Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon Travel

Wanderlust
Thais that bind
One minute she's giving me a mean massage, the next she wants to steal me away on her motor scooter.
By Zona Sage
[07/30/99]

Travel Advisor
I'm going to Disney World
Our expert advises readers on the best Disney packages, the cheapest Tokyo-London flights and finding that authentic tamale south of the border.
By Donald D. Groff
[07/29/99]

Out of Africa
Why do so many travel books about the continent start the same way?
By Wendy Belcher
[07/28/99]

Vagabonding
The Barbecue Jesus and other epiphanies
Wandering off the Vietnamese budget travel trail in search of authenticity, our correspondent finds that authenticity isn't all it's cracked up to be.
By Rolf Potts
[07/27/99]

Disturbing encounters in Iran
Did that gesture mean he wanted to slit my throat? Or that Iran was slitting its own?
By Mark Mordue
[07/23/99]

Complete archives for Travel

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

All this flashed through my mind as I stood at the base of the cables. "What are we waiting for?" my daughter asked impatiently.

"We're waiting until we grow wings," I wanted to say.

But she was ready -- ah, youth, that hath no fear -- and began to scramble up the slope. And then my wife went. And then my son started -- a little apprehensively, being 8 years old and all. But he was on his way. None of them seemed to understand that what we were doing was inherently suicidal!

Still, they were gone, and there really was nothing to do but grab hold of the cables and start to pull myself up this suddenly stupid and hateful mountain.

The whole thing seemed so absurd -- dying to prove what point? Hadn't I evolved beyond this kind of macho risk-taking decades ago?

Somehow the fact that all kinds of people, from baseball-capped teens to silver-haired seniors, had scrambled up that day and were now headed down the very walkway I was staring up, and that numerous others were perched on the face of the mountain in mid-ascent a dozen yards above me, scrambling up even as I quaked -- somehow this was of no comfort.

I was scared. I wasn't exactly convinced I was going to die -- I thought I probably had a chance of making it alive -- but I felt I was consciously subjecting myself to an experience that could really kill me. This was my idea of a vacation? Whatever happened to a full-service beach resort and little cocktails with bright paper parasols?

But so we started. My first few steps were leaden. My hiking boots kept slipping; my arms, which hadn't done anything all day, suddenly felt dead-tired and couldn't haul up the dead weight of my body. In a classic case of self-fulfilling prophecy, I kept slipping and sliding, just as I thought I would. I was utterly miserable.

One thing you should never do -- or at least one thing I should never do -- when climbing Half Dome is look around at the view. The view is what can kill you. You stop and brush your brow with your sleeve and your eyes steal a look to the left and whoa! It's a long, long way down. Your view drops right off the side of the cliff to green trees the size of matchsticks and postage-stamp meadows. You don't want to see this and you definitely don't want to think about it. I swayed and held onto the cables and stayed frozen, letting other climbers brush by me, until the dizziness and the wave-swells in my stomach stopped. My mouth was drier than I could ever remember it being before. My arms ached.

After about 15 wooden planks, my son and I paused. My wife Kuniko looked down from a perch a few posts ahead. "How are you feeling, Jeremy? Do you want to keep going, or do you want to stop?"

"Say you want to stop, Jeremy," I prayed. "For the love of God, tell her you want to stop!"

He was undecided. I was probably green in the face. "How are you doing, honey?" Kuniko asked, concern creasing her face.

"I don't know," I said.

We looked around and saw bulbous black clouds blowing swiftly in. "Maybe we should head down," Kuniko said.

"Yes! Yes!" a little voice inside me said.

"I want to keep going!" Jenny said.

"No, I think we should head down," Kuniko said.

"I think so, too," I said, whining with as much authority as I could muster. "I don't like the look of those clouds."

So, much to Jenny's loud disappointment, we slid down -- which was almost as terrifying as hauling up, except that now your body was helping gravity pull you to your death.

At one point I really did completely slip -- my feet just went out from under me, I landed with a sacroiliac-smacking thud and before I knew what was happening I began to slide down the face of the mountain. Luckily I managed to stomp the sole of one boot squarely against the iron post that supported the cable, thus stopping my fall. Mortality had never seemed nearer.

I lay on the side of the mountain for a few minutes, trying to slow my heart, waiting for my arms to stop shaking.

"Are you all right?" people asked as they stepped gingerly by me.

Then I said to myself, "Just go down slowly, one by one," and I did. And suddenly I was at the bottom, stepping off the last plank onto level rock, and I was sitting down and sluggishly taking off my gloves and Jenny was asking, "Dad, are you OK?"

The hike back to camp seemed about 10 times longer than the morning's walk. My head was black-clouded with doubts and fears about attempting the climb again the next day. What a stupid way to die, I kept thinking.

But at the same time I felt that I had to do it. The kids were going to do it, everyone was doing it -- I couldn't say, "Gee, I think I'll just stay down here and watch."

So even though I knew I was putting my life unnecessarily at risk, I also knew I had to make the climb.

Next page | The final ascent