Log: Day 100 - Clouds Rest

July 21, 2016

I was up early to try to get a walk-up permit for other trails in Yosemite. Katy and Sadie weren't starting the JMT for another 10 days so I had some time to kill and what better place to be stuck than Yosemite? I got the Tuolumne Meadows permit office just before 6:00am and there was already a line. I threw down my pad and sleeping bag and settled in.

Despite how early it was, the other backpacker in the line were quite chatty. Some were regulars at the park and thus weren't too particular about which permit they got. Others had gotten unlucky with the online permitting system and were just hoping for something. After a few hours a ranger came out, went down the line, and noted which permits people were interested in.

Finally, at around 10:30am, the permit office actually opened up and walk up permits were distributed. I got lucky and was able to pick up the exact permit I wanted, including Half Dome! I didn't stick around much after that as I still had around 14 miles to cover. I wanted to camp near the base of Half Dome in preparation for a pre-dawn summit.

I was able to catch a ride with a nice older gentleman from Montana on his way to a wedding. His wife had insisted he take a few days to hit the national parks on the way and he was more than happy to give me a lift down to the trailhead. I had less luck finding the actual trail and took a small detour before setting off in the right direction towards Clouds Rest, the first stop of the day.

Clouds Rest

The approach was a rough 10 miles. It was a lot of climbing, I was moving fast, and it was hot. I was a little lower on water than I would have liked, but made it to the top without incident to be greeted by a spectacular view. It was a little bit hazy but still pretty amazing visibility. I got up there right about the same time as a man about my age and his two friends from Israel.

They headed down the other side ahead of me but I caught up to them at the base where we were all camping. I set up a bit more removed from the group with the hope of not waking them up at 2am when I was planning on beginning my ascent.

I did join the three of them as well as a father and daughter for dinner. The Israeli man was using an interesting little stove. I couldn't figure out what it was using as fuel and for the longest time it didn't look like he was actually cooking anything on it. He noticed me examining it and informed me that it was actually an Israeli army trick for cooking tuna: tuna canned in olive oil can be cooked by burning off the oil using toilet paper as a wick. Who knew?

With the early morning ahead of me, I turned in extra early.