A momentary break, and then a turn for the worse

Shortly after passing by the Nevada Falls, the trail really flattens out for a while. There's an initial stretch past the falls that is pretty bumpy and rocky, and in fact you actually go down somewhat for a bit (again, exceedingly frustrating when you know you weren't anywhere near done going up), but overall, this is about a mile or so of the flatest stretch on the trail (at least the part of the trail that I covered). It's very peaceful, you walk by the river that feeds the falls, it's just overall a nice breather after all the climbing. One thing that is a negative about it, or at least was for us, is that it's much more open and out in the sun than most of the trail. I never really got a read on how hot it actually was up there - but it was in the high 90s down on the valley floor the other days we were in the area, so I'm pretty sure it wasn't terribly far from that range where we were hiking most of the time. Now, in that part of the world, it's very, very dry, so without the humidity, the heat is easy to escape when you are shaded, but it does really beat down on you when you're out in it.

This whole segment of the trail is also in the shadow of Half Dome - and by this time we could already see a few people on the cables heading up from the lower dome to the very top, looking like ants on the side of the big rock. We did sit down for a while near the river, and at this point I was still feeling alright, although the toll of all the climbing over the last couple hours was definitely setting in. After getting up from our rest, we made rather quick work of the flatter part of the trail and then turned up into the forest to begin ascending again.

This, unfortunately, is where the story of my ascent takes an unhappy turn. Shortly after we (at this point we was my Mom, Dad, uncle and I - Tim and Megan had pushed on ahead) had headed up into the forest, it was noted that we had missed the last "real" (and I use that term VERY loosely) bathroom on the trail. The reason we had missed it was because it wasn't actually "on" the trail, but was rather at a backpack campsite that was just off to the right of the trail before it made the turn back up into the woods. So, we went back. I'm not sure I particularly remember why I did, cause I didn't really have to go and I really didn't have worries in the event that I wound up needing to go in the woods. But back we went. I suck at estimating distances, but I'm going to guess we went back about a quarter mile or so.

I am not sure totally sure what it was, but after doing that, everything turned in the wrong direction for me. I think my parents would say the same thing. I became much more fatigued, both physically and mentally, and everything became much more of a struggle. Thinking back on what went wrong, it was probably a combination of things:

#1 - I had been very focused on keeping myself hydrated, but I don't think I paid enough attention to how much food I was taking in.

#2 - The lack of sleep from the night before was finally setting in to some degree

#3 - That trek back to the bathroom had been back in that open section that let the sun beat down, and probably didn't help.

#4 - We were getting higher, and the altitude wasn't exactly helpful

#5 - I think going back threw some psychological switch, along with all of the above.

We were climbing again, but it wasn't that bad compared to where we had come from, and yet I was really struggling now. The stops were coming more frequently, and being less helpful. For the first time, I was really doubting whether I was going to be able to do this, and the bigger problem, which I alluded to earlier, was that I had never really WANTED to do this, so it was hard to convince myself that continuing to do this to myself was going to be worth it. I kept going, thinking to myself that, while I knew it would get a lot steeper at the very end, it would probably be okay until then. Of course, then Mom asked my uncle if it got much steeper before the very end, and he said, yeah, right up around there. Great!

And it did get steeper (by the way, you'll notice I've not been posting many pictures in this part of the story - that in itself is evidence to what we were going through, because the photographers definitely weren't in the same mindset that they were earlier), and at this point I think we were all openly questioning whether we could make it - and I was questioning whether it was even worth it to try. I didn't really want to give up, especially not this soon. So, with my original dreams of the trail not getting much steeper until the very end dashed, I consoled myself by looking at the time, thinking about when we had left (I'm thinking we'd been on the trail almost 5 hours by this time), going on my rough estimates of what kind of time we should have been making, and thinking, "It can't be much further". I'm thinking, it's 8 miles to the summit, on flat ground I could do that in 2, 2 1/2 hours, so, double that for the climb, maybe minus a bit. My math led me to believe, without asking of course, that we were within the last mile of the hike.

Then of course, we came out into an open area, where I saw this:

WHAT?!