Mariposa Grove

On Sunday, we hiked for three hours at Yosemite's Mariposa Grove of giant redwoods, and still had lots of energy and no stiffness. On Monday we finally started feeling some minor muscle aches from Saturday. Duane had a final visit to his physical therapist Naraj. Everything was fine, and he got some additional strengthening exercises 'to go'.

Today's hike around the Mariposa Grove was reminiscent of the times we have visited Calaveras Big Trees, Sequoia National Park and Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park. This grove of big trees, however, I had missed depsite the many times Duane and I have been to Yosemite.

Wild flowers were in abundance in this part of Yosemite. We saw wild irises, goldenrod, wild strawberries and some kind of wild rose. We also saw a beautiful butterfly, which we believe to be a Sagebrush Checkerspot.

Our son came with and got a chance to explore the trees, climb some rocks, take photographs of deer, and check out all of the sticks. He had a good time! One of our mentors, Deb, also came along as did Vivian, one of our fellow hikers.

We've begun scheming for how and when we can scale Half Dome ourselves, this year or next.

To be continued?

Awesome Hike!

On Saturday, our big Team in Training event day, we had an awesome 8-hour, 9-mile hike on Yosemite's Panorama Trail. At 6:30am we took vans to our starting point up high at the Glacier Point overlook. Here we saw the entire valley far below, and Half Dome looming far above us just across a narrow deep canyon. The trail dipped down, rose 800 feet, and descended 4000 feet past three major waterfalls -- Illilouette, Nevada, and Vernal -- and ended low at the valley floor. The views were really stunning along the whole trail. We both found this hike to be relatively easy, compared to many of our recent local training hikes. I had worried that my recovering knee would still have problems with a very long hike with lots more downhill than I have managed recently. But my knees were fine all day long.

We hiked in a group of ten team friends plus Roddy, a professional guide. The weather was perfect, sunny but cool, with lots of shade on the trail. There was a lot more fast water flowing on Illilouette Creek than I expected from our distant view two months ago.

One woman in our group suffered jammed big toes from inadequate, wrong-sized tennis shoes, which slowed us up by over an hour. (She had given up finding well-fitting boots after only one pair; we are on our 7th pair.) She gutted through the last mile of the hike without her shoes, just socks.

Other friends were on the three official and one unofficial TnT groups doing Half Dome this day. The perfect weather gave them ideal safe conditions for the very steep cable section. The slowest group completed well after dark, much later than planned. They were slowed down by a hiker with a undisclosed fear of heights (on Half Dome!!). And by another hiker with pre-existing knee problems. And by long waiting lines at the few toilets along the trail. Their primary guide took on carrying three backpacks -- his own, plus those of the two hikers with problems.

Given how well my knee performed, I think we could have managed Half Dome too. But there was no way to tell without first doing a major hike without pain. I could have been the hiker causing major problems for a Half Dome team.

After the hike, we took an extremely crowded Yosemite free shuttle bus from the trailhead to a gathering point at Yosemite Lodge. The bus could only creep along, but all non-bus traffic was totally gridlocked on this busy Saturday; the worst I've ever seen there. From the Lodge, we escaped from the valley by van.

We both felt great after our Panorama hike, and danced a bit at our celebration dinner event!

Water, Water Everywhere

We set our alarms for 5:45 a.m this morning, but as it turned out it was unnecessary. Our son knocked on our door at 5:00 a.m. Our son and Uncle Dave were up early to see us off!

We showered, dressed and packed the final items in our packs. I packed my sandwich and we both filled our water bladders. I left a little bit of room in my hydration bladder and filled the rest of it with ice. That kept my water nice and cool for much of the day.

In doing all of this, I put my pack on my bed for a moment and when I picked it up a few minutes later, I noticed that there was some water on the bed. It turns out I had put the pack on the valve and released some of the water. I quickly cleaned it up while Duane gave me a hard time about doing this and reminded me to keep the valve closed. (He had done this at home about two months ago, emptying the entire remnants of his bladder onto our kitchen floor.) Duane meanwhile, had also put his pack down on the bed and, only moments later, noticed that he had a HUGE leak. (Uncle Dave named it "Lake Havasu".) Unfortunately, it wasn't just on his bed. The entire contents of his pack were soaked, including his spare socks. Apparently, the lid to the hydration pack had not threaded correctly. He quickly pulled the bedspread off the bed so that at least the mattress wouldn't get soaked, refilled his hydration bladder and this time put the lid on correctly.

Worse yet, he discovered this at 6:25 am, only five minutes before our shuttle was supposed to leave. We went downstairs, checked in for the shuttle and while we waited a few minutes for it to be ready, Duane unpacked his wet pack and dried the contents out and repacked, while I fetched him some dry spare liner socks from our suitcase. Fortunately, Duane didn't have his sandwich in his pack or that would have gotten soggy too.

We loaded our team, the Panorama #4 team, into two shuttles and headed off for Yosemite National Park and Glacier Point. About 40 minutes later, we arrived and, after some photos and an opportunity to use the bathroom, we headed off. Our son and Uncle Dave drove separately to Glacier Point to see us off. It was clear that they were going to have a really fun day together! Ten minutes and a few switchbacks down the side of the canyon and we heard two voices yelling "Bye" at us - our son and Uncle Dave waving at us from Glacier Point. That was really cool!

Almost immediately after we started our hike, we noticed a bush with white blossoms. Our guide Roddy told us that it was Whitethorn. I thought it looked an awful lot like Ceanothus, except that it wasn't blue. It turns out that Whitethorn IS a white Ceanothus.

The view of Half Dome, where several of our teammates were hiking, is much more imposing and intimidating from Glacier Point (seen above with Vernal and Nevada Falls to the right) than it is from the valley floor. I must admit to having mixed feelings about not making the team, especially after what happened last week. Fortunately for our teammates, the weather is perfect. Not too hot and no rain. They will have a good day.

The first stretch of our hike was mostly down switchbacks, not terribly steep. We made it to the first junction and the group was still mostly together. By the time we got to the junction of the Panorama and Buena Vista trails, about 2.6 miles into our hike, one of our teammates was falling seriously behind. We waited about half an hour at that junction for the group to come together before trekking on. This teammate apparently didn't participate in most of our training hikes - so much so that I didn't even realize this hiker was on our team. Apparently, this hiker had an issue with blisters and, to make things incredibly worse, had chosen not to wear the hiking boots that had been left in the car. Instead, this hiker wore ordinary tennis shoes. No hiking poles either.

On a short hike, this might not make much of a difference. But on a longer hike with a lot of downhill, this was a stupendously bad idea. The tennis shoes did not have enough room in them at the toes for all of the downhill we were doing. Consequently, this hiker was jamming toes into the end of the shoe and will probably lose both big toenails and perhaps others as well. This teammate hiked the last paved mile from the footbridge to Happy Isles in stocking feet.

Similar problems had happened to me earlier in the season and I was not unsympathetic towards this hiker. I was unable to finish our Windy Hill hike. That's when I discovered that my boots were too small and that I needed an orthotic to prevent problems with my metatarsal arch. As of today, I am on my fourth pair of hiking boots, but I sorted these issues out months ago and I kept at it until the problem was solved.

There is apparently a requirement that all Team in Training hike participants wear appropriate hiking boots for our last and longest two hikes and also for the event. So why this hiker was allowed to participate with inadequate gear doesn't make any sense to me. Where was our coach who was acting as the sweep on our hike? Didn't she notice? And what about the officials who were taking check ins? Tennis shoes would have been fine for the easy, level Valley Floor hike, but not for a 9.6 mile hike with a 3,179 ft. elevation drop!

The immediate consequence for the rest of the group was that we had longer and longer waits for this hiker to catch up at the trail junctions. By the time we got to the Vernal Fall footbridge, just past the junction of the Mist and the John Muir trails and nearly at the end of our hike, we were waiting about an hour. Our muscles started to cool down and tighten up and we had to keep stretching. Our hike, which should have taken between five and six hours, instead took about eight.

But even that couldn't ruin the glorious day that we had. The weather was perfect and the temperature never rose above 80 degrees. We hiked down to Illilouette Creek and crossed the bridge, reaching Illilouette Fall a few feet later. Illilouette Fall can not be seen from the bridge or even from just above the Fall - we had to view it on our way down to the bridge. We dawdled a bit at the bridge before hiking our one incline of the day (about 700 feet) out of Illilouette Canyon and on to Panorama Point. Panorama Point has incredible vistas of Half Dome, Yosemite Valley and the Merced River. Awesome!

After Panorama Point, we pressed on along mostly level terrain until the junction of the Panorama and Mono Meadow trails. From there we descended a series of switchbacks down to Nevada Fall. Wildflowers were in evidence throughout the day, with the best specimen being the wild azalea that we saw just before reaching Nevada Fall. They were wonderfully fragrant, reminding me of the perfume of star jasmine or wisteria.

We stopped at Nevada Fall for lunch (would someone please remind me NOT to put avocado on my sandwich when I order it the day before). There was also the opportunity to use the bathroom conveniently located slightly upriver from the Fall. We had wonderful views of Liberty Cap and the Merced River, while eating our lunch.

Roddy, our trail guide, had been given about five pounds of M&Ms and trail mix to carry in his pack. Why, I wasn't sure, since we all had our own food. Apparently, people didn't bring enough food last year, so this year the guides and everyone else over corrected. So poor Roddy had to carry all that extra weight the entire hike and, of course, he took every opportunity he had to offer us M&Ms. We obliged as we could, but refrained from giving any M&Ms to the two squirrels who befriended us during lunch.

Of all the trails we have hiked over the past several months, this one had the most bathrooms, located at Glacier Point, Nevada Fall and the Vernal Fall footbridge. I think there was one at Vernal Fall too. Ironically, I didn't need to use any of them, which was even odder considering that I nearly always need a bathroom about ten to fifteen minutes into a hike. Go figure. I must have calculated my liquid and electrolyte intake just right. I drank a 32 ounce bottle of Gatorade on the first half of the hike and another 32 ounce bottle of Gatorade on the second half of the hike. In between I sipped water out of my hydration pack. By the end of our hike, I had almost no fluids left. Perhaps, being at higher and drier elevations, my body also knew that it needed to use more fluid?

My equipment was also working well. My hiking boots were comfortable all the way to the end of our hike. My newly purchased sweatband worked wonderfully, keeping my forehead nice and cool while at the same time keeping my glasses dry. The water-laden neckerchief that I had purchased was refreshingly cool on my neck and I was glad to have it along.

Oddly, our group was composed of several teammates with injuries. Duane had a knee injury earlier in the season as did another of our teammates. A different teammate was recovering from a broken collarbone. And there was our hiker with toe issues. But most of us had been training for Half Dome and were in pretty good shape despite all, remaining at our near the front of the pack. Duane's knee didn't bother him the entire hike - his knee strap did its job.

After lunching at Nevada Fall, looking at the Fall from the observation point and taking several photos, we moved on. At this point, we made the decision to take the John Muir trail down to Happy Isles, rather than the Mist trail. The Mist trail goes right next to the waterfalls and is composed of two runs of large granite steps cut out of the side of the canyon. Going down the John Muir's more gradual switchbacks would be easier on the knees and feet than the Mist's granite staircases, despite the extra half mile, and we already had one hiker with serious feet problems.

As we descended down the John Muir Trail, we were passed by a few mule trains which left their smelly droppings along the trail. We hadn't encountered these during our April hike to Vernal Fall, most likely because portions of the trail were still covered with snow and it was too early in the season. Despite this odiferous portion of our hike we had a stunningly glorious view of Nevada Fall on the way down, hiking under an overhang dripping with snow melt. Very refreshing, but we had to watch out for our cameras!

By the time we got to Clark Point, all was beginning to look very familiar albeit with less snow than there was last April. Only 1.7 miles to go! We hiked down this last portion of the hike reaching the junction of the Mist and John Muir Trails. Our guide Roddy decided to wait at that junction for the rest to catch up and told the rest of us to proceed a short way down to the Vernal Fall footbridge. It was a nicer place to wait, complete with bathroom, drinking faucet and a place to wash off the dirt. We waited there for about an hour before hiking the last bit to Happy Isles.

At Happy Isles, we caught the shuttle bus to Yosemite Lodge, where we were to check in from our hike before catching our vans back to Tenaya Lodge. I stopped in at the general store and purchased a six-pack of Bud Light, which I shared with our teammates. Our hiker with the foot problems was very happy to be back and I was glad to offer my congratulations with a beer! On the way back to Tenaya Lodge, we stopped for a bathroom break and I finally had the desire to unleash what was left of the pent up fluids I had consumed earlier in the day. Ahhh!

We had an hour and a half to shower and change into fresh clothes, after reaching the lodge and reconnecting with our son and Uncle Dave. Felt so much better! I wasn't much sore this evening, despite the length - and duration - of our hike. This trail really wasn't very challenging. But, oh, what gorgeous vistas! At 8:00 p.m., we went to the Celebration Dinner, where we ate a pretty good meal and even had enough energy left over to dance some swing. After dinner, I soaked in the jacuzzi for an hour with some of our fellow hikers, sharing stories of the day, before turning in for the night.

What a wonderful day!

Driving to Yosemite ... and Inspiration

We threw our clothes into suitcases this morning, gave our dog extra water and food for two days, and we left the house at 10:00 a.m. We were on our way to Tenaya Lodge and Yosemite National Park. We would meet Uncle Dave there at 3:00 p.m.

We drove down to Gilroy, where we stopped at In-n-Out for a hamburger lunch. Then we took Highway 152 over Pacheco Pass until that merged into Highway 99, where we went south to Madera. At Madera, we refueled, for the final stretch: Highway 145 to Highway 41. We stopped at the grocery store in Oakhurst to pick up breakfast for tomorrow, since the restaurants at the lodge will not be open when we leave.

We got to Tenaya Lodge right around 3:00 p.m. Uncle Dave got there about a half an hour later. Unfortunately, he missed the turn off and wound up down in Yosemite Valley. But all's well that ends well. We had a few hours to freshen up and get settled. Mentor Deb stopped by our room and gave me the black fleece jacket that I had ordered at the beginning of the hiking season, but which had been on backorder. At last!

I've been to Yosemite many times, but have never stayed at Tenaya Lodge. It's a very beautiful hotel with lots of amenities. The rooms were comfortable and spacious. There were both indoor and outdoor pools, as well as a spa and loads of activities for guests to do. Fortunately, we brought our swimsuits along. Apparently there is also a jacuzzi which I am planning to visit after the hike tomorrow.

The Inspiration Dinner was at 6:00 p.m. in a place called The Summerdale Experience, which is an outdoor eating area next to the hotel. The food was okay, but I would have liked the experience better had the food been at least warm. And next time, someone might want to let people know to bring their insect repellant so they don't in turn become dinner for all manner of gnats and mosquitos. Yuck! Just the thing you want on a long hike - mosquito bites. Not!

All of the Yosemite teams from all over the country assembled here at dinner tonight. We listened to inspirational talks by the national hike program director as well as one of our teammates from Florida who is also an honoree - a survivor of blood cancer. Then we met our guides for tomorrow's hike. Our guide, Roddy who is also from the Bay Area, has been guiding children's hikes for quite some time, but has only been guiding adult hikes for the last year or so. He likes mountain climbing as well as hiking.

After dinner, we returned to our rooms to complete our preparations and to turn in for an early night. Tomorrow is the big day!

Preparations and List Making

Today was the final day to make preparations, and buy any supplies needed for our hike. My husband Duane, a great list maker, made a list of all of the things we would not want to forget on our trip.

Meanwhile, I made preparations of my own by doing the household chores and ran several errands around town, not only for myself, but also for Duane, our son, and his weekend caretaker, Uncle Dave.

Among the many things I did today:

• I visited the Good Feet store in Campbell and had my right orthotic adjusted. It hasn't felt quite right on the last couple of hikes. I wore my hiking boots with my orthotics in them all day to ensure that my feet would remain comfortable and used to the orthotics.
• I made a last minute trip to REI, where I purchased myself a sweatband. After the last couple of hikes, I decided I was really tired of sweating into my glasses. I purchased a wicking sweatband. Duane also wanted a new sweatband, but unfortunately there was only one selection for wicking sweatbands and this one was too small to fit his head. He will have to make do with the one that he has. I also picked up some sports beans of the kind that Duane likes.
• While at REI, I also happened to see some neck-cooling bandanas of the kind that mentor Deb was handing out at Mission Peak. At that time, I declined to take one, but today I reconsidered since that sounded like a really good idea. These bandanas have little water-absorbing beads sewn into them. You soak them in water for twenty minutes and they swell up, holding cool water for days at a time. The water keeps the neck cool and you comfortable while hiking. Since the one that Deb gave Duane split at the seams (unfortunately, he didn't realize he couldn't leave it in water indefinitely...), so I picked up one for him too in his favorite colors - teal and turquoise.
• I did all of the laundry so there would be no issues of the clothes we wanted to take not being clean and ready to be packed.
• I visited Costco and picked up some VitaRain vitamin water as well as some bottled water. We'll use the bottled water for our hydration packs.
• I shopped at Safeway for our favorite flavors of Gatorade.
• Stopped in at Barnes & Noble to purchase our son some activity workbooks for the car.

Later on, we laid out all of our gear on the kitchen table after dinner, and packed our packs, except for those last minute items. In the course of doing this, we noticed that Duane's hydration bladder had something yucky growing in it that was making his water taste awful. I took his bladder, filled it about halfway with water and then poured some bleach into it. We let it sit in the bladder for half and hour, then turned it over and let it sit again for another half an hour. Duane then rinsed his bladder out so there wouldn't be any bleach residue. If this doesn't work, he's going to have to buy a new bladder tomorrow on our way out of town, but he said it tastes fine.

All I have to do tomorrow morning is throw some clothes in my suitcase and we'll be out the door! Yosemite, here we come!

100%!!

We've now reached 100.1% of our minimum/required fundraising goal of $6400 for participating in this weekend's Yosemite hikes. Woo Hoo!! Thanks to 'Team Sand' for putting us over the top!

Additional donations to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society via our Team in Training event page are definitely welcome; that page will remain open until July 20, 2009 - 30 days after our event.

Shopping IS Walking

Today our son and I drove up to the North Bay to spend some time with Nona and Bis-Nona. We went out to lunch and afterwards, we went shopping.

Normally, clothes shopping is something that I really don't much care for. When I do go, my visits are usually targeted search and find missions designed to find exactly what I want and get out of the store as soon as possible. Shopping with my mom is also uncomfortable because she'll know what size I am and because I don't want to be told again what I already know - that I need to lose weight.

Now that I've lost twenty pounds as a result of the training and I'm in better shape, I decided that this could be more fun. So it was off to Nordstrom for a few hours in the afternoon. I tried on some shoes, but I also had fun trying on some shirts and the clothes fit much better. I've lost a couple of dress sizes since February. Yeah! Mom bought me a nice shirt, some t-shirts and a couple of pairs of shoes. Thanks Mom! Best of all though, we had a nice visit and some girl talk.

We walked around the store for about two hours, so I guess I got my easy walk in today after all!

Send Off!

The Send Off dinner event for our Team in Training Yosemite hikers was tonight at Memorial Park in Cupertino. Chipotle donated all of the food for the dinner. Yum! We officially learned our trail selection: Christina and I will be hiking the awesome (but safe) Panorama Trail, from Glacier Point down to valley floor one-way. About half of our trail group of thirteen plus guides are teammates from our Silicon Valley chapter, and the rest are all from the Monterey Bay chapter. We get to sleep in; our bus departs Tenaya Lodge for the trail head at 6:30 a.m., compared to the 3:30 a.m. departure for the first group of Half Dome hikers.

The total number of Yosemite hikers from all national chapters is around one hundred participants. This is quite a bit less than prior years. Fund raising has been harder this year. There are three trail groups of twelve each, headed up to Half Dome. This is probably the right number of groups to form for Half Dome this year. At the start in February, about half of the Yosemite-bound in our local chapter were aiming for Half Dome, but more recently, only a third of us surviving participants. All of our uninjured fast hikers who chose Half Dome were included. And also one medium-fast hiker, whom I was betting would be cut out by the numbers and competition.

I think Christina and I were the only medium-fast hikers to be cut who were still striving hard for Half Dome, and I was not yet fully recovered from my knee injury. If other chapters were similar, then filling a hypothetical fourth trail group for Half Dome may have included much slower hikers and that group would be less safe or successful on a very busy Saturday.

So I now think the selection process and the budgeting for event-day logistics was fair. Losing out on our main iconic goal still hurts. I maybe wish we'd scaled back our expectations at the beginning. But back then we had no way to gauge what would or would not be possible for us to achieve in this training period. We would not have trained so long and hard for a lesser goal, or gathered as much needed support from friends. Thank you all!

Not a Walk in the Park

We were appalled to hear that Bay Area hiker Manoj Kumar fell to his death on Saturday June 13, on the steepest cable section of Half Dome. He was descending at 3:40 p.m. in rain and hail. He fell when about halfway (200ft) to the bottom of the cables.

Besides being very steep, more than 45 degrees in places, the granite here is worn smooth from many decades of hikers using the one path. The smoothened granite is treacherously slick when wet. Some people climb outside of the pair of cable handholds rather than in between them, for better traction or to skip around slower people. It is not yet reported whether the fallen hiker was inside or outside, or whether he was using hiking boots appropriate for granite or just rubber-soled shoes. It is not yet known whether he was alone or in some group.

Six rangers went up via helicopter and took many hours to safely bring down 41 other scared, trapped, cold hikers from the summit and cables.

Ascending this final part of Half Dome is very dangerous when raining, from both traction and lightning strikes. Some reports say that the sky overhead was still cloud-free when these people ascended in mid-afternoon; the arriving clouds were hidden from view by the mountain itself. We don't yet know whether Kumar and others were suckered in, or just chose badly.

Our 'Mr. Half Dome', local author and Half Dome expert Rick Deutsch, was atop Half Dome earlier that day on his 24th trip there. As he came down, he told some arriving hikers about the clouds he saw and advised them to turn back. There are plenty of warning signs posted here and at the beginning of the trail, but there is nothing to stop those who disregard warnings. It is too remote from camps and too expensive, to have a ranger permanently posted there to watch for problems and turn people back.

Duane's office mate safely ascended Half Dome with her husband a couple of weekends ago. But she has a friend whose husband was among the 41 hikers stuck on the summit this fatal evening. Small world.

A few weeks earlier, a woman hiker fell somewhere on the Half Dome trail and had serious but nonfatal injuries.

Two days after Kumar's fall, a worker at Yosemite fell to his death off of a different high cliff elsewhere in Yosemite. This was apparently a recreational hike on his time off.

Team In Training aims to keep its Half Dome event as safe as possible. Each group of twelve participant hikers is accompanied by two experienced professional guides. The ascent is planned before midday, when weather is usually best and the cables are uncongested. Everyone will have good gloves, good boots with sticky soles, and stay inside the cables. If there is any chance of rain, all will turn back and not do the summit. For the regular trails, we are advised to always stop walking when looking up and around.

Christina and I originally planned to do the cables while tethered to them with D-rings. This would stop any fall within 10 feet or so. At his lecture, Mr. Deutsch recommended against this for most people. Messing with it distracts from keeping two good hands on at all times. Now I'm not so sure. It would be useful to have this with and ready, in case of worsened conditions.

We now expect to be assigned to the Panorama Trail instead of Half Dome for our June 20th event day. So we don't have to face these dangers and fears now. It will matter, if and when we return to hike Half Dome someday on our own.

Carnival and down to "Nawlins"

After Mass, we attended our parish picnic and carnival. Our son got to go on some fun rides, play some carnival games, and we all had some good barbeque chicken for lunch. We saw a taekwondo demonstration, which was especially interesting as the taekwondo program at our son's school will likely be disappearing over the next two years. Snow cones were the order of the day, lime for Duane and I and "rainbow" for our son. I got a lot of walking in!

This evening, we all went to the Poor House Bistro for dinner, which was a benefit for our Team in Training teammate Tara. Mentors Bowman and Deb were also there. The Poor House Bistro serves a wonderful selection of Cajun/New Orleans style food. I had a wonderful dinner of Cajun Crawfish pasta, and Duane had the Jambalaya. We also sampled the sweet potato fries (with cinammon sugar), the beignet (a hot pastry covered in powdered sugar), and the bread pudding. I'm not really a fan of bread pudding, but this one was quite honestly delicious!

Another of our teammates, Karen, was playing the violin as part of a zaydeco-ish band for the evening's entertainment. It was fun to hear her play and Duane was especially interested in how the fingering and bowing of the violin is different for this kind of music.

We had much fun and we were glad to help our teammate raise money, but it was nice to be home again after such a busy weekend!

Tapering Down at Rancho San Antonio

Today, we tapered down, doing a shorter less strenuous hike at Rancho San Antonio. Our objective was to do the full PG&E Trail looping back down on the Wildcat Trail to Deer Hollow Farm and back to the parking lot. About eight miles long.

The hike itself was unremarkable, although I noticed that it was a lot easier than the first time I did it. That time we only did half the distance. I took half as much water as I usually do and I actually used very little of it. The weather cooperated and we had the marine layer which thinned into a high haze that kept temperatures lower than they otherwise would have been.

The poison oak was itself spectacular today, giving us all quite the warning. Don't touch! As with many of the other parks we have hiked in this season, the wildflowers were in full display.


Clematis Vitalba, or Old Man's Beard, classified as a pest in New Zealand, is a fine with white fluffy flowers with tendril-like petals. Apparently this thing kills whatever it grows over.

Chamise is a very beautiful plant that throws up sprigs of tiny white flowers.

California Golden Poppies were ubiquitous. Also in view was the Blue Nightshade, (a relative of the tomato).
Blue Nightshade, a relative of the tomato with it's beautiful yellow centers, was also in evidence.

There were also some beautiful stands of Alstroemeria, commonly called the Lily of the Incas or the Peruvian Lily. Some of them appeared in orange, while there were others in a beautiful deep shade of red.

Also in evidence was the Pacific Monardella, a beautiful cornflower blue cluster of tiny flowers.

Perhaps the most stunning flower that we saw today was the Mariposa Lily. They come in a variety of colors and patters; today's version was basic white with green and red centers.

This beautiful flower is called Farewell to Spring, a Clarkia, presumably because it blooms at the end of spring. Its vibrant purple colors were absolutely stunning.



Do you have any idea how many yellow daisy-like flowers are out there? Lots of them! This one is called Curly Gumweed.

We reached Deer Hollow Farm near the end of our hike. Three of the female goats had just given birth to some kids and they were really cute, walking around awkwardly and unsteadily on their brand new legs. We hiked about 3.5 hours this morning, a little bit longer than our 2.5 hour goal, but by no means as long as we hiked on the previous two weekends.

Resting and Radio

Today was a rest day, so I went to my usual Friday amateur radio lunch. Afterwards, I spent an hour in a basic radio class. Although I've been a ham for the last six years now, given my non-technical background, there is always something I can learn even from a beginner level class. Today was no exception, and what I learned in class provoked other questions about frequency and modulation.

This evening, Duane and I decided to take our son out to see Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. It was cute, but not as good as the first movie. We came home after an early show, got our gear ready for tomorrow's hike and went to bed.

94% Ready!

We have now reached 94% of our fund-raising goal, thanks to everyone who has helped and thanks to Google's very generous company match of $3000. We are now just $400 shy of the minimum/required donation amount for our Yosemite event. If you haven't yet donated, please help us now, if you can! We are almost there!

All monies go to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society to fight blood cancers and to help with research and patient support.

Chores

Today was a quiet day at home. I did a lot of household chores today, but didn't get a neighborhood walk in. Hopefully next week.

Final Track Workout

Tuesday evening of June 9, our final scheduled team workout together at the track and bleachers at Foothill College. But where the **** is everyone? Christina and I and some of our mentors are again the only participants from the Spring hike season who bother to show up.

But there is a huge new crowd here. The members of the Summer TnT Hike groups, who are now beginning their training for hikes on the Tahoe Rim and high in the Colorado Rockies. Their mentors include our Bowman, plus some very strong, experienced hikers from earlier seasons.

As in our first meetings, almost all of their time was devoted to meeting teammates, meeting lymphoma/leukemia survivors, and discussing fundraising, with just an iota of time for exercise. The bleacher steps were no big deal for us today.

I missed not seeing any of the rest of our team. We will see them again next Monday at our Yosemite send-off dinner event.

Mini Golf ... Not the Ultimate Workout

Today, after a second more successful attempt at sleeping in, our son and I decided to go play mini-golf. We had a few fun filled afternoon hours in the sunshine not keeping score, after which he played a couple of video games and then we got an icee. Yummy and cool.


By the time we finished with golf, it was almost time for our workout. I decided to pick Duane up at work, so we could drive to Foothill College in one car, thus saving ourselves $2 in parking fees.

As we neared the track and drove into the parking lot, we could see that there was an unusually large crowd of people gathered. It turns out that the summer hike team was just beginning their workouts and we would be doing our workout with them. They had lots of questions. Unfortunately, this meant that our "workout" was more mixer and ice-breaker than it was a workout. Fun, but nevertheless disappointing.

What was also interesting is that, besides mentors and our coach, Duane and I were the only members of our team at the workout. Where was everyone else?

Sleeping In ... Best Laid Plans

This morning, I had planned to sleep in. School is out! Duane got up to get ready for work at his usual time and as he was about to leave, I heard our son, who was already up, ask him for breakfast. A few negotiations registered in my sleepy brain and I heard them settle on some cold pizza.

The question is, would Duane remember to give our son the right leftover pizza? There were two sets of leftovers in the refrigerator: one with cheese (babysitter leftovers) and one without cheese (for our son).

I decided that I'd better get up and make sure this was sorted out or I'd be dealing with three hours of vomit - something I really didn't want to do on our first day of summer.

Unfortunately, Duane chose unwisely. By the time I got to the family room, one piece of cheese pizza had already been consumed. Duane made an emergency trip to the pharmacy to get some lactase pills, we gave one to our son, and then waited to see what would happen. Thankfully, it worked and he didn't throw up. Duane headed off to work but, of course, I was now wide awake. Harumph! Maybe tomorrow...

As the Ball Bounces

After Mass, we packed up the car with water guns, beach towels, folding chairs, a soccer ball, baseball gear and headed off to the park for a barbeque and picnic with friends.

This particular park had a water play area, and an enormous sand box, as well as the usual jungle gym and swing set. The kids loved it!

We had cheeseburgers, watermelon, wine and conversation while the children played. Parents and children got together for a water balloon game and, later, some of us including myself played volleyball.

After a wonderful time, we headed home thoroughly tired but happy.

El Corte de Madera Revisited

On Saturday, June 6, we had our final long team training hike of this season before our Yosemite event. Next Saturday will be a shorter YOYO (You're On You Own) hike, tapering off to build plenty of energy for Yosemite. This was my last chance to gauge how well my knee is now doing on longer hikes with lots of up and down. This hike was our second team practice in the El Corte de Madera Open Space Preserve. This is on the west side of Skyline Blvd near Woodside and Kings Mountain, just north of Purisima where we hiked the prior weekend.

This second hike was much longer than our earlier hike in the preserve, travelling around the entire perimeter of the preserve and reaching its lowest points. Our goal was to hike eight hours if planning for the Dewey Point or Panorama Trail Yosemite hikes, or ten hours if planning for the Half Dome or Yosemite Falls hikes. Somehow Coach Nathalie thought we were still eager to accompany the fastest hikers on the ten hour version, under some pretense that we were still candidates for getting accepted onto the Half Dome Trail. Yeah, right.

We also wanted very much to see some of our son's final T-Ball game of the season -- we had missed so much of them! Fortunately, our friends and his coach haved helped us out immensely in escorting him to nearly all of his Saturday games.

This hike had a familiar pattern. Lots of down and down and down, through unbroken trees with no views. Then a little bit of level, and no views. Then a lot of up and up and up, with no views. The weather was very accomodating. No drizzle this time, and the local marine layer overhead kept us cool enough that we needed little water. But I much prefer those other parks that lead to awesome vistas.

The long downhill was no problem for my knee. I started having some warning pains a third of the way back uphill. I was glad when our coach decided to make up some time by taking a shorter route than first planned. Then we did an interesting very steep section named 'Steam Donkey Trail', where the old-growth loggers required steam power to move logs around. This was a bit of a huff but no problem when not in a hurry. There were no mountain bikers around this particular afternoon, but they obviously love tearing down this path.

After reaching the top, we followed the Skyline ridge northwards along the Sierra Morena trail, back towards the cars. My knee had again felt okay on the latter part of the uphill. But now, when beginning an absolutely trivial slight downhill, my knee began having sharp stabbing pains. Weird. No problems during the early hike when the downhill was very steep and long. Some problems a few hours later during uphill. Then major pain on a trivial slight downslope. So the problem comes with total time on the trail, not simply from dropping major elevation. My therapist thought my problem this day may have been because my knee taping was 3 days old and stretched out.

I got permission to end my hike early without any further trail extensions, and did so. Everyone else in our group did the same. 7.25 hours total. It is so so hard to return back to the outward trails, once you know you are near your car.

The Fast & Furious Half Dome hopefuls did their own thing on this hike, and we never saw them again after the morning departure. Mentor Deb led them on a full ten hour hike.

I iced up back at the car, and felt fairly well the rest of the day. These hikes used to leave us very stiff, very exhausted, and hardly able to walk at all. Now, it was no problem. If it weren't for the knee, I could keep this up a very long time now.

This week, my knee would definitely not yet be ready to do Half Dome. So maybe it doesn't matter, that there is no room for us on the elite 36 person team. Yeah, right.

Throughout this day's hike, I was sure that I was going to need to take a dump, out there off the trail in the middle of the forest. No outhouses anywhere. I haven't yet done that and hope to avoid it. So this was on my mind nearly constantly during the hike, adding to my desire to be done with this hike and go home. (It appears that California's budget crisis will be closing every non-city hike venue that has flush toilets.)

On our way home, we stopped in Portola Valley to help a team-mate shrink her fundraiser mailer from 16 megabytes down to 310 kbytes. And a bathroom! But I found that I had nothing to poop. All that worrying, for nothing.

We then saw our son's final at-bats for this season. That was great!

School's Out - Time to Head for the Beach

Today was my son's last day of school and there was half day dismissal. In celebration and in order to visit some friends who were in town on their last day of vacation, a bunch of us school moms drove to Capitola Beach.

The children had a great time playing in the sand and surf. The moms had a good visit. By the time we got home, it was almost 7:00 pm and I still had not packed our son's bag for his sleepover! I ran around the house in a whirlwind, got everything ready, fed everyone dinner and delivered our son to his sleepover about half an hour late.

Then I went home and prepared my pack for tomorrow's hike at El Corte de Madera. This will be our longest hike of the season before our Yosemite event, about eight to ten hours.

Home Improvement

Today I had to stay home because I had workmen in the house for a home improvement project. There will (hopefully) be a number of such projects over the next few years. Today's project was one of the smaller ones.

I did, however, manage to get out and about for a little bit before picking up our son from his taekwondo class.

Still Catching Up

This morning I got in a neighborhood walk before getting down to the business of life, for that was the only time I had available today.

My son had an early dismissal day today, and he brought a friend home for a playdate. The both of them went on a bug hunt in our backyard. Entomologists in the making? I continued to clean house and catch up on paperwork, while keeping an eye out on the children.

After his playdate, I got him ready for his TBall game this afternoon. He had some good hits and also fielded well. I helped the children get organized on the bench. After TBall, it was off to pizza night (which for me is chicken caesar salad night) followed by one of my monthly amateur radio meetings. A very busy day!

Catching Up

My desk is not quite this bad, but it's close. I was supposed to be somewhere else this morning, but I decided that I really needed to use today to catch up on all of the paperwork that I haven't been paying attention to. It never ceases to amaze me how much running a household is like running a business.



In addition to my desk, the laundry was undone and my kitchen looked like a disaster area. Both needed a lot of work. So my day was spent doing the mundane and the unimportant.



This evening we had our Tuesday night workout. Lots of bleachers, laps, stretching and strengthening exercises again. I did planks again tonight and still lost out to Mentor Bowman. He's really good and in much better shape than I.

Funeral

A couple of days ago, I received an email informing me that one of my college professors, Dr. John Gleason, had passed away. The funeral was today and I drove to St. Hilary's Church in Tiburon, about an hour and a half away, to attend. Although I never formally had Dr. John Gleason for a class (he was a Shakespearean scholar), I did have his wife, Dr. Elizabeth Gleason, for a history class, and Dr. John filled in for her one day when she was absent.

The service and especially the music was lovely and the church in which it was held was quite beautiful even if modern. I saw some friends and professors.

There was not much time left in the day by the time I got back home. Time enough to pick up my son from taekwondo practice, do the household chores, cook dinner and do some webmastering.

Only 36??!!

We are now at the deadline where local and national Team in Training coaches work out which hikers, nationwide, are best prepared to be on the Half Dome hike. A dozen or more cities are participating in the June 20th Team in Training event day at Yosemite. All of those cities will be adding hikers to each of the available hike events on various Yosemite trails.

The criteria for most of the trails is simply, can the hiker do it, and do they want to do it. The Half Dome hike has the additional criterion: can the hiker do this strenuous trail at a fast-enough pace, that they can reach the cables of Half Dome before it gets crowded midday, and not hold up other participants hiking with them on this very long day. We hike in groups of up to six or so. Last year, one Half Dome group got back to the valley floor much later than other groups and after dark, because some members were too slow.

We've been long aware of this issue, and so we have trained to hike faster than we'd prefer, and taken many of the many opportunities created by Mentor Deb to do longer/steeper hikes. We've rarely been able to keep up with our fastest participants for an entire hike. (I was most successful at Saratoga Gap, when the 'Fast & Furious' group kept getting lost and kept waiting for me to show up with a better official map. They stubbornly refused to carry it.)

Christina and I have been in our local chapter's second-fastest group (of four groups total), called 'Hot on Your Trail'. We were told that people in the two fast groups had a chance of getting selected for Half Dome. We would be matched with others of similar speed. This gave us hope for doing this amazing thing and motivated us to keep training and keep pressing ourselves harder. But no guarantees. Every pitfall in shoes and knees and endurance seemed to put our goal at risk.

Meanwhile, many participants who started this adventure with us have dropped off. Some lost their jobs and couldn't raise money. Some got injured. Some couldn't spare enough time. Some got discouraged. The main Saturday hikes had fewer and fewer regulars. The Tuesday evening track workouts became visibly smaller. Several times, Christina and I were the sole participants at track, outnumbered by our unflagging mentors. This feeling of being a survivor was accentuated when the Grand Canyon participants had their event, weeks before our Yosemite event, and they stopped coming to workouts afterwards. I felt like we now stood a better chance of getting selected, with so many already fallen away.

On the May 30th Purisima hike, Coach Nathalie told me that the June 20th Half Dome hike has a very limited roster of just 36 participants (plus guides for each trail group). Nation-wide. She expects that many of those 36 would be hikers that are far faster than any of our local participants. The limit of 36 is apparently due to the perceived need to hire very expert trail guides to accompany each group, who are each able to handle the emergencies that could arise on this extreme hike. There aren't many such guides available for hire. (She did not mention this, but I suppose the cost of those guides is another factor.)

This number 36 came as a big shock to Christina and me. It now seems very unlikely that there will be any less-than-fastest Team in Training groups arranged for Half Dome that day. We have no hope in hell of getting selected.

Apparently we never did have any real chance. None of the participants who started out at our level of fitness or hiking speed have advanced into the already-fast-and-fittest group. The dream of doing Half Dome (with Team in Training) was a mirage. Team in Training was not set up to support lots of participants achieving this goal. There apparently never were any plans to have moderately fast hikers summit Half Dome.

Christina and I now plan on doing our second event choice instead: the Panorama Trail. This goes one-way from the top of Glacier Point down past Illilouette Fall, Nevada Fall, and Vernal Fall, down to valley floor. It has lots of knock-out views of the entire area, but not enough uphill to challenge Christina. When we hiked up past Vernal Fall this Spring, I was very intrigued by seeing lots of water dropping down from Illilouette Fall high above. I hadn't known it was there. I will enjoy seeing it again from above.

We are now discussing when and how to someday do the Half Dome hike on our own in some small group. The speed thing is not important outside of Team in Training. Hikes during midweek or Spring or Fall do not have big traffic jams at the cables, and so it doesn't matter so much when you arrive at those cables.