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.