Half Dome Hike

While staying at Sequoia RV Park a few weeks ago, we ran into two other families with kids roughly the same age as ours. On multiple nights, we'd hang out and chat while our kids played.

One night one of the guys asked me if I wanted to hike Half Dome with them about 10 days out. I tend to forget that I'm not as young or as in shape as I once was, so I immediately said "Sure," followed by, "What's Half Dome?"

He informed me that it was about a 15 mile round trip hike, leaving out some other key details that would become apparent later on. 15 miles is a long hike, but I knew I could do it. He also told me that there was a lottery involved, so I guess it had to be popular. That was enough information for me. (Incidentally, this is how I ended up hiking Kilimanjaro a few years ago. I really need to learn to ask more questions.)

Let me state what most people other than me probably already knew and that I know now: Half Dome is a famous rock formation at Yosemite (one of many famous rock formations). It looks roughly like half of a dome when viewed from a certain angle (and nothing like half of a dome from all other angles).

A portion of the Yosemite Valley, complements of Google Earth

Most of the famous rocks at Yosemite are climbable with the right equipment, but the "dome" portion of Half Dome can be hiked with the help of a set of chains strung up the side. Anyone can hike to the base of the rock, but due to overcrowding in past years, you need a permit to tackle the cable section. It takes a 7 mile hike with roughly a 4,800 foot elevation gain just to reach the base of the subdome, which is a hump at the base of the larger dome.

This is the hike I had signed up for. But not to worry. We had to win a lottery to do it, and odds were good we wouldn't. I understand that math would disagree with me, but I'll go ahead and say that I'm one of those people that never wins raffles or things of that sort.

Uh... yay?

I won. The other two guys did not, but we all entered for three hikers, so it didn't matter. We ran into people on the trail who said they had been trying for 5 years to win, and I pulled it off on my first try with one week's notice. I didn't know whether to feel special or upset.

I'll sum up the hike by saying that it was strenuous. Very, very strenuous. And I am most definitely out of shape. I confirmed those suspicions about 1.5 miles in, and the first mile was on a road walking from our parking spot to the trailhead (the "parking lot full" sign lied to us, leading to an extra .8 miles of hiking each way). Yeah, I'm out of shape.

By my estimation, the part leading to the actual rock formation involved roughly 8,394,291 stairs, where "stair" can mean anything from "a nicely chiseled surface" to "a rock that is a little bit higher than the rock on which you are currently standing." But every one of them was up. Up and up and up. So much up.

Remember subdome? Yeah, I learned about that halfway through the hike. So you hike up and up and up for hours to get the base of this:

Again, compliments of Google Earth

Look closely at the lower portion. That's the subdome. See all of those switchbacks? This is after already ascending almost a mile in elevation. My legs were not happy about this.

Ascending the subdome

But we made it. We decided to rest for a bit before tackling the cables.

Bryan is in green, and Shawn is in blue; the cables are coming out of the top of Bryan's head. See the tiny people?

Turns out the cable portion on the dome wasn't even the hard part. At least I got to use my arms to help me! We knocked them out in about 15 minutes, and it would have been faster if we didn't have to stop for people coming down. It turns into an intricate dance.

It averages a 45 degree angle

Was it worth it? Take a look for yourself...

Hi, mom!

The view from the top is absolutely stunning in every direction; photos do not do it justice. It also didn't hurt that we had a beautiful day. We were just shy of 9,000 feet up, having started below 4,000.

We spent an hour and a half or so up on top, eating, socializing with other hikers, and generally just marveling at the beauty all around us. Honestly, I didn't want to leave, and that's not because my legs weren't looking forward to moving again. It was that nice.

Descending the cables was pretty easy if you have gloves, which we all did. You just kind of lean back to drive your feet into the rock and then walk backwards, keeping a loose grip on the cables. We ran into quite a bit of traffic on the way down, so it ended up taking longer than it should have, but the last thing I was going to do was complain about excuses to take a break.

The hike back was uneventful. We took a slightly different way back for a portion of the hike, trading switchbacks for stairs. A good trade? Unclear.

Let me pause and say how much I appreciated Bryan and Shawn inviting me. Remember, they had known me for all of a few hours when they did. The cynical part of me figured they just wanted better lottery odds, but after spending a day with them, I know that they are just good guys (though if they did want me for the increased odds, it worked out). As hard as the actual hike was — and make no mistake, it was hard — I thoroughly enjoyed it thanks to the company I was with.

One of my favorite memories of the day actually happened when we were back on the road, walking to the truck (recall that we ended up parking almost a mile from the trailhead). A car pulled up to us, and the nicely dressed, older gentlemen in the passenger seat wanted to know how to get to Half Dome. Keep in mind that it's about 5 PM at this point, and we started that morning at 6 AM. And there's no way this guy was prepared for hiking. Not sure how to answer, I first asked if he planned to walk there. He did. I couldn't bear to break it to him, so I responded with, "Well, you probably won't make it back by dark." Then he asked how to drive there. If only...