Friday, August 9th
Start: Happy Isles
End: Sunrise Creek
Miles: 14.7
Elevation gain: 8005′
After a hellacious 36 hours of travel (which included not sleeping for 36 hours due to me needing to drive myself 4 hours to Fresno from LAX and not being able to sleep on buses or planes), I managed to arrive and claim my JMT thru hiking 30 minutes before they would have given it away to other interested parties.
I then started hiking from the Happy Isles trailhead by 10am, making good time to the top of the falls by 11:30.
I then headed over to the trail intersection with Half Dome, where I dropped my pack and put the bear canister nearby; this worked out nicely. I then hiked up the first part of Half Dome, where some lovely trail angels gave me some water as they were heading down; once I could see how steep the cables were, I briefly questioned going up.
I started up the cables bare handed and a man gave me a pair of gloves; they were really helpful as the cable was rough on hands and somewhat slippery. I had a snack on the summit and headed back down; on the way, I ran into a Latinx woman having a rough time and I swapped out her construction gloves for my sticky mechanics gloves and that made things easier for her. I then returned to the trail intersection, retrieved my bag, and headed out. From there, it was another few hours of hiking to get to my desired campsite.
Transcending Mountains 