The life of the road is a tough one, mostly because it requires the traveler to awake with the sun despite the fact that one rarely goes to bed with it. Such was our luck, as our nylon walled tents afforded us little protection from the light penetrating our eye lids and ringing the bell of morning.
We slowly dragged ourselves out of bed muttering, “Goddamn that Jonny Walker” and remembering the wisdom in not mixing him with some of that southern hospitality we had been offered. Once we emerged from our caves and the sleep was peeled away from our brains, we began the task of breaking camp. The excitement levels began to rise.
Our neighbors arose and quietly awaited our departure. They needed our car to pack their stuff into it and drive it to the other side of the trail. Or so we hoped.
KB and I headed over first as we had some items to be sorted at the car. We had brought extra gear as we were uncertain how the weather would pan out. We made it about 30 yards from camp only to realize that her pack was leaking water. We returned to the camp table and pulled her gear out. We found that her CamelBak reservoir was leaking. It looked like she hadn’t screwed the top on all the way. I closed it, double checked it and off we went again. This time we made it about 500 yards before it became apparent that it was leaking again. We stopped and pulled it out. The top was secure but water was gushing out around the seal. Luckily the water was dripping almost straight down through the pack and hadn’t got any of her gear wet.
The car quickly became a scene reminiscent of the Denny’s parking lot or a yard sale, you can pick your own mental image. Gear was sorted and decisions about what we would have with us for the next four days were made, almost on a whim. Down jackets were left behind, a decision I regretted on the third day…
I handed over the keys and then watched my car drive away with two people driving that I had met less than 15 hours ago. At this point there was little left to do, we had to make it to the other end of the trail.
We gathered our belongings, strapped them to our backs and then started putting one foot ahead of the other.
Our first day was planned to be our biggest, 11+ miles and just shy of 5500 feet of elevation gain. End destination, Cloud’s Rest and for those of you wondering, it is aptly named. But first the Mist Trail up to the falls also known as The Never-ending Stairs. As you can see from the above photo, the first part of our adventure was within striking distance of those who don’t go too far from their cars and thus, the trail was paved and when it got good and steep, there were stairs cut into the granite.
There was a second option but the beauty of the Mist Trail is not to be missed. Even with the crowds in the way. 
The waterfalls were spectacular and worth having to push random strangers off of the trail to get through. Ben even threw some poor guy’s hat off the trail and then sat and watched as he desperately tried to get it without falling to his death. And there was the guy whose camera had been stolen, he was running down the stairs…
And then I caught my wife kissing some dude.
Luckily Shelby snapped a photo so we threw him over the falls and continued on our hike.
After the second set of falls, the trail somewhat leveled off and followed the river. It had been a few hours since we had eaten breakfast, we found a nice little spot that we could get our toes wet and eat some grub. We pulled our bear canisters out and began to dig through them for sustenance. Stoves were fired up and we were enjoying the shade when a foreign couple (to us at least) came nervously walking toward us. They pointed out that there was a bear and two cubs just around the corner. Of course, we wanted to see it and walked just far enough to witness it scampering through the trees.
This bit of information put KB in a fit of anxiety. She could be heard saying things like, “What should we do?”, “Should I blow my whistle?”, which she did, “Oh, I don’t feel so good now.” The rest of us sat back down and finished eating lunch. Ben even went for a swim.
Seeing that we were only 1/4 of the way done for the day, we packed our things and headed up. At this point, things started to get warm. In the shade things didn’t feel too bad, but we weren’t in the shade very often. And despite thinking that we were going to be traveling flat for a while, we started climbing almost immediately.
As we were passing the fork to head up to half dome, we witnessed an Asian family sitting under some of that shade drinking Gatorade. Ben overheard the assumed father say, ok we still have half a bottle left… Probably not the best prepared as they still had a long way to go. We had bigger problems to tackle and continued up.
There’s always a point when I am backpacking that I hit a rhythm and my brain wanders through the recesses of its spaces. I always seem to forget these sections of trail. The only solid memory I have of the next little bit is of my wonderment and that I felt that this was one of the most beautiful places I had ever been. You could say it was spiritual, but I wasn’t going to because that would just get Shelby going again.
It must have been around 3 or 4 PM when we hit that last watering hole before Cloud’s Rest. This was our point of no return. We could camp here or at Cloud’s Rest, but there wasn’t any water in between. Our original plan was to make it to Cloud’s Rest and after about 30 seconds of discussion, we decided to stay with our plan. So we continued up toward the place where clouds go to rest. (Editor’s Note: I am absolutely certain that paragraph holds the record for the most uses of rest out of any paragraph I have written.)
We could see our destination as it sat with its massive rock face hovering over us. We followed the switchbacks, stopping to rest in the shade, but mostly we just kept putting one foot in front of the other. We watched as that rock got closer and closer. Judging by my altimeter, we had a good hump still to go and we were almost at the base of the rock. Hell, altimeters can be wrong.
And then the trail went around that rock and we could really see Cloud’s Rest. In our defense there are a lot of granite outcroppings in Yosemite and they all kind of look the same. We continued upward reaching the base. The trail forked giving us the option of going up and over the top or around. Being the bad asses that we are and seeing that we came to rock this shit, we went around the base. This turned out to still be a hell of a hike. KB recalls seeing Ben sit down and wondering if he was going to be able to get back up. After about ten minutes, she could see his weather station bouncing toward her and she knew he was ok.
We made it to the junction of the two trails and dropped pack. Our planned campsite was downhill from here and less than a mile away. That was as long as there was water, if there wasn’t we had a bit farther to go. None of us wanted to think about that. Of course, KB had to go to the point and while we were resting she set off to explore Cloud’s Rest. We were all fine with this until the thunder started cracking and we could see a storm moving directly toward the granite pinnacle we were standing on. KB scampered back toward us and we headed down.
We reached a saddle where the trail traversed and then started back up. Shelby and Ben headed down to find water. I thought I would let them do the exploring and sat down. KB came back and couldn’t for the life of her figure out why I was sitting by myself and decided to go after the boys. I sat and waited.
From what I gathered, as soon as they had found water Ben ripped his tent and sleeping bag out of his pack and had his camp set up within 2.3 seconds. This was faster than the mosquitoes could congregate. KB then showed up and recommended we camp elsewhere. After filling the water bottles and swatting at swarms of hungry little flying vampires, Ben was forced to repack his gear and they headed back up toward the saddle.
We were still on top of the world, so we found the flattest spot possible and set up camp. We were famished and the bear canisters were once again emptied as we feasted upon what was inside. I rocked out some Pad Thai, it was almost as good as Benja’s.
Ben and Shelby put up their hammocks and soon we were all kind of in our own world watching as the last moments of the day were murdered by the evening. Some sticks were gathered and rocks put in place and we turned on the hippy television and let the philosophizing began. Flasks were taken out of packs and our lubricated brains quickly got deep into things that none of us knew anything about.
Knowing my limits, I went to bed. The last thing I remember from that day was hearing Shelby stand up and mutter, “I feel woozy.”