Half Dome Hike - Sept. 3, 2007

On September 3, 2007, Dad, Dan, Kelley and I hiked half dome. The actual hike was almost identical to the Half Dome hike from last year, so I won't bother going into the details. Here is the high level synopsis:

• We started the hike at 6:15am
• Made it to the top at 11:45am
• Spent 1 hour on the top
• Finished the hike at 6:15pm

Here's the updated list of Half Dome summits:

• Dad - 9
• Dave - 5
• Dan - 3
• Kelley - 2

The real drama occurred the next morning as we were sleeping after the long hike. At about 5:15 in the morning, I woke up to a woman yelling, "Go away! Seriously, leave me alone!" She was banging on a garbage can and making a lot of noise. My first thought was that it was a domestic dispute, but when I got up and looked out the tent cabin window, I saw a large, female grizzly bear directly behind our tent cabin, about 10 yards away. She was just standing by a tree, looking around. About 5 second later, I found out why, when 2 grizzly bear cubs made their way down the tree. They meandered over to the mother and proceeded to walk away from our tent cabin

(the picture to the right shows the view from our tent cabin window. The center tree is where the cubs descended and the other tree has a light attached which is how we saw the action). A few minutes later, I saw "the woman" walking back past our tent cabin with a couple other people talking about how she was walking to the bathroom alone and how she just wanted to get back to her tent cabin. That must have been extremely scary for her. I'm glad we followed the rules and put all of our food in the bear locker. I had never seen a grizzly bear at Yosemite before and I wouldn't mind seeing one again - just not so close. Over the next 15 minutes, I heard a few noises that sounded like shotgun blasts. If that was what I was hearing, I'm pretty sure they weren't intending to strike the grizzlies, but to just scare them away from where the people are. That sure was a memorable way to end our trip.

If you want to see what it looks like on the top of Half Dome, check out this video. Of course, a video shot from my phone can't really do it justice, but it's better than nothing.

For another perspective of this trip, Dan's version of events can be found here