Date/Time: 08/18/2006
Place: Clouds Rest & Half Dome, Yosemite National park, California.

We have planned this Clouds Rest trip since we came back from the North Dome trip last August, and many thanks to Yoeman for doing all the lodging, transportation arrangement for the whole group.

We started out from San Francisco Bay area by 9:00AM Thursday, picked up few more friends in the East Bay, then headed up to Yosemite @ around 10:30AM, had lunch and bought some last minutes stuffs at Oakdale, Ca. We arrived Curry Village around 4:00PM, checked in and settle down, took a short walk around the area and had dinner at Curry Village. Took another short walk after dinner, went back to the room and pack up, got some sleep for the big hike tomorrow.

At 5:00AM Friday, everybody was up and ready to go, looking very enthusiastic. Most people had instant noodles and I had a pack of Mountain House dehydrated Teriyaki Beef Rice, the kind of stuffs we ate all the time on our backpacking trip. Since the shuttle bus service doesn’t start until 7:00AM, so we walked to the Happy Isles trail head instead, at 5:45AM, it was bright enough for us to see the road so we didn’t need flash light, but we all carry one of course in case we came back late. At 6:20AM, we were standing by the big trail sign by the Happy Isles trail head, wondering if we are going to make it and how long it would take us to complete this crazy 21 mile round trip, actually the trail sign was moved 500 feet or so up the trail from the original location since few years ago, therefore you will not see it at the trail head.

We got to the Vernal Falls bridge in less than 20 minutes and continued headed up via the Mist Trail, although there wasn’t much mist on the trail, but The Vernal Falls were still flowing pretty good. Continued on, climbed up some giant stone steps along the Vernal Falls, went past by Emerald Pool, sneaked by the foot of Liberty Cap, walked across the Nevada Falls Foot Bridge, without much interruption, we got to the top of Nevada Falls @ 7:50AM, that’s about 3.4 mile into the hike. We continue on towards Little Yosemite Valley, stop by Merced River to fill up our water bottles as we know there will be no more water after Little Yosemite, each of us had filled up 2 or 3 32Oz. bottle and continued on. From the top of Nevada Falls thru Little Yosemite, there is very little gain in elevation, so we were able to walk pretty fast in that 1+ mile stretch, even with a short stop for water, we didn’t waste too much time here. At 9:15, exactly 3 hours from the start, we got to a trail split, the one on the left goes to Half Dome, and the one on the right leads to Clouds Rest, Tenaya Lake and Tuolumne Meadows. We stick to our plan and picked the Clouds Rest trail, 4.3 miles to go. This section was the toughest so far, we were at 7200FT, and need to gain another 2770 FT more in the next 4.3 miles. Fortunately, the weather was cooperating, it wasn’t hot at all, and most of the time we were in the shade, but this 4.3 mile still seemed like never ending…... At 12:11PM, we finally got to the top of Clouds Rest, total 6 hours so far. From the rocky summit, we were rewarded with views of the Clark Range and Merced River Canyon, and of course Half Dome and Yosemite Valley captivated most of our attention.

Leaving Clouds Rest-an exfoliating high crest on the Tenaya Canyon rim, we first went down some short switchbacks on the south side of the summit, then descended more longer ones past some Jeffrey pines and put us back in the shade again, another set of switchbacks dropped us into a forest cover to obstruct our views of Half Dome, the moderate-to-steep descend finally dropped us at the John Muir Trail junction where the sign says “Half Dome, 2.0mile”, it’s now 2:30PM and according to my GPS, we had 15 miles on our legs so far, we figured it will take us another 2.5 to 3 hours to get down to the valley from this point, so we were a little “too early” and we decided to “take a walk” to go visit the big rock again. Two of my friends thought we are crazy and decided to head down and had a nice dinner instead. So here we are, three crazy guys started another torture..… the first half mile or so of this ascent was kind of view-less, as we continued west, Half Dome’s northeast face came into our view. Hiked up more to a crest, we got really nice view of Clouds Rest and Quarter Domes, I stopped there for a few pictures, well, mainly tried to catch my breath. Moving on, we got to a rocky Zig-Zag, this 0.5 mile or so section seemed to be another endless one again, I was so tired and almost quit and almost forgot it was my idea to come here, so I really can’t quit, moving on but slowly, my other 2 friends must be 20 minutes or so ahead of me and left me in dust…....Now we are above the tree line so it could get pretty hot, luckily not this time, after another 20 minutes or so, the trail kind of disappeared, we just had to look up and find the “best spot” to set our feet on or follow the people ahead of us, once we past that section, we went down hill a little bit then struggled upward again, knowing we are almost there gives us new incentive to push us forward, few more short switchbacks guided us up the view-packed ridge of the dome’s shoulder where the intimidating 45 degree Half Dome cable starts. Please note the cables are only put up late May and normally downed in late October in the normal year. Normally there is hundreds of people on the cable when we got here, but today we were a little late, so there were only few groups of people in front of us, we only spent less than 20 minutes on the cable route. By 4:00PM, we were on top of Half Dome. This was my 5th time up here, I still enjoyed it as it was my first time. Would I come back again? You bet!! From the board summit, we had a 360 degree panorama view. You could look down and find Yosemite Valley, from a distance, El Capitan, Cathedral Peak, Mt. Starr King and Clouds Rest also got most of our attention, it was pretty hard to believe we were on top of Clouds Rest just 4 hours ago looking at Half Dome and now we are standing on the top of the Half Dome and looking at Clouds Rest. What a achievement!! We then congratulated each others for a job well done. Too bad Yoeman was too lazy to carry a bottle of Champagne with him. Looking at my GPS, it was 9 hours 45 minutes and 17 miles from the beginning.

After a short break and few quick snap shots, another Cliff bar and a pack Power Gel, @4:30PM, we said Good-Bye to the summit. 60 minutes later, we met the John Muir/Half Dome trail junction once again, another 60 minutes, we were on the top of Nevada Falls, now is about 3.5miles from home, the Yosemite Valley, knowing there will be ice cold beer and hot meal waiting for us in the Curry village gave me a little extra power to push myself to finish the last portion of this hike. I finally dragged myself back to Happy Isles Trail Head @7:45PM, that wrapped up our 25 miles journey, total time spent 13.5 hours and total Elevation gain was about 7000 Feet.

See chart below for a brief summary of the hike. Thanks for reading.