After dinner everybody was tired of driving for one and an half days and there was going to be a very long hike tomorrow, so most of us went to sleep. A few people played cards, but eventually we all went to sleep.
Day 13: 9/10/00 ==>Half Dome Hike.
Today was going to be a very hard day. We were going to do the Half Dome Hike, which was going to take all day. We had to hike 30 km and overcome 1.500 meters in height.
James left us at the Trailhead at 6.30 am and we wouldn't see him until late in the afternoon. The first bit of the trail went up and down a lot. And the trailsurface changed constantly from hard rocks to just mud. After half an hour or so we reached a bridge over a small river that came down from the mountain. This was the last place to fill up our waterbottles if we didn't already did this at breakfast.
From that point on our group of 9 got split up in two groups. Will, Norine and Pascal went faster than the rest of us. We took a much slower pace and we tried to view as much of the surrounding as possible. We that is James, Orsi, Jon, Rudy, Thomas and me(Joeri).
We walked for an hour and then we reached the first of two waterfalls we would encounter on this hike. But to reach a nice height to see all of the waterfall, we had to climb these huge stone steps. This was very hard on our knees. So on the way to the top of this fall we stopped a lot just to catch our breath. Finally after an hour of climbing we reached the top of the fall. |
