Fan wasn't planning to head into the valley (the part of Yosemite from the pictures), but said it would be easy for me to hitch a ride with someone if I wanted to go, so I ended up riding in with Fan's twin sister, Fawn, and her friend Phi. :)
Fawn and Phi claimed to not be very active people and said they would probably do more walking than hiking, which was fine with me -- but, in the middle of the day, some friends in the group said they were by the waterfall if we wanted to meet them, so we decided to go. It was much more of a hike than we had expected, but Fawn and Phi seemed to be up for it!
We ended up running into our friends on our way up the trail and their way down. They weren't staying the night and wanted to head out before it was too late, but said the waterfall was just 30 minutes in and it was worth it to keep going.
The waterfall was beautiful! When we made it to the trail near the base, we discovered that the trail turned into rock steps that you could take all the way to the top and look down! I really wanted to go to the top. Fawn and Phi said I had done a good job of pushing them along that far, so why not? :)
We made it to the top with no problem and the view was majestic. It felt very worth the climb. Fawn noticed the rocks at the top were a bit slippery with her shoes, though, so we would all take our time with the rock steps on the way back down.
When we got back to the base of the waterfall, there was this path that went off of the main trail to some rocks much closer to the waterfall. I really wanted to go there too, so I asked Fawn and Phi what they thought. Phi didn't want to go. She was moving pretty slow and would meet us at the bridge. Fawn wanted go with me.
There were signs saying to not go off of the trail, and the walk out looked steep and rocky, but it was nothing I hadn't done before. A guy had just said to us that it was a bit dangerous, but there were a bunch of people out there so we weren't worried. We started hiking out. I was leading the way and Fawn was following me.
There was a spot on a steep part of dirt that was a little slippery, so I called back to Fawn to be careful in that area. I'm not sure if she heard me because she was farther behind me than I had expected, and seconds later I could hear her falling toward me.
!!!!
A lot of what happened next is hard to remember. I knew Fawn was falling really fast and I would have one moment to catch her, and that it would have to be done exactly right to both stop her and to make sure she didn't take me with her. I can't seem to remember if she was in danger of falling off of the cliff or into rocks, but it felt critical for me to grab her and I had to make the decision fast. As I turned around, I leaned into the hill and grabbed her by the leg as she came past me. Her body flipped around and her glasses went flying into the dirt, but she stopped.
We awkwardly readjusted ourselves in the dirt for a moment, processing and checking to make sure everything was okay. Fawn said she was okay, both emotionally and physically, and that she still wanted to go to the waterfall. So, we brushed ourselves off and hiked very carefully the rest of the way.
We sat down on a big rock close to the water's edge when Fawn pulled up her pant leg and noticed she was scrapped up a bit. As we were checking it, I realized that I had thrown my first aid kit into my bag to hold my money. I was super excited I had it!
"Do you need a gauze pad? Or scissors? Or, I can blow the emergency whistle! Oh, are you bleeding, I have rubber gloves!"
"Um, I think I just need a bandaid... "
"I have tweezers! Or do you need a stinger wipe? Or an antiseptic wipe??"
"I'll take the antiseptic wipe. I know you really want to use your first aid kit, but I think I just need a bandaid."
"Do you want a butterfly bandaid, or this kind of bandaid....?"
I gave her the biggest bandaid I could find. :)
Fawn cleaned herself up, applied the bandaid, and then we sat for a while in the midst of the waterfall, doing our best to appreciate the power, beauty, and scale. Now that things felt a little better, I said with a bit of levity, "You almost died and I totally saved your life." She smiled and thanked me for catching her.
It wasn't funny to us until we were in the car ride back to the cabin trying to figure out what had happened. The only things we could come up with were that Fawn was falling really fast and we both felt like she was in danger, but we couldn't picture anything but the trail being really steep. Then I remembered that the first thing Fawn said to me when she stopped was, "What did it look like?". She started laughing and said, "That is what I said! I wanted to know what it looked like cause I was in it and couldn't picture it." I started to laugh too. "How did I respond?". She said, "You said, 'I don't know...'". Then we laughed very hard to the point that Phi said she was worried about us because it sounded nervous. I could feel it in my body that I needed to either laugh or cry.
After telling the story back at the cabin, one of the girls on the trip said, "So, I guess what we've learned is that we should hike with you because you can catch people AND you bring a first aid kit!". Haha.
I don't think I've ever felt so clear and so scared in my life.
