YOSEMITE VALLEY, Calif. — Hiking the Half Dome trail in Yosemite can seem intimidating for even experienced hikers. It includes 4,800 feet of elevation, culminating in a 400-foot cable climb up a rock to reach the scenic view.
Throw in the challenge of not even being double digits and you have the obstacle Tori Tibbs faced this last weekend.
Tori was inspired to hike Half Dome when she first visited Yosemite at age six. It was on this trip she first gazed up at its summit and knew she wanted to take the journey to the top.
Flash forward three years and Tori, a fourth grader at Leonardo Da Vinci School, has accomplished her almost lifelong dream of summiting the famed Half Dome.
“I was very, very, very exhausted…I was also super happy because I looked out and I'm just like, I just climbed that giant rock, wow,” Tori said.
Tori hiked the trail with her mom Chelsea Tibbs, an experienced backpacker who has hiked Half Dome before.
A moment of doubt showed up for Tori when the two were ascending the cables to the top of Half Dome.
“There's this one part where it just gets very cold and you're depending on the cables. Like I freaked out and I said, mom, I want to go down and she's like you can do this,” Tori said.
Tibbs had the plan if at any point her daughter wanted to turn around she was free to, but at that particular point, it was more unsafe to turn around than to keep going.
“I told her that that was the place — that her dad had freaked out on the cables when he and I had hiked it before, and everyone freaks out on that point. It's really steep and slippery and scary. It was so cool to see her push through,” Tibbs said.
After pushing through the cable climb, Tori and her mom made it to the top, where the nine-year-old said “It felt like a dream” looking out from atop the rock.
The nine-year-old from Sacramento not only credits her mom for helping her accomplish the hike, but also fellow backpackers she met on the trail.
"We met these people that we call trail angels. It's just people who are like really kind," Tori said. “There were these two men and we had some stale trail mix and that was really it…we were just so hungry. He either heard my stomach growling or saw me just like eyeing the plum he was eating and he said, do you want some fuel? And I'm like, 'Yes, please.'”
Tibbs said backpackers were so impressed by Tori that they gave her the trail name of ‘Rock Star.’ She explains being given a trail name is reserved for accomplishing a big feat in the backpacking community.
Her mom hopes hiking the Half Dome trail has prepared Tori for whatever comes her way in the future.
“It's a lesson that maybe we can't articulate right now having just come off of it, but in years to come — when a hardship or scary thing gets in our path — we'll be able to think back on this like, OK, this is something that's scary, but it's something we can overcome if we stay determined and focused,” Tibbs said.
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