Mammoth Lakes Basin - 9/2019
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Half Dome, August 1975 - Bill and Dad (David) hiked a two-day trip from Happy Isles to Half Dome and back again.
We had driven up the evening before our hike, parking along Northside Drive near the foot of Lower Brother (which we would do several more times in the next few years before park rangers adopted a stricter enforcement policy against overnight parking in the Valley). Dad had found his favorite secluded spot on an undisturbed bed of pine needles and preferred to cowboy-camp, while my sensitive ears couldn't sleep a wink with the nocturnal wildlife prowling about slowly with purpose in the forest nearby. In subsequent years I slept in the car.
The next morning we spent several hours securing our wilderness camping permit for the Little Yosemite area. That required parking the car, then taking one of the Valley Shuttle buses into the Village to obtain the permit, then visiting the Village Store for last-minute supplies before returning to our car where we shouldered our packs and boarded a different shuttle to Happy Isles Trailhead. There was no permit system for climbing Half Dome proper back then, and the camping permit was an easy walk-up affair.
This was my second backpacking trip in the Sierra, and I hadn't yet decided if I liked backpacking yet. On my first backpacking trip in 1974 to Upper McCabe Lake with Dad and a group of his work colleagues I might have found reason to abandon the idea after I had trouble carrying my pack over Shepherd Pass and had also spent a night vomiting all over my sleeping bag in the middle of the night due to altitude and/or too much faux-lemonade (Wyler's) the evening before. It was not an auspicious start to my backpacking days.
But Dad was keen to climb Yosemite's iconic mountain, and even though I had never hiked that far, I was also enthusiastic yet not sure my legs would carry me that far.
A year older I still found the pack uncomfortably heavy, but this time I carried it myself. We climbed Mist Trail past Vernal Fall, then up the switchbacks to the top of Nevada Fall. Although we hadn't hiked far I recall I was already quite tired by then, but we had some distance to go before we could set up camp.
In the mid-1970s the black bears in Yosemite that lived in frequently-visited areas had become habituated to people and their food. The idea of NOT feeding bears had not fully taken hold in the minds of the public, although Valley officials were working hard to publicize the new policy in Yosemite.
We had been told that the Little Yosemite backpacker's camping area was an especially notorious area for bear encounters. Although I did not realize it beforehand, I since learned that Dad harbored a fear of bears that was only exceeded by his fear of sharks. Back then there were no bear boxes in which to store food overnight. Dad suggested we press on toward Half Dome and find a secluded spot off the trail away from the crowds (and the bears).
This time we found a great secluded camping spot a short distance down a faint use trail that left the main trail just after the former crossed the western tributary of Sunrise Creek. Our camping spot lay near the bank of the eastern tributary just upstream of the confluence. We were both surprised to find the spot unoccupied, although it could easily have held two or three parties.
We set up camp then prepared and ate dinner. During dinner preparations Dad accidentally spilled chicken soup on his pants.
After dinner we carefully separated our food from the rest of our packs and sleeping area, placing the former in one of our sleeping bag bags, along with a thin rope. After several tries we managed to get the full bag thrown over a high limb above our camp, and tied the other end of the rope lower on the tree. This was the recommended method back then, but today storing food overnight inside bear boxes or bear canisters are the required methods.
Because the weather was expected to be clear, we wanted to minimize weight, and because this was Dad's preferred sleeping arrangement, we cowboy-camped under the trees. We could still see a few stars poking out, but unlike Upper McCabe Lake here the August air was thick and hazy, smoky perhaps from campfires in the Valley and elsewhere. As I was tired from the day's excitement and activity I fell asleep easily.
Later that night I awoke suddenly when Dad started yelling at something at the feet of our sleeping bags. His tiny flashlight barely illuminated something large and furry moving slowly in the gloom. Bears, and two of them! "Oh, why didn't Dad bring a tent!", I thought, hoping the bears wouldn't think we were edible.
Fortunately, they seemed less interested in us, only sniffing briefly at our feet—probably smelling Dad's spilt chicken soup—before starting to climb up the tree into which we had slung our food bag.
The branch we had chosen was too slender to support the weight of what appeared to be Mama Bear, so she sent Junior to retrieve their prize. But, whether it was Junior's inexperience or our food-bag-hanging competence, Junior's efforts after multiple attempts proved unsuccessful. Eventually, the bears moved off into the forest looking for easier pickings.
It took me a while to drift back to sleep after our visit from the bears, but just as I did I re-awakened to a rumbling jolt, followed by the ominous sound of large boulders bouncing down a slope some distance away. We had just experienced an earthquake. At this point my adrenaline was pumping, and it took me a long time to get back to what little sleep remained for me that night. I briefly wondered if our camping spot was safe in an earthquake. Were we near any loose rock that might come down on us? If it wasn't bears that might eat us it was falling boulders that would crush us.
But, I did eventually fall asleep again because the next thing I remember was Dad gently waking me up and my noticing that the sky was already getting light. Dad was always an early riser, but I was not. The full weight of my lack of sleep the night before made rising difficult and slow. Yet Dad seemed anxious and impatient to get moving.
We ate a breakfast of granola, found a place in the woods to do our business, then packed up our food again for the food bag over the tree limb, since it had worked well enough the night before. For our hike up Half Dome Dad carried a single day bag with our lunches and water, while we left the rest of our gear at camp.
As we climbed the Half Dome Trail we encountered a couple of parties whose food had been stolen by bears. These reports seemed to make Dad anxious, but we were focused on reaching the Summit now. If bears took the food we had left behind at camp, it was a small sacrifice.
When we arrived at the foot of the sub dome we started to enjoy the interesting scenery and distract ourselves from thoughts of marauding bears.
At the top of the sub dome the full cable route rose before us, and it looked scary. Although the maximum grade is around 50%, the cables looked vertical to my untrained eye. One older gentleman we spoke with who was waiting on the sub dome told us his friends had gone to the top, but he was going to wait for them here.
Dad instructed me to put on my gloves and climb one rung at a time without looking backwards. "Focus on getting to the next wooden slat."
He then snapped one of the few photos we took on our hike after I had hiked up to the first slat. We then continued up slowly, one slat at a time. I went first, then Dad hovered behind me, and I found his "protecting" me from the precipitous drop behind me mentally comforting.
Occasionally someone would need to pass us going downhill, and we politely stood off on one cable, but I always waited at a wooden slat when we stopped, and always held onto a cable with both hands while stopped.
Although my shoes were not appropriate hiking footwear while carrying a heavy overnight pack, they were ideal footwear for smearing on granite slab, and this was one helluva slab.
At several spots along the way the cable route would climb onto a higher layer of exfoliating rock. I was just over five feet tall at the time, so these steps were uncomfortably high for me, but I still managed to climb them. They were the most difficult parts of the cable route, up or down.
It wasn't long before the grade eased slightly, becoming gradually less steep. Then finally we reached the end of the cables, but the rock continued to rise before us.
But I could see that we didn't have to climb too far before we were at the summit.
"Now, don't go running off! Stay with me!", Dad ordered.
There were a few other parties at the summit enjoying the view and relaxing. A couple of older kids had climbed down onto some ledges near the Diving Board, but Dad told me that it was too dangerous for us to do that.
We found a spot near the summit to sit and enjoy the view while we ate lunch. After lunch we hiked around the dome and over to the lower summit, just to check it out. But, then Dad remembered the bears and our packs, and he told me we needed to start down.
As before we donned our gloves, and we descended in the same orientation as we had climbed: Dad below me and both of us facing uphill. It was slow and tedious, but I don't recall being scared at all, even though I was a little frightened on the climb. I think by then I realized my shoes stuck to the granite like glue, so I had much more confidence we wouldn't slip off. Of course, wet weather would have changed that risk considerably, but today the skies were mostly clear and dry.
We continued down the sub dome and back into the forest, descending at a speed faster than was comfortable for me. Along the way we passed a small party of hikers who had stopped by the trail. When we asked how they were doing, without saying a word they pointed off the trail into the forest.
About 50 feet away from us a large bear was stripping down a large backpack from outside to in, leaving no pocket un-explored nor seam un-torn. It would hardly have looked different if the creature had been rendering a fresh kill, and in hindsight I suspect the visual analogy was not lost on my father.
The hiker told us he had set his pack down next to himself while he took a break on a log when a bear came out of the bushes and grabbed his pack.
That was the final straw for Dad. He insisted we get moving to get our packs and head out of the wilderness.
We arrived back at our camp to find our stuff was miraculously undisturbed in our absence. We quickly retrieved our food bag, reorganized our supplies, and started down the trail to Happy Isles.
Now that the exciting part was finished my bad sleep the night before was catching up with me. I wanted to stop and rest a few times, but Dad wouldn't hear of it. "The bears are getting smarter; we have to keep moving!", he ordered, as if the Bears were in hot pursuit.
I began to wonder if we might be ambushed by a bear lying in wait behind a large tree or boulder, ready to snatch the packs of our backs. Although being sniffed at in the night by a large wild creature was not conducive to restful sleep, I had until this point not yet absorbed Dad's now palpable fear of bears. For the next half-hour until we found ourselves on a more crowded trail I continued on silently in fear.
Our descent of the John Muir Trail into Happy Isles went as a blur. All I can remember was how tired I was and how my feet were sore, how I wanted to stop and rest, eat, whatever, but Dad kept me moving. When we arrived back at the car Dad suggested we shower at Housekeeping Camp before we drove home, but I was too tired to get out of the car. So, Dad took his shower, and I fell asleep in the back seat. I don't recall waking up again until we had arrived home.
All web site content except where otherwise noted: ©2024 Bill Bushnell
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Please send comments or questions to the .