Since a handful of people have been asking if we have lost our home… No, the fire is still quite far from Yosemite (say 20-30 miles) and is not threatening El Portal either. The main impacts on the park are major power outages and lots of smoke. Most of the business places are running on generators, but most (perhaps all) residences are without power. I'm not sure if the guest rooms in the hotels are powered up or just the commons areas.

As for the smoke, it was nasty on Saturday, but hasn't been as bad since. That said, I can barely see the outline of Half Dome from the Valley floor. Supposedly, power will come back on in the Valley tonight. PG&E has already delivered a couple of giant generators which they are now trying to hook up to the substation down valley. I'm not sure how long until power comes back on in El Portal, Wawona and Yosemite West.

So Hans and Yuji got me all psyched up to get back in climbing shape and I find that the easiest way for me, as a vegetarian and lazy cook, to get protein, is from protein powders. Most experts seem to think that the best protein powders are whey protein isolate (which is different from whey protein concentrate). The Hammer Nutrition folks say that soy protein is actually better if you are in the midst of an event, but mostly want it for recovery. The problem is that most protein powders are full of sweeteners, which I find yucky (I don't care if the sweetener is healthy or not, I just don't like it!).

So here's a list of unsweetened protein powders that I've found. Most are unflavored too. Only the Solgar Whey to Go powder is flavored, but not sweetened. If you know of others, please add them in the comments. If you know of a really good deal on an unsweetened powder, please add the link in the comment. I think that links in comments will be put in as plain text, but I can edit it them after the fact and make them work right.

1. NOW Mega Pack ($76.99 for 10 pounds). This is the best deal I could find and I have it on order now. Damn, though, 10 pounds is a lot to order. That's 162 servings with 25 gms of protein in each serving (most manufacturers have servings with about 20gms of protein). Only the unflavored version is unsweetened.

It took me a while to get around to this, but Hans and Yuji did it! I usually find watching climbing to be incredibly boring, especially from a distance, but it was incredibly exciting as they appeared to be on pace, then behind, then ahead but by just a little bit. In the end, they broke the record by about two minutes. Bill Wright and Hans give the pitch-by-pitch account on speedclimb.com.

The title pretty much says it. Yuji showed up on Sunday night and, after 3 hours sleep, he and Hans did a recon on the Nose. It took them 4:48, but they spent a fair bit of time just hanging out on ledges talking and resting. The next morning, Yuji said he had "so much hurt" all over his body and was surprised at how much fitness he had lost after focusing on bouldering the last couple of years.

Anyway, they are up there as I write this, trying to climbing in 3:00 to 3:30 in preparation for a full-speed attempt on Sunday.

We'll see how it goes. Hans seems to be back in pretty good shape, but Yuji is climbing with an injured finger and thinks he may need to go home and rest it for a while before he can really do the record (which currently stands at 2:45).

Easy Running!

After a near miss in 2006 and bigger miss in 2007, 19 year-old Ryan Ghelfi of Redding, CA, succeeded this year in breaking the Half Dome Trail running record. On Monday, June 16, he left Happy Isles at 6:00am, touched the summit and in a mere 2:30:50 found himself back at Happy Isles, beating the old record, set by Hari Mix, by approximately seven and a half minutes (Mix ran the trail in 2:38:21). Ryan had previously done the run in 2:40, but then was disappointed last year by his 2:48 time and came back this year determined to run harder and smarter.

Like most runners, Ryan walked the steep stairs before the top of Vernal Falls, the last bit before Nevada Falls, the sub dome and the cables. He said the hardest part of the run is keeping it together for the last thirty minutes on the uphill part. He says that "It all happens in that section… Mentally that is the hardest part so prepare for that like that is the whole race. It’s going to feel slow. And I find that it is very easy to want to give up in that section". Last year, he was on record pace at the "2 miles to go" sign, but lost a lot of time between there and the summit. This year he kept it together to reach the summit in 1:32:54, running the downhill leg in 57:56.

Well, I'm guessing that some genius climbers who were moving slow got benighted and decided to stay warm with a fire. Someone said they saw a fire up there on Monday night. Anyway, they started a fire basically at the point that the walkoff for the Royal Arches route meets the rim. Bad climber! No chalk!

I first noticed the smoke while out for a lunchtime walk to meet my sweetheart and then the helicopters came around 2:00pm. I didn't see any flames until someone roused us around 7:30pm to go have a look. I got some pretty decent pictures of the fire on top of Royal Arches (9 images), but there were a couple of times when it really flared up and i was not ready with the camera, so I missed those. I also missed the best of the firefalls. By 8:00pm there was a substantial fire on the ledges that were below tree line. We could see them clearly through the trees, but couldn't really get pictures and I didn't want to cross the valley to get a better look, but I think the Royal Arches climbing route was on fire. That's unconfirmed, just my guess as looking at it from Stoneman's Meadow. Good job dude!

The Mariposa Grove road opened last week.

Rumor is that Glacier Point Road will open this weekend. Of course, as usual, it doesn't open until it opens. If some problem arises or whatever, opening dates are always subject to change, so don't count on it.

A friend who was doing some setup out at the Point drove the road last week and got stuck in a snowbank (got herself out though), so the road is driveable for certain. It's usually a matter of cleanup and limbing trees and such that accounts for the delay between snow melt and opening.

For the definitive word, call (209) 372-0200, then

This is not completely Yosemite News, but Ed Hughes, of A Day Behind the Lens has just self-published a book of 40 of his favorite photos, a good number of which are from Yosemite. You can see a 15-page preview from his site. I really admire Ed's wildlife photography and, though not Yosemite-related, you literally owe it to yourself to look at the sample to see the waving otter without the watermark (that link takes you to a watermarked version). Really, it's one of funniest wildlife pictures I've ever seen and it's got 100x more personality without the watermark. And his pouncing coyote is great - if I hadn't been shooting through a camera pressed up against a binocular, mine would have looked like that too. Sort of. OK, not really, but I like to think so.

A quiet walk with little traffic through dense forest, a recent burn area and a historic tour down the remains of an old logging railroad, arriving at Alder Creek Fall, and impressive 100-foot cascade. A nice place to escape the crowds on a spring weekend.

Okay, so this might strike some folks as a little weird. I just got back from two weeks in Vermont and the snow in the Valley is almost totally gone. Theresa's bike, which had only the seat showing above the snow when we left, had emerged in all it's glory... er make that gory, by the time we got back. And in spring, a middle-aged man's (who?) fancy turns to trail running. And then it turns to other thoughts. Like chafing. Feet, pits and, oh yes, that ever so fragile skin surrounding the testicles.

If I'm going 10 or 20 miles, no problem. But somewhere around 25 miles, the chafing and burning picks up and hopping in the shower at the end brings not relief, but YOUCH! Goodness that burns. Last year I never did any 50-mile days, but this year I'm swearing that I will and I'm looking for ways to make them less painful. I think Injinji Toe Socks are definitely on the list. Everyone swears by them as a good alternative to taping the toes and preventing toe blisters. But today I came across Saxx Performance Underwear, which looks sort of like a bra for testicles. Yes, women can't appreciate this and a lot of men can't either. But if you have a, uh, friction problem, you know what I'm talking about.