This time tomorrow, Nevada Falls

[cjsmith]

I begin climbing tomorrow morning, hopefully for an ascent of Half Dome. Sunrise in Groveland is 6:06am, sunset 8:08pm (how easy to remember is THAT?) so there are maybe fifteen or sixteen hours of usable light. Call it fifteen; I don't want to force my hiking partner to start before dawn! I'm being antsy enough about this as it is, and he's been very patient with things like a wigged-out preparatory phone call that woke him up.

According to my topo map, the trail is eight point two miles long, so I'll need to average just a little over a mile an hour. In the past, that's been very doable, even on trails with significant elevation gain, even with stops to eat and take photos and stuff.

I looked at what I want to bring, and it's probably not going to fit in my monster fanny pack. I'll bring a day pack too, I guess. Wish I had a really lightweight one. After all the food's gone, I could stuff the day pack into a pocket of the fanny pack, if the day pack were flimsy enough. Collapsible water containers would be useful too, I suppose, for the same reason. Oh well.

Now if only my knee will hold out. And my blood sugar. I suspect the knee won't start showing symptoms until I start going downhill, meaning I could do way too much and not know it until I'm coming down the cables. That's a suboptimal time to find out, with eight miles of severe downhill ahead of me. Fortunately, I don't think it would mean real damage. I'd just be in some pain during the descent, probably descend slowly well into the night, and would need some rest and recovery for a week or two. The blood sugar on the other hand could make me turn back. Better keep eating. Eat eat eat. Eat.

Wish I could carry just a bit more water. A half gallon to a gallon is recommended; I have easy space for three liters, but would rather have four.

I'm supposed to be carbo-loading today. Hee. Never done that before.

Gee, think I'm taking this all just a bit too seriously? :-)

Comments

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

Can you get a Camel-Bak? Can you find "instant ice" packs? You might want to stop and make your knees cold once or twice on the trip down the hill.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I thought of a Camel-Bak too late last night, sadly. I wish I had thought of it Wednesday morning, which was my last good opportunity to get to REI.

I like the "instant ice" idea. Hmm. Good one.