Half Dome

What an adventure I had this weekend! My parents and I, along with 4 of my friends drove up to Yosemite on Friday night. We planned the trip around the full moon because we had decided to hike it at night! Some road work delayed us by a few hours so it was 1am when we got on the trail. Hiking at night is my new favorite thing. It was the perfect temperature and something about the dark just helped me keep chugging along. A five-hour energy may have contributed too, hehe. We reached the bottom of the cables at 5:30am, just as light was creeping over the mountains. The cables loomed before us, inducing a small panic attack because they looked vertical. But we soon found out that was an optical illusion. Somehow we survived the 70 degree angle climb to the summit.

The view from the top was spectacular. Every few minutes the light would change and illuminate a new section of the valley. Watching the sun rise was really special. I felt like a conquerer. We spent about an hour on top and then headed down the cables. The hike down was hot and hard. Hundreds of people were hiking up the trail by the early afternoon. I felt like I was in China or something. So many tourists! Because we had hiked up in the dark, I didn't recognize many parts of the trail and kept thinking we were almost back-but of course we weren't! It was such a relief to finally reach the car.

Though I had been awake for 38 hours and had been hiking for 14 I still somehow had energy. It was crazy! Usually I get sick, or feel awful when I am sleep deprived but God granted me some kind of supernatural wakefulness over the weekend :)

Tonight I went to Campus Crusade. As we were worshipping all I could think of was the view from Half Dome. God is so evident in His creation! Sometimes I wish I could just live in the mountains for a while, constantly surrounded by God's beautiful nature. Yosemite is AMAZING but SLO is pretty awesome too.