Tuesday, September 6, 2016

I have developed a little hiking bug....I just decided that I want to hike more and I'm fixated on hiking Half Dome at Yosemite National Park.  Now this is no easy thing - first of all, you gave to have a special permit to do it.  You apply for a permit in the month of March, they hold a lottery, and they let you know in April if you were successful and got one of the permits.  I was very disappointed when I didn't get a permit, but one of my coworkers was lucky enough to get one and we tagged along on her permit.

Now that we had a permit, the training had to begin.  We consider ourselves pretty fit, we exercise regularly, but the Half Dome hike starts at approximately 4,500 feet in elevation and climbs to 8,839 feet in just 6 miles.  Sooooo, we decided to do some hiking in the Lake Tahoe area to practice.  We live just an hour and a half from Tahoe so it was very convenient for doing day trips to hike.

We started with Castle Peak near Soda Springs.  This was not an easy hike due to the pretty steep climb and slippery terrain.  The wind was also a factor, blowing about 40 miles an hour at the top. We made it up and back in exactly 4 hours which we thought was pretty good and no trouble with the altitude either. Altitude at the peak is 9,104 feet, elevation gain from the trailhead is just about 2,000 feet.  The hike itself provides some good scenery, especially impressive as you stop to look back at how far you've come.

Next training hike was Horsetail Falls near South Lake Tahoe.  We felt this was a pretty easy hike with nice scenery.  We were surprised that the falls were still flowing really well despite it being early August. Most of the hike parallels Pyramid Creek so you could stop and enjoy the water if you wanted.  We did see a really big rattlesnake on the trail which surprised us because we thought they didn't live at those higher elevations. Wrong! Lots of people doing this hike, families with kids too. Elevation is 6,700 feet with an elevation gain of just 600 feet. We did this one in just a few hours as well.

We were feeling pretty confident we could handle Half Dome after doing well on these hikes. Next up: the reality of hiking Half Dome!

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