Yosemite Psalm (Epilogue)

Day Seven: The trail home
The next morning we broke camp around 10 o’clock. We still had a little more than four miles to hike to reach Yosemite Valley and wrap up our weeklong Yosemite adventure. Rejoining the John Muir Trail out of Little Yosemite, we all looked around us as we proceeded down the so-called ‘Mist Trail,’ still mesmerized by the beauty we had taken in over the previous seven days.

The four miles back to back where we started from would be rather easy by comparison to what we’d been used to for the lion’s share of the trip. The Mist Trail is so-named for its proximity to two of Yosemite’s most celebrated waterfalls, the mighty Nevada Falls and the equally beautiful, but more lilting Vernal Falls. This late in the season and in conjunction with the fact that we were in the midst of a drought, neither of the two water features were providing a lot of “mist” that day however. The falls were indeed beautiful, but I had seen them displacing twice the water than this in past visits to this trail.

We were actually going opposite the flow of traffic on this final leg of our backpacking journey. The Mist Trail is the beginning of the famous and much-traveled Happy Isles Trail Loop, which begins in Yosemite Valley. From this starting point, you can pick up trails to nearly any point in the Park. It is a popular jumping-off point for most visitors to the Park, who will typically hike the Mist Trail to see the falls, and often to go the extra three miles to climb Half Dome. Going up from the Valley, the trail is steep, and when the falls are full, the rocky way can be slippery. Consequently it’s somewhat of a slow go if there is much in the way of traffic. But coming down, especially under these drier conditions, it was a pleasant, fast jaunt. We made the 4.3 miles in record time.

It’s a far cry from Sloth-quality, but the mountain flowers were beautiful. This is the only one of about five that I took that turned out reasonably decent.

Nevada Falls, which in the springtime, puts out an unbelievable amount of water, is at this point less than spectacular, but beautiful nonetheless. That’s Ron’s wife Ellie in the foreground.

Approaching Vernal Falls, one of my favorite photographs from this trip. This is where the “Mist Trail” lives up to its name under normal conditions.

There are signs all over Yosemite that pretty much tell it like it is (although once again I never thought to take a picture of one of ‘em). Near to this point, which is actually beyond the point that you’re supposed to be standing (I had Ron holding on to my backpack as I leaned in to take the shot), is a sign which basically says, “Stay out of the water. If you go over the falls, you will die.”

Showers — the gift of the gods
It’s just my opinion, but never let it be said, despite all it’s wonderful benefits and soul-stirring revelations of oneness with nature, that the ‘back country naturalist’ existence is superior to modern life. I wouldn’t trade what few true wilderness experiences I’ve had for anything, but it doesn’t take more than a couple of times having to dig a freaking hole just to make poopy, to make one realize how ill-equipped we are to live such a life today.

Yosemite was incredible, but after this longest backpacking trip of my life, getting back to the Valley and a hot shower was nearly as gratifying. Going for a whole week without such a taken-or-granted convenience really causes you to become aware of how urbanized we have become. I’m not saying that’s good or bad — it just is. That’s why it’s so important, in my opinion, to make a trip such as this at some point in your lifetime; to experience life in the wilderness, placing yourself in a circumstance where not only your days require pre-planning, but a heightened awareness of your surroundings at all times is a prerequisite for survival.

After that welcome shower and change of clothes, we piled the gear back in our cars and bade a fond farewell to our old friend, Yosemite. She was a most gracious host.

On the road again
As we headed back toward SoCal, I remember my body feeling nearly numb. I’m not sure if it was from the physical fatigue of a week of backpacking or the delirium of having such an uplifting dance with nature. I only know that there was an indelible grin plastered on my face. I felt good.

My sense of satisfaction got an even greater shot in the arm as I flipped through the dial of my car radio. You see, our excursion had taken place during the time of the Major League Baseball player’s strike of 1981. To my delight I learned that the two sides had come to a resolution during the week, and were in the midst of a few days of exhibition games as a warm-up to resuming play, sort of a second mini-Spring Training. We were out of normal radio range for most stations, however I was successful in picking up what sounded like play-by-play. The faint signal turned out to be a game between the Angels and the Cincinnati Reds. Wow! Baseball was back! And with two of my favorite teams to boot!

Then it hit me. I thought about the contrast of the two experiences that were arm-wrestling for domination of my mind at that moment. Simultaneously I was feeling the high of being surrounded by so much natural beauty, but also the exhilaration of knowing that my favorite sport was back in business after seven weeks of torturous absence. At first I felt repulsed by my own feelings. How dare I be so fickle as to allow my wilderness experience to be tainted by something so frivolous and mundane as professional sports. How shallow is that?

But then I stepped back a bit and really thought about it. Isn’t it really all about enjoying life? Isn’t it about appreciating every aspect of the time we have here on this planet? Baseball and back country are apples and oranges in more ways than one. They’re both good, and they’re both legitimate, because they’re both a part of my life and they both make me happy. I’ve always tried to embrace everything in life; not just the grand things, but the mundane, the man-made and simple aspects of what makes me, ‘me.’ I believe that to do anything less is to do myself a disservice.

The first day of the rest of our lives
When we got home late that night, we knew that we’d had a great time, but also knew we’d been through the ringer. There would be no unpacking this night. I think we just hit the hay as soon as we got home.

One of the aspects of this trip as being a ‘life-changing’ endeavor was the fact that it was by intention, our last fling as a childless couple. We both turned 25 that year and were ready to start a family. Michelle, following her doctor’s advice had gone off birth control a couple weeks before the trip. He said that it would take up to a month for her body to re-adjust to a normal ovulation schedule, making it possible for her to become pregnant. So as scheduled, as soon as we came back from Yosemite, I took on that daunting task of trying to get my wife pregnant. Yeah, it was a tough job, but somehow I mustered the strength to get it done. *grin*

About a month later Michelle walked through the front door after a visit to her gynecologist. I’ll never forget the look on her face until the day I die. She wasn’t even through the door yet, but was still in mid-stride across the threshold when she looked up at me, sitting on the living room sofa, and said those magic words.

“You’re gonna be a Daddy.”

If that doesn’t bring tears to the eyes of even the most macho of men, then they’re not really a man in my opinion. I was completely overjoyed. As I sprang to my feet to embrace the new Mommy-to-be, one of the first things running through my mind was, “Wow…that didn’t take long!”

It turned out that Michelle’s due date was May 8th, although our son Shawn liked things so well inside Mommy’s Baby Garage that he decided to hang out for an extra two weeks before making his entrance into the real world. So it’s more likely than not that we actually did get pregnant immediately after coming back from Yosemite, just like we planned.

I still don’t know the exact dates that we were actually on the trip, but I can estimate it accurately to within a few days. Once again, thank goodness for the Internet! As it turns out, I can extrapolate the dates from just one event — that baseball game I tuned in to on the drive home from Yosemite.

Remember my mentioning that I was surprised to find that the Baseball Strike of 1981 had ended when I found that the Angels and Reds were playing an exhibition game? Well I found in researching this, that the strike was officially resolved on July 31st. Given the fact that I never heard about it I can only assume this means that we were already gone and out of out of communication with the sports world on that day. There’s no other way, given my passion for sports that I could have missed a story so big as that. It would have dominated the newspapers and TV. I surely would have heard about it somehow.

Okay, the next thing to consider was the exhibition game I heard on the radio that evening as we were driving home. In my research on the Web, I could only find a single reference to it on a Cincinnati Reds-related web page, which said that two such games were played between the Reds and Angels at that time, and that they occurred just prior to the Major League Baseball All Star Game, which officially ushered in the resumption of the season.

So taking those two items as the front and back ends respectively of our trip, I’m reasonably sure that our seven-day trip went from Friday July 31st through Thursday August 6th. The All Star Game was played on Sunday August 9th, and the 8th would have been necessary for use as a travel day for the players participating in it, meaning that the two exhibition games were played on the 6th and 7th. I distinctly remember them saying that the game I was listening to was the first game played since the strike was declared to be over, logically meaning that the date was August 6th.

So again, given the due date, and further, the date of his actual birth, chances are that Michelle became pregnant with Shawn after we got home, rather than my more romantic notion that his conception was in Yosemite Valley, which I alluded to earlier.

Of course nobody really knows about these things, right? I mean it’s possible that our first baby was actually conceived that first night in the backpacker’s campground, isn’t it? A big part of me will always believe that. And it makes perfect sense, given the way Shawn has turned out; he is an outdoorsman in every sense of the word; he was an Eagle Scout, he’s an avid rock climber, and his major in college is Forestry. It only seems right that his life was conceived in the wilderness, forged partly of the beauty surrounding us and that I could honestly feel penetrating every part of me.

But one thing surely was conceived that wonderful week in Yosemite — the life of my memories there. They took firm root in my mind and are still flourishing now, 23 years later. They sing that familiar song that I still hear clearly whenever I stop long enough to listen. It’s a song of exhilaration; a psalm of peace. I hope I’ll get another chance to hear it again in person, but if not, I know that it will always be with me.

Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme.

— Shakespeare, Sonnets, LV


finis

Yosemite Psalm (Part IV)

**UPDATED new pic added 10-30-04**

Go Climb a Rock
That’s what it said — in big white letters across the back of Ron’s slightly faded red t-shirt. “Go Climb a Rock.” And that’s just what we were setting out to do.

Ron’s t-shirt was a popular one in those days; maybe it still is. It advertised the Yosemite Mountaineering School, a park-run service that offered instruction in backpacking, rock climbing and cross-country skiing. He had actually gone through the backpacking and rock climbing courses a year or so earlier to our making this trip, which is probably where he learned that nifty-dandy “bear befuddler” method of hanging up food from a tree that I mentioned earlier.

We set off from our camp in Little Yosemite Valley at about eight in the morning. The wimming stayed behind and took the day to relax after five pretty tough days of backpacking.

I remember the mountain air being so crisp that it almost crackled against my cheeks as we turned our faces into the breeze jetting through the mixture of fragrant pine and cedar trees that lined the trail.

The 1.5 mile hike to the east shoulder of Half Dome involved an extensive number of steep switchback trails along the way, making the altitude gain faster, but also giving my quads quite a workout in the process. However I really don’t remember being tired at all. I was so excited. This was the first time I’d done anything like this before. Ron had made the Half Dome climb previously, which also made me feel a little easier — easier that is, until we got to ‘The Saddle,’ the area between another small dome and HD’s eastern shoulder; the base of that huge, naked hunk-a, hunk-a plutonic granite.

If I’d been thinking, I probably would have taken this picture.* This is a great shot of the base of Half Dome, at the beginning of the cable climb. And no, that isn’t an optical illusion — it really is that steep. The cable climb from bottom to top is 900 feet over a 45-degree pitch of slick granite.

“Okay, AJ,” I thought to myself. “You’re really gonna do this?” Before I could answer, I was grasping the cables. I’m not sure if I decided to go first or if Ron told me to, but I lead the way. Fortunately there were no large groups, and very little traffic on the cables that day. I only remember having to stop a couple of times to allow descenders to pass by on there way down from the top, as is always the etiquette of climbing HD.

You can probably see it from the pictures, but allow me to describe the climbing cable setup. The cable assembly is composed of a series of waist-high metal pipes, placed every five to six feet apart into shafts drilled into the granite. I don’t know how deep the holes are, but they are just that — holes. You could pull a pole out if you wanted to. But not to worry, for the most part the poles are very secure and obviously strong enough to support the weight of the average would-be mountaineer. Half Dome is closed for climbing from Columbus Day through Memorial Day Weekend each year and the poles are taken down through that period to avoid damage from the severe winter weather.

Threaded metal caps top the support poles, sealing the “U”-shaped cups of the poles upper end. Through this "eye-of-the needle" opening, a sturdy, one half-to-three-quarter-inch diameter braided steel cable is threaded, interconnecting all of the poles on either side, from the bottom to the summit.

Additionally, there are three-foot wide 2" x 4"s, bolted into the base of the rock, resting against the uphill side of each pair of support poles, providing surer footing for the climber on the slick granite.

“Hey baby, let’s get perpendicular!”
It is truly an amazing feeling to come to the realization that one simple move, such as letting go would mean almost certain death. But there I was, scaling Half Dome, at one point, nearly perpendicular to the mountain, with only my grip on those cables separating me from life and being a greasy spot on the granite below. What a rush!

Now lest someone think I need to be given some kind of award for courage, I need to tell you, it’s a lot easier than it sounds. That’s not to say the climb isn’t a daunting one if you have the slightest fear of heights. But if you don’t, it’s easily the coolest experience short of real mountain climbing that one can have in my opinion. The secret is to keep moving, grasping the cables hand by hand, alternately, left and right, and taking as large of a stride forward as your legs will allow.

It seemed as though the climb took an hour, but in reality it was about 25 minutes. There were a few times I briefly paused to look around at where I was, and when I looked down, it was in wonder, not fear. It was truly one of those life-defining events that I will never forget, and hope to do again some day, hopefully next summer.

**New pic added 10-30-04**

About a third of the way up on the cables. I believe I was sitting on one of the 2" x 4"s when I took this. You really need to click on this one and see the full-sized version to fully appreciate the perspective of our angle to the ground!

Ron makes his triumphant approach to the top. I sure had a great time doing this with him. What a big kid at heart that guy was!

Another borrowed shot. The view from the top. In the foreground, the end of the climbing cables, and Half Dome’s jaw-dropping northeastern vista on the horizon. Cloud’s Rest (near right-center), Cathedral Peak (distant center), and Tresidder Peak (distant left-center) are in clear view.*

When we reached the top of Half Dome there were only a few people already there. The top of this big rock is gently concave, like a saddle, and a about the size of a half a football field. This makes it a pretty comfortable experience from the top unless you venture too close to the edge, which, of course, we did!

Unintended Enlightenment
I had anticipated the opportunity to get some really great photos on this trip, and Yosemite didn’t let me down. Unfortunately, however, my camera did. Due to a light leak in my camera lens, a bunch of the breathtaking scenery shots I took ended up looking like a polar bear in a snowstorm.

My camera, a Canon AE-1 was a little over a year old at the time. It came with a versatile 28-80 mm macro-zoom lens that I really loved. However less than a month after receiving it as a birthday gift from Michelle in 1980, I had dropped it while we were walking on the beach in Santa Barbara. After the incident, the camera still seemed to work fine, but the zoom and focus rings on the lens were noticeably loose from that point on.

As it turned out, I wouldn’t become aware of how much the damaged lens would effect my pictures until this trip to Yosemite.

Previously, following my dribbling the camera, the exposure on my pictures seemed to be fine under normal or low-light conditions. But now in this high-light circumstance on Half Dome, with the bright sunlight reflecting off the granite, nearly every picture I took looked severely washed out. I was able to salvage some of them through heavy manipulation in Photoshop, but many were just too far-gone.

These were the ones I was able to save....

Staring down the face of Half Dome. Yeah I was crazy enough to step right up to the edge to snap a few pics. I can only remember one time looking down and getting slightly spooked.

Same position panning to the left toward Glacier Point and the southwest Valley.

Ron, sitting on top of the world.

Me, standing with my foot on the edge of "the diving board," the finger-like precipiece that projects out the furthest from the face of Half Dome. The view behind me looks back northward toward Tenaya Canyon..

After about 45 minutes to an hour up on the summit, it was time to head back for camp and the women folk. It was a lot more fun going down than coming up, and of course you could see the incredible view right before you. Here I stopped to turn and grab a quick shot of Ron about 50 yards into our decent. What an incredible adventure!

As I think about making a return trip to retrace the steps of this fantastic voyage, I’m quite sure that I’m underestimating the role of benefit that my being in such good shape as a gymnast played in my enjoyment of such a rigorous exercise. I remember being tired, but never exhausted; fatigued, but never sore. Never did I feel as though I wasn’t going to make it, or that my condition placed me in danger of falling of making errors in judgement that might place me in harm’s way.

However 23 years and more than a dozen extra pounds later, I have to remind myself that it most likely will not be half as easy for me the next time. I really have to seriously consider what I need to do in order to get ready to meet the challenge when it finally presents itself once again.

The hike back down the switchbacks were a lark for Ron and me as we excitedly talked about the exhilarating afternoon we had just spent ascending the landmark feature of grand old Yosemite. What a great time.

Take me to the River
When we made it back to our campground in Little Yosemite Valley, we were hot, sweaty, dirty and probably not too much fun to be close to. And while there were no showers for us to use, there was a river — the beautifully gentle Merced River which runs east/west through Little Yosemite.

There was a log floating in the river, so Ron and I took turns log rolling, with some pretty humorous results and plenty of wisecracks from the peanut gallery.

Everything was going pretty well until Ron let go of the log...

When the call of our bellies won out over our desire to play in the river, we cleaned up and headed back to camp. We were about finished for one very busy incredible day. I don’t remember what the wives prepared for dinner, but I know it tasted good. I remember that evening at the campfire just feeling blissful.

I still can feel it.

*Special thanks to Ryan Zurakowski.


Next: The trail home

Yosemite Psalm (Part III)

Sunrise at Sunset
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. And that's a good thing, since I don't have the time to write more than a couple hundred of em today. For this segment, the pictures will tell the story.

Day Three: Cathedral Lakes to Sunrise Lakes
This leg of our journey would take us another five miles or so on the John Muir Trail southward to the offshoot trail at Sunrise High Sierra Camp. The Sunrise trail heads due West toward Tanaya Canyon where it joins the trail leading to our Day 5 destination, Cloud’s Rest. At near 10,000 feet, Cloud’s Rest trail would be the high point in elevation for our trip.

Back at our first backcountry campsite, near Lower Cathedral Lake, we made an early start, hitting the trail at around 8:00 AM.


The sun rises over majestic Cathedral Peak as we prepare to hit the trail.

Just before midday, we made the climb to Upper Catherdral Lake and closer proximity to Cathedral Peak, a favorite target for mountaineers and rockclimbers. We were feeling pretty good at this point.


Michelle peers at Cathedral Peak and wonders whether or not Glynda the Good Witch will emerge from that Bubble of Light thingy coming toward her. Sorry Dorothy. Clicking the heels of your hiking boots together won't get you too far out here.


"Grizzly AJ" at Upper Cathedral Lake. Please keep the hot pants cracks to yourself, thank you.

By the end of a tough climb, we reached Sunrise Lakes and camped near the southernmost of the triune lake group, overlooking rugged Tanaya Canyon. This was perhaps the most picturesque spot we saw on this trip, and the following are my two very favorite photos, taken at sunset.


At Sunrise Lakes looking southwest toward Cloud's Rest (center) and Half Dome’s east face in the distance.


Panning to the right, Upper Sunrise Lake and a magnificent High Sierra sunset.


Day Four: Sunrise Lakes to near Cloud’s Rest
The trail to Cloud’s rest along the upper edge of Tanaya Canyon was fairly dry, dusty and steep. This may have been our toughest day. Michelle was a trooper and didn't complain. She is a veteran backpacker and had about twice the experience as I did. She conserved her energy as best she could. Ron and I were fighting it, but were in good enough general shape that we really didn't have any problems. But poor Ellie was having a pretty rough time, so we took some weight off her pack and re-distributed it between Ron and myself. We tried to take it a bit easier for Ellie's sake.

The remaining climb to Cloud’s Rest’s 9,900 foot summit would be too tough to try on this day, so we stopped and camped about a mile or so short of the spur trail to the summit.


Mid-morning heading toward Cloud’s Rest (left) with Half Dome's less-often seen right profile (center) in clear view.


Same vantage point, zoomed out to reveal a beautifully reflective small lake just off the trail below.*


Another wannabe “artsy” shot featuring Michelle. It was at this area of the trail that I recall being my most weary. It was hot and steep, but oh so beautiful.


Exhausted, we stopped mid-afternoon at a spot with a nearby water source and pitched camp to conclude Day Four. Looking across the canyon, I caught another awesome sunset. National Geographic, here I come!...yeah, right!


Day Five: Cloud's Rest to Little Yosemite Valley
Being fairly close to the Cloud's Rest summit spur trail already, we set off and by mid-morning were sampling the incredible Yosemite panorama.


At Cloud’s Rest summit, taking in the view of everyone taking in the view at 9,900 feet. Looking northward from whence we came, Tresidder Peak is well visible in the distance just to Ron's left.*


Another one of my favorite shots. From the southern summit, Michelle, Half Dome and Yosemite Valley below.*


The obligatory “look at me” shot, holding a very bad “straddle ‘L.’” There was also an awesome shot of me holding a handstand in the same location, but it was so over-exposed that I looked like Casper the Friendly Ghost. This one was extremely light as well, but I was able to punch it up in PS to make it viewable (that’s why it's grainy).*

Half-way Thinkin’
With Half Dome so tantalizingly close, it was hard not to push on to climb it as well. However given Ellie's already spent condition, there was no way she was going to attempt that climb. Michelle had “been there, done that” several years earlier, before I'd even met her, so she was happy to sit this one out and stay with Ellie, while Ron and I tackled that most famous of Yosemite’s monuments of granite.

It was decided that we would stay an extra day. We would continue on to an area near the trail's junction with the John Muir, in Little Yosemite Valley and camp there. Bright and early the next morning Ron and I would make it a day hike to Half Dome, and the following morning we would make our descent into Yosemite Valley and head for home.

*Note: some of these photos came out horribly over-exposed (I'll talk about why later) and had to undergo considerable "fiddling" to even be worth posting (unfortunately, many otherwise good shots, couldn't be saved). Thank goodness for Photoshop!


Next: Go Climb a Rock

Yosemite Psalm (Part II)

The Ground Rules
I never realized it until I came across the fact in researching this story, that we were among the first passengers on the shuttle bus that transported us to Tuolumne Meadows on the morning of Day 2. The free busses that carry visitors to and from various points in Yosemite Park were newly purchased just prior to the summer of 1981. However the government report that I read notes that those same vehicles are still running 23 years later, and now are in desperate need of replacement. But we caught them at the beginning of their life cycle, and I remember the ride, though long, as being a pleasant one. Loaded up with our backpacks and walking sticks, we arrived at the trailhead around noon.

When we arrived at Tuolemne Meadows, I remember feeling a rush of familiarity and warm memories of Michelle and my camping trip there two years earlier. At its high altitude (8,580 feet), even at mid-day, the breeze there was cool, as it whipped across the sunny meadow, dotted with bands of colorful wildflowers.

The first order of business was to check in with the Ranger at the Visitor’s Center. There we were given the ground rules of behavior and survival in the backcountry: avoid bears, of which we would see several, and he particularly stressed that you should never store food in your tent where a bear may be attracted to it. Yosemite has strict rules regarding food storage. Thousands of dollars in vehicle damage and hundreds of “human conflict” incidents occur every year due to people not following the rules and underestimating the intelligence of bears. They recognize the shape and purposes of ice chests, grocery bags, and other food-related supplies. Bears can clearly smell any food in a car, even when it's stored in the vehicle's trunk, and have damaged cars for things as little as a stick of gum or an empty soda can. You may be fined or your car impounded for leaving food in your car overnight.

Bears are smart and know what they’re looking for. So how do you avoid them? When near a trailhead or campground, there are strategically placed metal storage boxes that resemble mini-dumpsters that are available for you to use to store your food. However when you’re in the backcountry and not near an established campground you have to improvise. Enter good ‘ol resourceful Ron. He had devised an ingenious technique for safeguarding our grub.

We always kept the food in a single backpack so as to avoid the smell being transferred to the others. What Ron would do was suspend the pack from a limb of a tree, high enough that a bear couldn’t reach it from below and far enough below the limb that she couldn’t reach it from above. He used nylon fishing line so that the bear couldn’t grasp and pull it down with her paws. It worked like a charm, but Ron’s technique would not go without being battle-tested at least once.

Mid-way through our journey, or so they tell me, we all got a pretty good start in the middle of the night by the sound of a bear lowing in frustration from not being able to reach the food. I don’t know if she was going at it from the ground or in the trees, but the bear made enough racket to wake us up — that is, everyone but ‘ol sleep-thru-frikkin’-World-War-III, AJ. By the time Michelle had successfully shaken my brains loose trying to wake me up, the commotion was all but over. I have to say, I bearly recall a thing about it.

Must be something in the water
The other thing we were sternly warned about was the drinking water situation in the backcountry. California is prone to droughts, as you may know, but the period we went through during the late 70s–early 80s was a real beaut. The waterfalls for which Yosemite is famous were fairly underwhelming, with landmark Yosemite Falls merely a trickle compared to normal standards.

To make matters worse, it was August, a time in which the water flow is less anyway. The Park Ranger told us that we would have to boil all of our water used for drinking and cooking to avoid falling victim to Sierra Nevada’s Revenge, more popularly known as giardiasis , courtesy of a microorganism known as Giardia Lamblia .
The ranger said that runoff from naturally-occurring animal feces in the wild can cause the organism to be present in the water, and since the water is was low, concern for the higher probability of giardia concentration made this safeguard necessary. So that was certainly a bummer going in, but one that we could deal with. After all, there couldn’t be too many things worse than having to cope with gastrointestinal distress in the wilderness.

However the silver lining of that dark cloud, for me anyway, was that less water also meant fewer mosquitoes, to which I’m inordinately subject. I don’t know what it is about my blood, but those god-forsaken little vampires just go after it like nobody’s business. My wife and I can be in the same location at the same time, and if mosquitoes are present, on average I’ll come out with two or three bites to her one.

Armed with all the pertinent info, we then hit the trail and began our adventure in earnest. Destination for our first night: Cathedral Lakes.

Cathedral Lakes lie within the small Cathedral sub-range of mountains in Yosemite’s northeast quadrant. Directly adjacent to the group of two lakes is picturesque Cathedral Peak. Its sharply sweeping spires are appropriately named, because the surrounding countryside is awe-inspiring.

Given the length of the tram ride from the Valley to Tuolemne, our first day of hiking would be somewhat abbreviated. The journey from the trailhead to Cathedral is a good introduction to what lies ahead on the John Muir Trail. It’s not too strenuous (a steady, fairly even 1000-foot seven-mile climb), but by the time it’s over, you know you’ve been hiking.

We, or should I say Ron, had planned out our daily distance itinerary with the women in mind, not to mention the idea of “not pushing it” for the purpose of everyone’s overall enjoyment of the experience. Throughout the week, we averaged around five miles of hiking per day. As we climbed higher, that would become a much more important consideration.

We only got about three hours in on that first leg, pitching camp near the turnoff trail to Lower Cathedral Lake. The peaceful calm was mesmerizing. The whole week was like that, so I’m going to try to avoid overusing the concept, but it really was.


Again, Ron & Ellie, as the sun sets to the west of Tresidder Peak, at the end of a very busy Day 2.

Michelle and I were first up with the water-boiling detail, in which each night we switched off taking turns boiling everyone’s drinking water for the following day. By morning the water was frosty cool in our bottles and canteens, and nothing tastes better than cold mountain spring water when you’re hiking a hot, dusty trail with 75-90 pounds strapped to your back.

I’m sure we all slept like a rock that night, bears be damned.


Next: Sunrise at Sunset

Revisionist History

In my never-ending attempt to get my story straight, I'm posting this notice that I have screwed up, again.

One of my least favorite things in the whole world is to find that I have remembered something incorrectly. It's almost like lying to yourself. While rushing to get this story written while still performing my due dilligence to researching the facts and figures about the wonderful phenomenon that is Yosemite, I of course relyed on the script in my head that I've been reciting from memory to nearly anyone who would listen for the past 23 years. If you've known me for any length of time in real life, you will have heard about this story — that's how important it has always been to me.

However one important detail had apparently become blurred in my mind over the years — just how long was this trip? In my mind, I had based that answer off of my memory of Ron telling me that the entire expedition would be about 25 miles, and that we would average five miles hiking per day. So remembering that, it means the trip was five days, right?

Wrong. Try seven, elephant-brain.

I have been telling people we were in Yosemite for five days for YEARS. But I never really sat down and thought about it. Yes, we did spend five days in the backcountry, but in actuality, we were in the park for a full week overall — less a half day coming and going. We were there for at least parts of seven days.

Why am I making a big deal out of this? Well for one thing, because it's history — my history — and I don't like bein' no frikkin' revisionist. It may not make a hill of beans to you, but it does to me.

My sticking to that formula of "in and out in five days" caused a lot of skewing of how things played out in my mind. I had a helluva time synching up the travel schedule with the pictures I had taken, and the time of day certain things happened. I would look at a photo and think, "Wait a minute...that couldn't have happened then, could it?" I mean, it's hard to give an account of something when your memories tell you something happened at one time and the pictures tell you they actually happened 12-24 hours later.

So finally I went to Michelle with my quandry, and she set me straight. Reluctanly I accepted that I had allowed that one concept of a five day trip to completely screw up my recollection of the events.

So to make things right, I have re-written the last part of Part I of this story ("Checking in"), as well as inserting a new map with an accurate detailing of our travel route. The new map isn't as cool-looking as the first one (of which I may re-insert a "clean" version later), but it is 100% more accurate for comparing distances, trails and landmarks.

The next installment is nearly completed, and will be up by mid-afternoon.

Thanks for bearing with my anality, but this stuff is important to me. I hope you continue to enjoy the series.

Yosemite Psalm (Part I)

Ron
I really don’t remember who really got the ball rolling, but I’m inclined to believe that it was more my buddy Ron’s doing than mine. He was sorta like that. I’m sure it started out that we were just talking about backpacking, and how Michelle and I had really wanted to make one last big trip before we started our family — our last hurrah, so to speak. And the next thing ya know, we were making plans — not to merely go backpacking, but to do so for an entire week, across twenty five miles of the most famous and beautiful terrain anywhere. Ron made all the arrangements and began planning our route.



Ron was the kind of guy who was great to know for a number of reasons, but mostly because he was someone who just seemed to be good at everything. Not that he claimed to be all that — oh quite the opposite. He was almost too humble. He was totally unassuming, kind, and generous. He preferred to operate without fanfare. He never bragged. He never ragged. He was just a nice, resourceful guy who did things very well.

You probably don’t remember my mentioning him in a previous story (and if you do, well then, 50 bonus points for you!), but Ron was one of the over half-dozen roommates I had in the years before I got married. He worked as a diesel mechanic for some type of contractor, the type or name of which I’m quite certain I ever even knew. However I do know that he used to come home from work every day covered from head to toe in sweat and grease — which often didn't make him all that pleasant to be around. But man, if you had car trouble (which I did — often), you were sure glad that he was there! Ron saved me loads of money in repair bills, and ended up teaching me more about the elementary workings of the internal combustion engine than any single person I’d ever known, before and since.

He was great working with wood too, and made a cutout plywood speaker enclosure for the back deck of my car once. This was after I had already screwed up the original fiberboard back deck trying to cut the holes out myself. He just offered to do it. I didn’t even have to buy the piece of wood. He used to kind of clean up a lot of my messes like that, and always with a smile on his face. Fact was, I felt free to try just about anything I really didn’t know how do, mostly because I knew I could just ask good ‘ole Ron if I ever got stuck.

But for as rough and burley as he was on the outside, he was every bit as gentle and friendly on the inside. Ron was a big ole’ teddy bear and everyone he knew loved him for it.

Ron had some pretty varied interests, too. He built and kept a salt-water tropical fish tank in the apartment for the two years we roomed together. Yes, I said he built it himself. He had great taste in music too, and turned me on to artists like The Alan Parsons Project, Jimmy Buffett, and Al Stewart well before they hit it big on the pop charts.

And although, as you might guess, he’d have appeared to be a pretty good catch, Ron didn’t date much. He was pretty shy by nature — that is until he met Ellie.


Ron & Ellie, as the sun sets to the west of Tresidder Peak, Day 2.

About a year after Michelle and I were married, Ron and Ellie tied the knot as well. We hung out as couples occasionally on a social basis, but the idea of us vacationing together was really never anything I had considered. While I thought of Ron as a good friend and a great roommate, our friendship was never really on a ‘best friend’ kind of basis.

That’s why I’m pretty sure it was Ron who took the bull by the horns when we talked about backpacking in Yosemite; and the fact that he obviously wanted us to join them kind of introduced me to a side of him that hadn't always come through while we shared an apartment, spending more time saying "seeya later" than hanging out together. However I certainly knew him well enough to know the look. It was quite literally a gleam in his eye he’d get when he was excited about something, and I could tell he was excited about this trip.

The route Ron designed for us was either one that he was previously familiar with, or that he perhaps had read about and simply wanted to try. As you’ve probably guessed already, yep, Ron was an avid backpacker and outdoorsman among his other talents, which worked out pretty well for us. The level of expertise he would lend to our little expedition made all the difference in the world.

The Route
Yosemite is a pretty big place, with lots to see and hundreds of potential backpacking trails and routes. The primary place that the tourists and campers flock to is of course, picturesque Yosemite Valley. From there, the most famous and prominent of the park’s geological monuments and features can be seen and enjoyed. The Valley view is a 360-degree panorama of utter majesty. However the presence of all those people and their cars, Winnebagos and other camping vehicles go a long way toward spoiling the wonder. The course we would follow took us away from all that. We would start and end our trek in the Valley, but in-between, take the path less-traveled, without boom boxes or portable electric generators to spoil the experience.

I kept no diary, and like the nimrod I am, I made no notes as to specific dates on any of the pictures. So with the exception of knowing that we went in August (because that’s what I had written on the box of slides that these photos came from), I’m working here completely from the combined recollections of Michelle and myself (there is actually one other indicator as to indicate more precisely when in August we made the trip, but I’ll save that little tidbit for later).

However, there’s always the Internet. And fortunately there are a lot of people who are so enchanted with Yosemite that they too want to share it with the world. So through gathering information from web sites and photos other people have taken and written about, I’ve pieced together what info was missing from my aging brain, to illustrate our trail path. As I did before, I will indicate which photos are not mine.

Oh look…here are a couple now…

Here is a map detailing our daily progress, beginning at Tuolumne Meadows on the second day after spending the first night at the backpacker's campground in Yosemite Valley. (Click to view at a larger size)


I present this borrowed image only to provide a unique point of view that would have been impossible for me to capture myself. In this shot, taken from Glacier Point on the south side of the Valley, you’re looking at Half Dome (right) and Cloud’s Rest (left-center) from exactly the opposite direction of our backpacking trip. Tuolemne Meadows, our trail head, is approximately 20 miles north northeast of this vantage point.

Checking in
I remember being excited going into this adventure, having been camping in various parts of Yosemite on three previous occasions. But I had really had no idea what lay ahead.

The six-hour drive from Long Beach placed us in the Valley at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon, as I recall. We parked our two cars in the assigned visitor’s overnight lot specifically for backpackers and campers. It was adjacent to the small ‘backpacker’s campground’ area that would be our initial accommodations for the first night.

Once we got all of our wilderness permit paperwork verified at the Park offices we unloaded our gear and pitched camp. The Valley would be both the starting and ending point of the 28-mile trek that was to be our weeklong Yosemite adventure.

Bright and early the next morning, the cars would stay, but we would catch the shuttle bus that periodically makes the 90-minute transport from the Valley to Tuolemne Meadows via Tioga Road, which bisects Yosemite National Park diagonally from southwest to northeast.

As the sun began to sink behind the western Valley wall, the temperature quickly began to drop as well. Even though daytime temperatures can be quite high in the Valley, the nights are brisk year-round, with August being the warmest at an average low of 53 degrees Fahrenheit. That campfire was sure gonna feel good!

Pitching our little two-person dome tent, I felt energized and alive. “How lucky I am,” I thought, “to be right here, right now.” I could tell that Michelle felt the same way. As it turned out, I got even luckier later that evening…!

Sleep was sweet that night, as billions of radiant stars kept watch over the Valley. Tomorrow I would need that rest, as I would discover negotiating Yosemite’s back country to be both more strenuous — and glorious — then I had imagined.


Next: The Ground Rules

Yosemite Psalm (Prologue)

Purple mountain’s majesty
Like most kids born in the flat terrain of the Midwest, I didn’t have a lot of experience with molehills, let alone mountains. I certainly had no concept of the majestic Sierra Nevada mountain range of California. Sure, it was a name that I heard in school on occasion, and I’m sure I saw plenty of pictures of mountains in books and on post cards, and images of their splendor on TV. But none of it totally registered. Nothing like that ever really does until you experience it first-hand.

When we moved to California in 1969, I saw the mountains for the first time at age 13. I was awestruck at just the sight of the local San Bernardino range, which on a clear day magically appeared upon the eastern horizon from my home in Long Beach. On most days the mountains are completely obscured by the smog of the LA Basin. But occasionally, most often during the winter months, after a rainstorm or a period of high barometric pressure, the smog would subside for a day or two — sometimes as long as a week — and the often snow-capped ‘San Berdoo’ Mountains would tease us with a brief peep show, revealing their hidden beauty. In the years that I grew up in SoCal, I always looked forward to winter specifically for that reason — to see the mountains off in the distance. It was such a surreal sight for me, adding to the already ‘wonderland’ mystique of my new homeland. There never seemed to be an end to the newness of my California environs, and I’m happy to say, that feeling has never left me, which is the main reason I’ll never tire of returning to visit The Golden State.

One such visit that I hope will come, if not next Summer then soon thereafter, is a return to that most magical of all places for me in the mountains of California, Yosemite National Park. Yosemite is the subject of this story and has continually been the subject of my longing over the past 23 years; a longing to retrace a trip in which Michelle and I, along with another couple, backpacked 25 miles through breathtakingly beautiful wilderness via the John Muir Trail for one glorious week in August of 1981. It wasn’t my first trip there, but it was my longest and most recent. It is a place I vowed to return to one day with my children, before my children were even born. But while I realized that trip would necessarily be many years off into the future, I never figured that this much time would elapse before it came to pass.


This is probably the quintessential view of Yosemite Valley, seen as you enter the park from the Southwest. That's El Capitan on the left, and in the distant right-center of this magnificent vista stands the sentinel of the Valley, Half Dome. This series will feature a lot of pictures, most of which I took. This however, is NOT one of them.

Let’s get readeee ta’ stumble!
Let’s be honest. I’m not your typical goal-oriented guy, as my wife will quickly attest. But to return to Yosemite as a family and retrace that 1981 backpacking trip is one very tangible goal that I’ve had for years, and it’s never faded.

But the longer we wait the harder it will obviously be for the old folks. Due to the terrain, this is no easy jaunt. There’s an awful lot of uphill-downhill hiking along the John Muir Trail from Toulemne Meadows to Yosemite Valley. It would be no problem for my son, who next summer will be near the same age that I was in 1981, and is probably just as fit. He’s been a rock climber since he was fifteen and I’m sure he would salivate at the idea of doing it, provided of course that he could lead. My daughter on the other hand is no couch potato, but would probably not be in shape to make the trip if we were leaving today. But I’m sure she could get it together in time to be ready for next summer. I hope to make the reservations soon after the first of the year. There are just so many things hinging upon our ability to pull it off in 2005.

As for Michelle and me, with apologies to Michael Buffer, we are certainly not "ready to rumble" as of the moment ourselves. However I’m confident we could be, given a few months of training next spring.

But that’s so next year.

What I want to talk about now is twenty-three years ago, in a place whose name is based on the local Indian word for Grizzly Bear; the place where the earth and the sky collide with your soul.

It’s a place as holy and filled with God’s glory as any cathedral ever built with human hands; a place whose mighty and ancient monuments of granite remind me of how small and transitory a creature man is by comparison.

It’s a place that fills my mind with the music of wind rushing through the trees, water flowing through winding streams, and birds calling out nature’s song: a Yosemite Psalm.


Next: Ron