After we sorted all our gear we realized that it was time to get some sleep. The agreed upon wake up call was 4:00 AM since we had to hike out of Upper Pines campground and do the approach. We also wanted to time it so that we could run into some of the girls from the trip at the top.

I went to bed.  And I didn't sleep.

Throughout the night we had:

- loud talking teenage girls in the bathroom "What was that?" "Did you see a bear?" "What is that?" "It looks like a giant toilet" (It was the potable water fixture).

- A bear -- which turned out to be a raccoon in our camp

- A bear in a campground close enough for me to hear folks yelling "Bear! Bear!"

- A bear that went through OUR camp but I was just so tired by then that I didn't even poke my head out to look

It was still dark when I heard Greg's voice outside my tent: "Eileen?"
"Yep" I said, without a hint of grogginess.

It was better this way. I just couldn't sleep so we might as well take off. We put our stuff together by the light coming from the bathrooms.

I had some water and some dry cereal. Greg had asked if I wanted coffee but I didn't. I'm just not a coffee drinker in the "every morning" category, more like every few months for social reasons.

It was awfully dark.  I wished for the 100th time that THIS trip was not the one where I had decided my tiny flashlight would be ok to bring and it wasn't worth digging for my head lamp.  Greg brought along a fairly large flashlight for us to hike by.  We had attempted to just walk in the dark but the tree coverage and lack of a moon made us use it. Every now and then Greg would shine it ahead on the path in case we were going to walk into a bear.

We walked for quite awhile on the paved road, not yet on the trail when I asked "What time is it anyway?"

"About 4:00"

"4:00?"

Turns out Greg had got me up at 3:30 AM not 4:00 AM, we were getting an early start.

And you could tell. The stars were very bright, it seemed darker than when I had gone to sleep. The road and then the path were lost in darkness. Every now and then Greg would turn off the light to see if we could make it without it. He had to turn it back on each time.

I've hiked up to Half Dome several before and used the Mist Trail for other reasons. It was a good thing too because it kept me from wondering how far we had to go. Even with our experience though, we had to make small backtracks twice. Trails look different in pitch blackness.

We made it nearly to the top of Vernal Falls before the sky finally started to lighten. To our surprise we met a couple on their way down. She was in short and a had a light jacket on, no hat. He was in covertible pants and had a jacket as well. No flashlights, packs, etc.

The slabs proved to be a bit nervy to get across. At one point I decided to put on my rock shoes. It may have been because I was getting anxious about the climb ahead but there was definitely one spot where I felt I was already doing a low grade solo. By this time we saw another party heading up too, they opted to go to another area of slabs to our left which butted up against another layer, formering a corner. Their way looked more like an actual climb though and I ended up being grateful that we had taken the friction route we did.

Getting past the friction part, we came into a thick layer of soot and ash as ground cover between broken rock and tree stumps. There had been a fire in the area a few months ago and this black soot was what remained. I regretted havign my rock shoes on then because I got some soot into them.

I looked down into the valley. The sun was shining, the lake below looked nice. I realized I was a little out of breath.

Finally we made it to the base of the climb.

We could see 3 parties ahead of us, one of which looked like a party of 3.

They must have hiked in from Little Yosemite campground. They were at least 2 pitches ahead of us though so we prepared to move on up.

I got ready to put my contacts in so I wouldn't have to climb in my glasses.

That's when I saw that one of the disposable contact lense containers must have leaked, the lense inside was dry and unusable.  I can't wear just one lense because my eye sight is so bad I'd get a headache (and also lose binocular vision).

I was going to have to wear glasses up. So much for full peripheral vision.