Hiking - Part 18

 Yosemite National Park

Yosemite is one of the crown jewels of America's national park system.  The park centers around Yosemite Valley, carved out of the granite of the Sierra Nevada mountains by glaciers, resulting in cliffs up to 3000 feet high surrounding the valley, with waterfalls and spectacular views, 

Here are some excerpts from a Scenic Boys video of Rusty Hauck (the blond) and a friend who hiked up to the rim of the valley where a stream tumbles over the edge as a waterfall.

The last scene in the video: Rusty looking at Half Dome in the center distance.

Half Dome looks like a giant dome of rock that has been sliced in half, and that's exactly what happened in the last Ice Age when a glacier removed half of it.  There's an extremely arduous trail to the top of Half Dome, climbing 4800 feet, the last 400 feet of which is up a steep slope of sheer granite with cables to hang onto.

Above: the view at the top of Half Dome.

Yosemite is full of great places to hike.  The high country above Yosemite Valley is a land of bare granite rock ...

and streams ...

and mountain lakes.

This is a guy named Aaron skinny-dipping in a Yosemite lake on his honeymoon.

This is Andrew Tipton jumping into a pool in the stream at the top of Yosemite Falls.  The waterfall is the highest in North America – 2450 feet – and the fifth highest in the world.

Yosemite is a mecca for rock climbers, especially the vertical faces of Half Dome and El Capitan.  These climbs can take more than one day.  How do you sleep when you're halfway up a cliff?  In a hammock suspended by ropes, like this one.  In 1973, partway up Half Dome, Galen Rowell is in his hammock, and Doug Robinson takes a photo of him to document the climb for National Geographic, while a third climber, Dennis Henn, took this photo to capture the view of Doug.  National Geographic had an article about their climb in the June 1974 issue, but did not use this photo.

Jesse Ray Nichols on Thank God Ledge, near the top of the 2000-foot-tall Half Dome cliff.  He didn't climb naked the whole way.  Instead, he stripped when he reached the ledge.  Why?  Because he could, I guess.

The other iconic climb in Yosemite is El Capitan, a 3000-foot sheer cliff rising above the valley.  In 2017 Leah Pappajohn (left) and Jonathan Fleury (right) were the first to climb El Capitan nude, wearing only shoes and backpacks and carrying climbing equipment such as ropes.  Here they are celebrating after reaching the top.  They both set personal records for the speed of the climb, doing it in 12 hours.

Afterwards, Fleury wrote: "I overheard a friend talking about Leah’s goal to climb [El Capitan] naked, and instantly I wanted to be a part of that climb. A couple weeks later, sure enough, we set off at 4:38 a.m. After about ten minutes of climbing, I pretty much forgot I wasn’t wearing anything. Both of us had done plenty of naked ascents before (this was my first time naked climbing with a rope) so it was comfortable territory. ... It was a great adventure and definitely a climb I will never forget. But seriously, with the beauty of that wall, how could you forget any climb on El Cap? Moral of the story, get out there, get naked, and go touch some rocks!"