“It’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock ’n’ roll.”

“It’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock ’n’ roll.”

That line comes from the classic AC/DC song “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ’n’ Roll).” It is especially memorable because somehow AC/DC figured out how to combine hard rock, electric guitars, and bagpipes. The song is about the grind required to make it. Long roads, bad conditions, paying your dues, and getting knocked around a little along the way. In other words, the good stuff often requires the climb. That seems like an appropriate soundtrack for my latest QTR adventure.

The Keefe, Berlinger, and Miller families have had a long tradition of annual summer vacations in Yosemite. We hike a lot. Sometimes it is an easy stroll to the river and sometimes it is an all day adventure that makes you wonder why you thought this was a good idea. Either way, it is always an adventure. Normally we head to the high country and stay in Tuolumne Meadows, where the nights are cool, the scenery is spectacular, and the crowds are a little thinner. This year we changed things up and stayed on the Valley floor at Curry Village. And there was one particular mountain calling us: Half Dome.

15 of us entered the lottery for permits to hike Half Dome and climb the cables to the top. Somehow, I was the only lucky winner, and my permit allowed 6 of us to make the climb. There was one catch. Yosemite made the permits nontransferable to prevent people from getting them and reselling them, which meant the permit holder had to be there, with an ID, when the group reached the checkpoint. That would be me, at 64 years old, hiking with a group of people 30 and under. No pressure, right?

We started at 3:30 in the morning with our headlamps lighting the trail ahead of us.

By the time we finished, we had covered 20.5 miles round trip. We were gone for 13 hours, with 8 hours and 45 minutes of actual hiking movement. We reached the top of the Subdome at about 9:30 AM, and from there came the part you can't really appreciate until you are standing underneath it: the cables. Up the team went, and eventually they were standing on top of Half Dome (the truth is that I did not go up the cables to the top...I made a game time decision not to go. I wasn't convinced that my legs could handle standing/waiting while climbers passed each other on the cables going up and down).

We spent about 1½ hours eating, taking in the view, climbing the cables, and enjoying the fact that we had actually made it.

Then we started the long journey back down and arrived at Curry Village at about 4:30 PM. There are moments in life when complicated decisions need to be made. This was not one of them. I went directly to the 1899 Bar for a beer, burger, and fries. I had earned them!

But here is the part that made this adventure especially meaningful to me. The last time I stood on top of Half Dome was in 1992. I was 30 years old. 34 years later, at 64, I got to stand there again. That is QTR.

Quality Time Remaining isn't about pretending we are still 30. It isn't about denying that our bodies change, that some things get harder, or that eventually there will be adventures we simply can't do anymore. It is about recognizing that we can still do them now. There is a difference. One of the questions I keep coming back to as I think about QTR is, "am I physically capable of saying yes to the adventures I want to have?" Today, the answer is yes. Someday it won't be. That isn't depressing to me. It is motivating.

Maybe one of the biggest mistakes we make as we get older is prematurely deciding that we are old. Clint Eastwood is often associated with the saying, “Don’t let the old man in.” I like that. I know that I am not 30 anymore, and there are certainly mornings when my body is happy to remind me of that. But I also don't want a number to decide what I am capable of before I actually find out for myself.

I don't know whether I will ever climb Half Dome again. Maybe this was my last time and maybe it wasn't. But I do know that when the opportunity presented itself, I didn't have to say, “I wish I had done that when I was younger.” I got to say yes, put on my headlamp at 3:30 in the morning, and start walking.

It turns out AC/DC had it right. It really is a long way to the top if you wanna rock ’n’ roll. Sometimes it is 20.5 miles. Sometimes it takes 13 hours. Sometimes you are 64 years old trying to keep up with a bunch of 20 and 30 year olds. And sometimes, when you finally get back down, there is a cold beer, a burger, and fries waiting for you.

For me, that is the point of QTR. Just say yes. Travel now. Climb now. Don't decide too early that your days of adventure are behind you. Someday we won't be able to make the climb. But if today we still can, why wouldn't we?

Besides, the view from the top is pretty damn good.

QTR.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/3d6463_14cbab8bb3544f3e9baf4945c2adff3d/480p/mp4/file.mp4

Video from Sierra Miller of the top of the Sub Dome and the top of Half Dome

#qualitytimeremaining