Yosemite (Part 2):  Clouds Rest – A lesson in fear and preparation

It’s about 3:30 AM, and I am two and a half miles into a nighttime hike to the summit of Clouds Rest – one of the highest accessible hiking destinations in Yosemite – when my iPhone screen completely froze.  And I am all alone.  My iPhone was my map for this hike in the dark.  It kept me on the path.  Already, I had deviated from it briefly, only to see on the AllTrails app that I needed to walk back 30 paces to get on course.  The app got me back to the right path – when it was working.  In this moment, I paused and cracked a smile.  This wasn’t the first time this happened to my phone – although it rarely does.  The last time was about six months ago, and as I had always done, I googled how to force restart an iPhone.  It’s hard to remember – quickly press the volume up, then the volume down, and then a long press of the side button.  But as I prepared for my Yosemite trip and the prospect of hiking alone through the night in darkness, I knew I needed to memorize the force restart – just in case it happened during the trip when there was no cell reception or internet.  And now it did!  I only slightly cracked a smile because I not only needed my phone to restart, but I needed AllTrails to start back up and resume tracking my hike.  If it didn’t, I’d have to abandon the hike.  Not only would I certainly miss my goal of reaching the summit for sunrise, but I could not safely navigate the rest of the trail.  But after the restart, everything worked!  The app was back up and running, and I was on track for the summit at sunrise . . .