Yosemite

[Drunk Monk]

Half Dome.  I climbed it with my dad some 40 years ago.  We made it from the valley to the summit and back again in one day.  16 miles, 8 up and 8 down.  This would be easier.  It's only 3.5 miles from Little Yose.  Yeah, right.

Stacy went ahead at daybreak to make it to the subdome base before the sun started beating down.  She once made it up in full pack and spent the night up there on a full moon.  Can't do that anymore.  Need permits.  On the way up, she ran into a woman who tried to hike it solo at night with a headlamp, hoping to catch sunrise from summit.  She ran into a mountain lion, screamed and fled, luckily encountering some backpackers camped nearby.  Stacy has been atop half dome 4 times and didn't feel the need to try it again.  She is wise, far wiser than me.  I went up with the HS grads later.

As we approached subdome, the sheer verticality started to nag at Tara and me.  Tara started to have serious doubts.  She started to get the fear.  I did too, plus it was so damn steep that I was getting really fatigued.  Subdome was crazy steep and it seemed that you could just roll off to oblivion, never mind that vertical cable part.  The boys were really supportive.  They are young without much fear, but were ready to bail if Tara wanted to do so.  But she didn't.  She wouldn't let herself.  I didn't have gloves so I taped my hands, but then got a pair from another hiker coming downwards.  

The cables were insane.  Freaking insane.  Who makes a trail like that?  There's a point where it's straight up and you're hanging off these cables, standing on a janky wood slat, and all that's around you is sheer granite wall, no where to go but down.  There was a point where my hands were giving into neuropathy and fatigue and I thought 'Hmm, I could die here.  My hands could cramp and I will just fall to my death.'  But Tara kept me going, kept asking 'you okay, dad?'  I think her concern over me panting helped focus her past her own fears.  

And we made it.  All four of us.  And it was ecstatic.  

I kissed the granite when I finished the cables.  We were all euphoric.  My dad was with me.  Greg's dad too, in a weird way, as that was still so fresh.  The whole father/son and now father/daughter thing was so moving.  High atop Half Dome, the heart stone of one of the most beautiful places on earth.  It was profound and sublime.  I savored every moment, knowing full well that I won't ever be back.  I can't do Half Dome again in this lifetime.  I'm so happy that I got to do it once more with Tara.  It was the apex of my summer, perhaps my whole year.  

Noticing the stone pagodas, Alex commented 'Is that all there is for entertainment up here?  Stacking piles of rocks?'  We all laughed.  Then some climbers came up the face and put us in our place.  They had started at like 3AM.  We were all 'where did they come from?'  Akio helped them take some photos of themselves.  Akio was also amazed that Paul the squirrel had stalked him all the way up there.  I had lost the cap to Tara's water bottle unknowingly.  Akio said he saw it fall to a nearby ledge and thought for a moment he'd reach out to retrieve it, and then thought better of it.  Notably, I didn't spill a drop.  

It's a very special place up there.  The view - my god - that view.  And the camaraderie as there are only a few dozen hikers up there at any given time, all blissed and endorphined out.  

On the way down, someone dropped a water bottle while replacing one of the cable poles that had become loose.  The shout was 'rock!' and I looked up and saw it tumbling right at me.  I thought about trying to block it, but then I'd have to let go of a cable so I ducked in a took the hit.  It struck me on the thigh, but it was empty so it wasn't so bad.  Nevertheless, I yelled 'OW!' as loud as I could.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

Beautiful.

[Drunk Monk]

The trail out is all downhill, past Vernal & Nevada falls.  Stacy loathes it.  She hates coming back.  It's hard for backpackers because it's a high use tourist trail, and the tourists are lame and have terrible trail etiquette.  You can smell them - their soap, perfume & cologne - so clean and unnatural.  I'm sure they can smell us as we hadn't bathed in days.  They struggle to climb with their daypacks and cameras.  We struggle to descend with our backpacks and beaten bodies.  When we got to the top of the falls, we separated because we thought Stacy was going to take the less traveled John Muir trail instead of the Mist trail.  She didn't.  She went to look at the view and then came the same way after.  

The Mist trail was slippery, but stunning.  With so much water, I've never seen so many rainbows.  The tourists weren't too obnoxious, but Paul the squirrel and his accomplices were out in gangs at the top of the falls, much to Akio's dismay.  I dropped a bag of nuts and nearly had my ankles gang raped by squirrels.  We got hit with this ecstatic blast of mist on the way down, and Akio's moan of joy was amusing.  A helpful ranger told us that the water fountain at the next bridge was out, which was helpful and allowed me to ration my remaining water.

When we got down to the shuttle, as I was stacking everyone's backpacks on the bus, everyone backed away in horror.  "There's a huge spider on your back" they said. "please help me" I replied.  A courageous Samaritan knocked off and stomped on it.  "How big was it?" I asked.  Eyes widened.  "Big."  It was a Raiders of the Lost Ark moment. 

We got to Yosemite Village and had a fantastic lunch.  The food there is great now, not that expensive considering.  I bought the kids all commemorative Half Dome pins.  They loved them.  We caught YART back to Crane Flats and my car was in perfect shape where I left it.  As we drove out, we saw another wildfire.  We ate at Chipotle that night (the kids love that place).  

Now I long for another drink of that Yosemite high country water.  Best water in the world.

[thatguy]

They Might Be Giants have a new album out: “The World is to Dig”

This is the cover:



No idea what the connection is if any…
—tg

[thatguy]

How to keep the national parks so beautiful? Keep the body count secret...

https://gizmodo.com/the-trump-administra...2000777851

The Trump Administration Wants to Keep National Park Deaths Quiet
A leaked memo from U.S. Department of the Interior has blocked National Parks staff from confirming deaths or “the severity of injuries” sustained by any park patrons.
By Matthew Phelan
Published June 25, 2026, 3:40 pm ET


A park patron hiking near Yosemite National Park's Nevada Fall fell to their death last weekend, according to news reports. Credit: Domenico Convertini via Flick, CC 2.0 license

A tourist hiking through Yosemite National Park’s Mist Trail noticed something unusual on Sunday. People in “yellow shirts,” the hiker posted on Reddit, “rolled a body bag down the granite steps on an off-road stretcher. We all had to step to the side so they could make it […] one of the most chilling things I’ve ever witnessed.”

But the encounter—the apparent aftermath of the death of a 23-year-old who fell over the park’s 594-foot (181-meter) Nevada Fall on Saturday—has only officially been confirmed as “an incident” by the U.S. National Park Service (NPS). This seemingly needless air of mystery surrounding the event appears to be an intentional new policy, judging from an internal memo from the park service’s overseers with the U.S. Department of the Interior, as first reported by the Washington Post. The new internal guidance reportedly states that Interior agencies “shall not confirm a death” nor “the severity of injuries” following incidents—a departure from past policies that might increase the risk of fatal accidents among park patrons, according to NPS staff who spoke with the Post.

The policy allegedly delayed an announcement on the deaths of three visitors to Grand Canyon National Park this month, “apparent heat-related deaths” attributed to sweltering days above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius), as three anonymous park staffers told the Post.

Respecting “investigative processes”
To the extent this move might reveal the Trump administration’s anxieties over deaths in America’s national parks (or the political optics of those deaths), the new restrictions might stem from the thousands of buyouts and early retirements that have dropped permanent park staff by roughly one quarter. According to NPS veteran Bill Wade, now the executive director of the Association of National Park Rangers, the staff cuts—which has left vacancies for lifeguards, park rangers, and more—could impact the parks’ ability to protect visitors and even locate missing persons.

“The lack of permanent staff all the way around is likely to have some impact on emergency response capability for things like search and rescue,” Wade told the Utah-based National Public Radio affiliate KUER last year.

Interior Department representatives, however, pushed back on this interpretation in statements after the new Post report: “The narrative being presented is false and reflects a significant mischaracterization of the Department’s guidance,” a department spokesperson told The Daily Beast. The guidance, they said, was “developed to create a more consistent approach” and is “not intended to conceal fatalities or delay information.”

The department emphasized that its new policy withholds information instead out of respect for “investigative processes, privacy considerations, next-of-kin notifications, and, in some cases, requests from family members.”

(NPS staff who leaked other recent communications restrictions to the nonprofit National Parks Traveller this January, and worried about “accuracy of information shared with the public,” might beg to differ, however.)

“Maximum disclosure, minimum delay”
Despite their lurid headline-grabbing magnetism, deaths of any kind within America’s national parks are exceedingly rare, according to the agency’s statistics: An average of 358 people die within the parks each year, amounting to less than 0.012% of the over 300 million visitors annually. The vast majority of these deaths, according to NPS, have been caused by motor vehicle accidents and drownings. More salacious deaths by wild animal attacks or homicides account for single-digit figures each year.

That said, past NPS guidance to staff advocated for a policy of “Maximum Disclosure, Minimum Delay,” according to a template reviewed by the Post—intending to help avoid speculation or panic from the public, as well as to educate visitors of any emerging dangers at each park.

One former superintendent for Yellowstone National Park, Dan Wenk, told the paper that this previous push toward transparency was essentially the only way to deal with public curiosity about these deaths.

“When I had a grizzly bear kill somebody, I literally had 10 uplink trucks outside my office the next morning,” Wenk told the Post. “People want facts and they expect answers.”

--tg

[Greg]

Not talking about deaths or crime in general in Yosemite is not a new policy