock. we did get stopped to show our permits, which thankfully i had secured long in advance. amazing. even up here we had to briefly endure bureaucracy. "paperz! vhere arr yor paperz?!" and now we struggled on. up the steps to sub-dome, the last stop before the cables. lungs really sucking air now. as we hit the cables i, just for a moment had my doubts. i stared up the face, my thirteen year old in front of me. what was i doing here? could he really do this? just days before, a young woman who graduated from my high-school had slipped up here and fallen to her death. and the folks on the cables moving up and down the rock didn't inspire me with confidence either. a third of the way up i hear someone yell "carabiner!" as i looked up to see it go shooting by. someone tried to reach out and grab it. "don't reach for it! let it go" someone else said. indeed it was good advice. as we pushed further up the cables i saw suntan lotion, t-shirts and ball caps littering the rock face. i could just see a foolish move of instinct bringing disaster.


we sat on the cables for what seemed like an hour, patiently waiting as folks moved down beside us, even as we moved up. and then in a final push suddenly we were on top. like the surface of an alien world, we were in fact now on top of the world, at least the world we could survey from here. and now in the open up here i felt free. free from the cramped confines of the cables our crowd seemed to disappear as we all spread out along the dome. along the trail i had remarked to jake about all the films i had seen about teams scaling everest. and the thing that always struck me was that after years of training, months of planning and the several weeks it actually takes to make one of these expeditions, once the climbers reach the summit they are only there for a very short time, as both the day and their bodies are winding down. now i too looked at my watch and realized our own time was short. i didn't want to be walking back in the dark and had to make sure we paced ourselves for the descent.


but for now we had these moments. i presented jake with our flag and a stack of letters from the brotherhood of fellow men welcoming him into our tribe. we read a few but kept looking around. this is why we were here. to touch the sky. to spend a few minutes, an hour maybe up here at the pinnacle.


as we gazed down the steep face we spotted a lead climber coming up. working his way along a route, his rope trailing, we watched as he patiently navigated the hand and footholds. maybe it was the thin air or the adrenaline from the last push, but we both felt like shouting, so we did. we looked around, knowing this was a moment that would pass and both of us ok with that. tomorrow we would be back down on the valley floor listening to the chatter of so many people who hadn't come here, who hadn't shared our ecstasy. we would listen and nod and smile. but in the back of our minds and memory we would still be standing here.