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

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

no. that's a serious hike, and being well-prepped is important.

That's true enough. I suppose I miss the days when I didn't have to worry about preparation. I was young and uninjured and healthy as a stoat, and the worst I'd face without prep is being a bit tired or hungry. I am envious of people who can still do this sort of thing without worry. Ah well...

Huh, straps to hold on to, interesting. I like carrying weight on my hips, and I'd rather sweat on my waist than on my back, but I think I'm gonna have both. Now I'll think about hanging onto the shoulder straps when I'm going uphill :-)

Thanks for the well wishes! I hope your trip was beautiful and enjoyable, also.