My Hike in Yosemite :: Autobiography, Personal Experience

The trip began when I took a small green pencil and signed by name on the release forms needed to hike in Yosemite National Park. I and nine of my friends left the ranger station that night with a neatly folded map and a felling of excitement to what lay ahead. The long drive to the park left us tired and in need of a good night’s sleep. We decided to stay in tent city like most hikers do before they set out for their trek. Tent city was a large subdivision of tents that resembled a community of houses. Each tent was perfectly uniformed in its appearance and made up a total of fifty tents. Before we went to bead, we studied our maps and made an itinerary to the amount of hiking we would do. The next day began with an alarm clock echoing in my ears at 6 a.m. Our first days hike started early and began with one of the most impressive features of the park. El Capitan is a giant slab of granite rock that towers thousands of feet above the valley floor. Like a skyscraper, the rock has a presence of amazement surrounding its every crevice and crack. After a few minutes of starring at the rock had passed, Eric the leader for that days hike shouted that it was time to go. Because the leader was in charge of the navigation and speed we traveled, he knew that we would not make our campsite if we did not continue. Time drugged along as the weight of a forty-pound pack full of food and water dug into to my bony shoulders. My pack seemed to be getting heaver as the day went on. My shoulders pulsed with pain from the thinly padded straps that connected to my pack. Four hours of this pain was all I could handle. I decided that this was enough I needed to stop. I shouted to Eric that I needed to take a break. He quickly turned around and said it was okay if we stopped. Because it was close to lunch everyone agreed and we all set down to eat lunch. Each one of us was caring five days worth of food for our trek. Every meal was neatly packed in a clear plastic bag and labeled for when it should be eaten. I opened up a package of peanut butter crackers from my lunch package and stared into the open field we had stopped in.