My Date with Half Dome

Ranger Sender and I

Week 9 I finally got to make my way up half dome, this took place during Friday and Saturday. Before you get to hear about my hike up there and my time spent up top I will first half to tell you about the rest of the week and the build up to the trip. I started my week off on Monday helping out with a training for the seasonal rangers. In this training I got to be a role player and be as difficult as I could be when the officers where trying to deal with certain situations. It was interesting to be on this side of the training and see just how calm and collect the officers were while I was attempting to be as obnoxious as possible.

On Tuesday of this week I spent my time in the desk office learning how to use the reporting system that the National Park Service uses. This was a slower day but I learned a lot about the reporting system and how to do simple reports along with reporting of accidents. The group I worked with was also something I enjoyed learning about. Since Yosemite is so busy they bring in volunteers to write the reports for incidents that didn’t call for citations and accidents that didn’t have any injuries. This helps the officers not spend so much time writing the reports of everything that happens in the park.

Cables going up to top of Half Dome

On Wednesday I got to see the legal side of things in the park, which meant I got to go to court again. In this court session I got to see a couple of different cases, the most interesting one was an evidentiary review from an arrest in march. I was able to see a ranger getting questioned by both the defense and the prosecution. I was happy to see this because now I know how they do it in Yosemite and when I have to do that in the future I will have a better understanding of what is going on.   

On Thursday I was off so that I could prepare for my trip up half dome, so I spent most of the day hydrating and sleeping. I started to pack late at night and was given two dozen peanut butter cookies from one of my roommates for my trip up half dome.

On Friday we started our hike up to Little Yosemite Valley at noon, it took us about 2.5 hours to get up to where we would be staying for the night. The hike up there was hot but very beautiful since we followed the Merced river all the way up to the camp. Once getting up to camp we talked with the interns that stay up there for the summer and then checked permits of people staying in the camp to ensure they had everything they needed. Luckily everyone had the proper permits so we had an easy time. We decided to get an early night so that we could start our trip early the next morning.

Yosemite Valley

On Saturday at 6:30am we started our trip up to the top of half dome with water food and an iPad to check permits for going on the cables. It was an uneventful hike up to sub dome, that was where I split from the ranger I was going checking permits with. I make it to the top of half dome at 8:45am and saw one of the most beautiful views I had seen all summer. I spent about an hour up there enjoying the views and making contacts with visitors. After making my way down the ranger and I started our hike all the way down to LYV getting there about 1pm. From there we started our hike back to the valley, on our way we were told to look out for two missing teenagers. On our trip down we had to talk with many visitors about swimming in water that was close to waterfalls and making sure everyone was doing alright. We finally made it out of the trail at 3pm and I went home and passed out for a couple hours and spent Sunday relaxing.