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!
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!
I differ from Duane on two points: There was no way we could realistically manage our expectations of being selected for Half Dome unless we were told the truth by our coach. Unfortunately, that never happened. This is not a good quality in a coach. While I had positive, truthful feedback on my performance and encouragement from the mentors I had contact with, I can't say that I received much feedback from our coach.
ReplyDeleteIt's probably true that we wouldn't have worked as hard or accomplished as much had we set our sights lower. Nevertheless, like any sport, there is a huge mental component and this is also true of endurance hiking. Appropriately managing expectations while at at the same time encouraging participants to break through their own personal barriers is an important part of this mental game.
The only other point of difference is that the medium-fast hiker who was picked for Half Dome was, in reality, hiking in the fast group for nearly all of the hikes. She dropped back with our group for part of some of the hikes, but I never really considered her part of the medium fast group. As such, she deserves to be selected for the Half Dome hike. She earned it!