Part Eight: Hiking My Feelings in the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne - Yosemite National Park

PART EIGHT // Not a cruiser.

I woke up excited, knowing that Barry wanted to go catch the sunrise. I put on *all* of my layers to justify packing them, grabbed some snacks, and we started hiking up to the top of the ridge.

I don't know about you, but I'm more confident hiking in the dark, and here's why: I get decision fatigue. Whether it's strolling over scree fields at Black Butte or boulder hopping toward Mount Jefferson in the White Mountains, when I can see fewer options, I have less to choose from, and end up moving faster as a result. Once the sun comes up, I slow down to a sloth's pace on those kinds of trails because I have to train my brain to move with the flow of the landscape instead of trying to decide which is the perfect rock to step on in this field of 34,889 rocks (I'm approximating here).

We get to the top, I find the perfect sitting rock, and I set up my camera* for a sunrise time-lapse, stoked to see how the valley below us lights up.

*And by camera, I mean shoving the pop socket on my phone into the loop on my Nalgene as a makeshift tripod. It works.

I set it, forget it, and sit behind it to watch the show. Then my butt got sore and I found a new rock (in the dark) to sit on.

"She's in the video," I hear KBong say to Barry.

I felt some remnants of the shame I used to feel when my father told me I was "sabotaging the mission" when he was inconvenienced by my speed walking through the airport, how long I was taking to get ready, etc. I felt it, identified it, and affirmed to Younger Sydney that we are okay. This isn't *that*.

I looked around. There were perfect sitting rocks to my left and right, so I invited the guys to sit with me.

My mistake turned out to be one of my favorite moments from the trip. 🤷🏼‍♀️

After sunrise we packed up and hit the trail early. The night before, Barry kept telling us "we've got a cruiser of a day tomorrow into Ten Lakes". This was our shortest hike of the trip, 6.98 miles, and it looked like it was mostly downhill.

To think we entertained the idea of adding this hike onto yesterday's monster was laughable, because as we started hiking, we realized: this was not a cruiser.

Part 9 tomorrow!