{"id":875,"date":"2012-09-17T06:00:10","date_gmt":"2012-09-17T13:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/morningnewsinverse.com\/?p=875"},"modified":"2012-09-17T06:00:10","modified_gmt":"2012-09-17T13:00:10","slug":"the-ascent-of-half-dome-not-your-average-walk-in-the-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?p=875","title":{"rendered":"The Ascent of Half Dome – Not Your Average Walk in a National Park"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/strong>The literature on the Half Dome hike reads as follows:<\/p>\n

Difficulty:<\/strong>\u00a0 Extreme. It’s long, steep at the beginning and end, and more dangerous than most Yosemite hikes. It’s probably the most difficult of all Yosemite day hikes. On the traditional 1 to 10 scale, this one rates an 11.<\/em><\/p>\n

Insanity Factor: 9 out of 10.<\/strong>\u00a0 Wait ’til you get to the cables, and you’ll see.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I lie motionless in\u00a0my sleeping bag in the still night air listening to the climbers miles away on El Capitan\u00a0shouting back and forth\u00a0to each other as they are suspended thousands of feet up on the face where they have clamped their \u2018bat hammock\u2019 into the granite face for the night.\u00a0 My alarm\u00a0goes off at 3:30 a.m., but I’m already awake.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Although\u00a0we all went to bed\u00a0very early, none of us slept very well\u00a0– we knew we had a big day ahead of us.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We were on the trailhead at 4:00 a.m.; we gazed in awe at the\u00a0black sky filled with billions of stars – it is an awesome sight, one we don’t get to see back home.\u00a0 With miner-like hiking lights attached to our hats, we begin out journey.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It’s a little over a mile’s hike from where we parked to the trailhead, from there it\u2019s 6.2 miles to the top of Half Dome, our destination.\u00a0 I\u00a0attempted this same hike just last\u00a0year, but because of the late and heavy winter, the infamous cables that must be used to climb the last several hundred feet\u00a0to the summit, were down, so I could not get to the top.\u00a0 The bucket list went unchecked, so I returned.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Early in the hike we\u00a0get to\u00a0the extremely vertical granite \u2018steps\u2019 of Mist Trail along side\u00a0Vernal Falls, one of the toughest part of the hike, compounded by the fact that\u00a0our packs\u00a0are heaviest with the 3-4 liters of water we are carrying, as there is no potable water along the way.\u00a0 We reach the top of\u00a0Vernal Falls and it’s still dark as\u00a0we head\u00a0towards the base of Nevada Falls, but after about 20 minutes, we realize we\u2019ve lost the trail.\u00a0 Scott has a\u00a0GPS and gets us back on course.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 To me one of \u00a0the most beautiful parts of any\u00a0hike\u00a0is when you\u2019ve hiked in the dark for several hours and then are able to experience the soft light of a sunrise filtering through the pines slowing bringing daylight to the mountains.\u00a0 This soft morning light allows us to turn off our \u2018head lights\u2019 and enjoy the relatively flat part of the hike and then a gradual incline\u00a0to the base of the \u2018Subdome\u2019.\u00a0 The trail is relatively free of other hikers, in part because\u00a0it\u2019s after Labor Day and the tourists are gone, and in part because the recent hantavirus outbreak caused by rodents that infected eight\u00a0visitors to the park this summer, killing three, has certainly discouraged some visitors.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\"\"<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We\u2019ve been on the trail for about five hours when we reach the base of the \u2018subdome\u2019; climbing the subdome is arguably the hardest part of the hike.\u00a0 It is a series of\u00a0very vertical granite switch back\u00a0steps, the heat of the day is\u00a0apparent\u00a0as is the fact that\u00a0you\u2019re at around 8,000 feet and air is starting to get a little thin.\u00a0 We take our time and\u00a0finally reach the top of the subdome; from there it’s a\u00a0short hike down to the saddle\u00a0between the subdome\u00a0and the bottom of the cables and your eyes are on the cables the whole\u00a0way.\u00a0 There are about 5-6 hikers spread out at various\u00a0stages on the cables, which\u00a0look\u00a0much more vertical than I remembered.\u00a0 Perhaps it’s because I know that this time I’m going to have to climb them.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We don our gloves, which are necessary for gripping the cable and pulling yourself up, and begin the final phase of\u00a0the climb.\u00a0 Because of generally fewer\u00a0people on the trail and our early start, there is no one coming down the cables while we were trying to go up.\u00a0\u00a0They say the cables are at a 45 degree angle, it seems\u00a0more like\u00a090 degrees.\u00a0\u00a0Under the two cables,\u00a0which are about three feet high, are 2 x 4s on the granite about every ten feet, where you can stop and rest, which we do.\u00a0\u00a0It’s an opportunity to turn and look\u00a0down at where you’d end up if you slipped.\u00a0 You don’t want to spend\u00a0too much time dwelling on that, so\u00a0you turn around, keep your head down and your hands on the cable.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The top of Half Dome is spectacular;\u00a0at\u00a08,835 it’s not that high, it’s not even the highest point in Yosemite, but\u00a0the view beats any I’ve seen from much higher\u00a0summits.\u00a0 The area on top is\u00a0surprisingly large, I was told\u00a0that there is room for 17 football fields up there.\u00a0 Maybe, but I wouldn’t want to go out of bounds on any of them.\u00a0 I did crawl\u00a0on my hands and knees and then my stomach to the edge of the dome\u00a0to looked over\u00a0and immediately crawled back.\u00a0 Patrick, \"\"<\/a>Jeff, Greg and I spent about twenty minutes on top, ate a small lunch\u00a0and then headed back down the cables – maybe scarier than going up; I tried\u00a0going down\u00a0forwards\u00a0and backwards – it was scary\u00a0both ways.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Our return trip was high-lighted by seeing both Nevada and Vernal Falls in the light o\"\"<\/a>f day; the water levels\u00a0were down, but still it’s amazing to just stand and look at these wonders of nature.\u00a0 Eleven hours and 15 miles later we are exhausted\u00a0and\u00a0exhilarated\u00a0. . . and\u00a0home.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For those who haven’t seen the video I made of last year’s Half Dome hike, when the falls were spectacular, I’ve put the link below.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=gVBqw7nVz1c<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\n

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The literature on the Half Dome hike reads as follows: Difficulty:\u00a0 Extreme. It’s long, steep at the beginning and end, and more dangerous than most Yosemite hikes. It’s probably the most difficult of all Yosemite day hikes. On the traditional … read more<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[110,302,319,793],"class_list":["post-875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cables","tag-half-dome","tag-hike","tag-yosemite-national-park"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p31aN0-e7","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}