Photograph by Richmond Hollen

The temperature in the valley of Yosemite was supposed to range from 20- 32 deg, so I thought shorts and a t-shirt would be good for the hike. The trail was never flat for the first 3 miles or the last 3 miles of the hike, so warmth was not an issue and I quickly drenched my t-shirt in sweat. At around 4 AM I put on a sweatshirt, but only really because my arms were cold; I was still sweating, but my arms had gone almost numb.

We made it to the top at around 5:30 AM. We didn’t quite make it to the very top because one of our group members was running on little sleep before we set off and it was catching up with him at the top. He was on the verge of passing out, so I didn’t think it was the best time to be scaling steep mountains, so we stopped
about 200 yards from the top. We were able to get plenty of pictures before, during and after sunrise and sat around when the sun came up on the top. We left the top at 8: 30 AM for our return trip and got to see everything we had missed the night before. There were plenty of places that were completely unfamiliar and others that caught us off guard. We had passed a very large and impressive waterfall the night before and thought they were just big rapids claiming to be a waterfall. There were also plenty of glacier carved valleys on the hike that were pretty impressive. We got down around 1 PM and drove back to Stockton. I had to relieve myself of driving and let one of my napping friends take over after the 17 miles on no sleep. When I got home I rested for a while, took a shower, and then fell asleep around 7 PM and woke up at 8 AM this morning. I am surprisingly not too sore from the hike. Really only my right knee (which I tweaked at the top and walked down in pain on) and my left hip are sore.

So, all in all it was a really fun trip. Hopefully you all enjoy the pictures.

- Richmond

PS - The beard helped tremendously at the top and I don’t want to hear anything about how ugly my beard is. Most of you are family and have to love me no matter what and the rest of you aren’t family, so I don’t really care. Okay, I do, so I’ll pretend you have to love me as well.

PPS - The hiking shoes were a donation from the church of indie-dom, specifically from the rt. reverend.

Photograph by Richmond Hollen

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