Hiking Half Dome

In the last two months, I've hiked numerous trails. However, a friend of mine tells me that I should set my sight higher, and aim to hike the Half Dome. So that's what I did. The Half Dome Trail is quite a challenging Trail, as it is 8~9 miles one way, and net of 4800 ft of elevation gain from the trail head to the top of Half Dome. Some people train for months to get in shape to climb Half Dome, and climbing accidents and deaths are fairly common.

http://www.hikehalfdome.com/Accidents.html

Anyways, I knew that I wanted to give Half Dome a shot, and I wanted to try to work my work up. However, laziness got in the way of my training, and one day I just decided to pack myself and drive to Yosemite and climb the Half Dome.


Since I had gathered a bunch of camping gear already, I decided to camp overnight at Camp 4, the walk-in-and-pitch-your-own-tent camp site. Camp 4 is a historical camp site, since it's where a lot of rock climbers stayed in while rock climbing slowly grew up to be an acknowledged sport.

Staying at Camp 4 is very economical. It costs $20 for a 7-day pass into Yosemite, and $5 per night for a spot at camp 4. I drove to Yosemite on the afternoon of August 26, got into camp 4 at around 6:30 PM. Fortunately, there were still spots open in the camp site, and that's where I slept for the night. My tent is the dark blue and grey tent in the picture above.


Here's another picture from camp 4 that shows the sheer rock face that's very close to camp 4. That background and setting makes the campsite quite majestic.

I had intended to get up early in the morning to climb Half Dome. However, since I got in late, I had to sign myself in to the camp site, and I had to pay the $5 fee the next morning. Unfortunately, the ranger didn't get in until 8:30 AM, and because there was a line, I didn't get to pay her until 9:30 AM. In hindsight, I should have given the $5 to someone in line to ask them to pay the $5 for me. Perhaps the German tourist right in front of me (there were lots of European hikers. From all the non-English conversation going on around, it seems that roughly 50% of the people there were from Europe). In any case, the delay means that I didn't get to the trail head parking lot until 10 AM, and I started my hike at 10:03 AM.


One thing that I noticed right away was that hiking in Yosemite was quite different from hiking on the trails in the local state and county parks that I've been doing. The big difference was that the background in Yosemite was simply far more majestic. Everything seems to be on a grander scale. Here's a nice waterfall.


Here's another waterfall.

The trail was majestic and grand, but also mercilessly steep. Even more problematic was that the hike goes from about 4800 ft of elevation to about 9600 ft of elevation, and the oxygen content in the air is just far less than it is at sea level. Previously, my hikes have ranged in between 1000 ft of elevation to 3000 ft of elevation, and I had a difficult time adjusting to the elevation.

The net result of the steepness of the climb and the higher altitude was that I would get tired rather easily. Also, I just couldn't generate and sustain power climbs over 30 seconds in duration. On the steep parts of the trail, I found that I would have to rest up for a minute or two every 30 to 50 steps. It almost seemed that I was totally out of shape, which I knew I wasn't. Fortunately, after I rested for a couple of minutes, I was able to resume the climbing, and stamina wasn't a problem. However, the frequent rest stops really extended the climb time. It took me 6 hours and 15 minutes just to get to the cable rails for the final climb to the top of Half Dome.

This is the infamous cable rails that hikers use to get to the top of Half Dome. The cables help hikers climb the last 400 ft over bare granite. The climb here is very steep, and the rocks can be slippery, even with good shoes. When it rains, the rocks become impossible slippery, and people without good gloves and good shoes are known to slip and fall - some to death. So this climb is considered to be extremely dangerous.

Fortunately, I had been warned, so I bought a decent pair of general purpose gloves from Home Depot. Moreover, it was sunny and there were no rain and little wind. So aside from the fact that I couldn't sustain the power to climb for extended periods of time, it was a tough but not all that dangerous of a climb for me. Because of the need to rest frequency, it took me a good 40+ minutes to climb the 400 ft to the top of Half Dome.


Here's a view from the top. Because of my late start, and the fact that I had to rest frequently, I didn't get to the top of Half Dome until 5 PM, some 7 hours after I started from the trailhead parking lot.


Here's a picture of me kneeling on top of Half Dome, at around 5:15PM. I made it.

Because it was already so late, I didn't dare stay too late. I started down the cables on my way back around 5:30 PM. Typically, park guidance for hiking Half Dome suggest that if you don't make it up to the top of Half Dome by 3:30PM, you should head back down the trail, because the length of the trail means that you'll run out of sunlight, and hiking in the dark is not a lot of fun. However, I had been aware of the time factor, and I had brought a head lamp and a flashlight, so I decided to press on and finish the climb. Still, as the sun dropped lower and lower, it got darker and darker. I had to put on the head lamp at around 7:50PM.

It was difficult to see the trail in the dark, and I got lost twice. Suddenly, I found myself in the middle of large boulders and loose leaves, with no sign of the trail. The first time I got lost, there were still some light, and I quickly found my way back onto the trail. However, the second time I was lost was far more serious, as I was lost for more than 10 minutes. I was stumbling around in the dark, with my head lamp providing a bit of light, looking for the trail. My mind started to wander, as I started thinking that I might have to stay out in the wilderness for the night, and that has its own set of problems - the first problem being that I didn't have much gear or water left, and the second problem is that there are bears around. In any case, I just concentrated on not twisting my ankles or otherwise getting hurt in anyway, as that would just seriously compound my problems. I then stopped trying to go downhill, and instead traveled sideways on the slope of the mountain, toward the sound of the waterfall. Fortunately, that strategy paid off, as I soon found the trail and got back to the business of stumbling down the mountain, this time on the trail.

Finally, four hours after I started down the cables from the top of Half Dome, I found my car in the parking lot. In total, counting the distance from the parking lot to the start of the hiking trail, it was an 18+ mile hike that lasted 11 hours, not counting the half hour I spent on top of Half Dome.

In hindsight, hiking in the dark was a really bad idea, and I would recommend the following to anyone who wants to hike the Half Dome.

1. Get to Yosemite a couple of days early, try to do short hike at altitude above 5000+ ft in the first couple of days. Basically, get your body acclimated to hiking at the higher elevations.

2. Start the hike as early in the morning as you can.

3. Good gloves, shoes and flashlight with fresh batteries are a must.

Hiking the Half Dome was quite interesting, and I think I would go again if I had other people to hike with. I don't think I would want to hike the Half Dome by myself again.