Boote Being Boote

Trying new things…

So my fellow senior, Dominick Francks, is the definition of an outdoorsy, adventure man. You only have to peer through his Facebook or bring up mountains in Washington for you to realize this fact. This past November he decided to take first-timers, former teammate Patrick Grimes and myself up the mountains in order for us to experience nature, spectacular views as well as pre-maid packaged food and artic temperatures for ourselves! It was a very memorable trip and over the next few minutes while you read this blog I’ll show you some of my best memories from this trip.

Our goal was to hike up the Yosemite Falls Trail and then camp overnight before hiking back down the next morning. As you can see I was perhaps a little over-excited at the start before realizing the difficulty of the 3.5 km hike straight up Yosemite Falls! 

Despite the difficulty, it was a beautiful hike which took us around 2.5 hours to complete. Along the way we saw some amazing sights, one of which being the waterfall itself! Perhaps the craziest part of the trip was the group of French extreme climbers camping on a ledge next to the top of the falls and tight roping across the top everyday 4/5 times!

As you can see to the left, spirits were still high halfway up the mountain – Grimes must have been checking his sore wrist at this moment!

And finally... We made it!  Here we are having a spot of lunch on top of Yosemite Peak, with an amazing view across to the Sierra Mountains in the distance.  

We pitched our tent, collected firewood and slept through the night in temperatures that went down to the mid 20s (Fahrenheit), but that wasn’t before we saw something fly across the sky, which certainly caught our eyes in an alarming way!

A trident missile test off the coast of California performed by the US Navy was the apparent cause, although I still have my suspicions!

Finally here are my feet, alongside a spectacular view with Half Dome out in the distance, in a pic I took post breakfast and pre-nap on top of the world the next morning.

All in all, it was a great way to spend some of my offseason time trying something different and new to me. Thanks to Dom for showing Patrick and me the ropes!

I would highly recommend anyone thinking of going camping for the first time to give it a go, I thoroughly enjoyed my experience and would love to do it again sometime!

By David Boote