John Muir Trail: Day 2 — Half Dome

Sept 4, 2012 — Half Dome and not too much further

Half Dome isn’t tech­ni­cal­ly part of the John Muir Trail. From where I camped  it was a 5 mile side-trip. Being so close to the JMT though lots of peo­ple take the time for it. Two years ago the park ser­vice imple­ment­ed a per­mit sys­tem to lim­it the amount of peo­ple, (Up to 1,500 peo­ple used to try and squeeze up the cables a day, now it’s 400) which usu­al­ly books up pret­ty fast. How­ev­er if you have a per­mit for some­thing near­by and it is con­sid­ered rea­son­ably close to Half Dome you can get a Half Dome per­mit for $5 (like I did), even if all the reg­u­lar per­mits are tak­en. Some peo­ple do try and go up with­out a per­mit but there is usu­al­ly a law enforce­ment ranger (like a cop for the park ser­vice) wait­ing at the bot­tom of sub-dome to check.

No I did­n’t end up get­ting up at 4am. It was clos­er to 6am, still dark, but not for too long as I begrudg­ing­ly got out of my sleep­ing bag. I had a bit of a headache and was so tired, but excit­ed to go up Half Dome. By the time I packed all of my stuff into my back­pack and hit the trail the sun was ful­ly up and I got a grand view of half dome. It was so beau­ti­ful, ris­ing out of the for­est a giant bar­ren mono­lith of gran­ite. Allur­ing, impos­ing, enticing.

I left my main pack and most of my stuff where I camped, tak­ing only a small day­pack with me. Food, water, jack­et, rain gear, map, Nikon d7000 (cam­era), wide angle lens, tri­pod and small point and shoot cam­era. It felt so good not to have to car­ry a huge 70 liter back­pack, prob­a­bly weigh­ing almost 50lbs.

A mule deer caught a glimpse of me on the way up, real­ly close, maybe 15 feet, she glanced up, looked at me for a sec­ond and then went back to munch­ing on the bush she was hav­ing for break­fast. They are so friend­ly here in Yosemite. With no hunt­ing per­mit­ted there is no rea­son for them to be skit­tish. There were 3 in all, right next to the trail unfazed by my pres­ence, except for the fawns, they don’t seem to be quite as used to peo­ple yet.  It was still ear­ly in the morn­ing so was quite cool and the Dou­glas Squir­rels were chirp­ing  (click for audio file of a chirp­ing Dou­glas squir­rel) as I walked through the for­est up to Half Dome.

 

When sub dome came into view (the ridge that you climb up before Half Dome) it looked total­ly unclimbable from a dis­tance, just straight up. As I got clos­er how­ev­er I saw the trail carved into the rock. Real­ly quite amaz­ing actu­al­ly. So much work went into these trails. They lit­er­al­ly have to carve steps into sol­id gran­ite in places. It was steep and shade was scarce. Reach­ing the top it lev­eled out for a bit and half dome came into full view. I could see the cables and peo­ple going up. It was­n’t as intim­i­dat­ing as I had built it up to be in my head.

 

Cables were installed on half dome about a hun­dred years ago to assist hik­ers and climbers going up and down it’s East face. Holes were drilled into the gran­ite and poles set in them hold­ing up the cables. The cables are also bolt­ed into the rock in a few places. The poles how­ev­er are not bolt­ed down, you can pull them out of the groves they slide into. In fact every win­ter the poles are pulled out and the cables lie flat on the rock, this makes the cables feel a bite loose and you def­i­nite­ly don’t want to pull up on them as you will yank the poles right out. The gran­ite at one point was pret­ty rough, but after count­less thou­sands of peo­ple have gone up and down in the same place it is pol­ished smooth between the cables. Wood­en slats were put up to deal with this and they are locat­ed approx­i­mate­ly every 10 feet or so, were there is also a set of poles. The ten­den­cy is to quick­ly go from wood­en slat to slat, rest­ing at each, which can be quite hard if there are lots of peo­ple on the cables.

It could be con­sid­ered a dan­ger­ous hike, sta­tis­ti­cal­ly it most def­i­nite­ly is with peo­ple dying at least every few years, and hun­dreds of “inci­dents” every year (there were fatal­i­ties in 2006, 2007, 2009 and 2011), usu­al­ly attrib­uted to poor weath­er con­di­tions, rain, hail and light­en­ing. Just last August 2 peo­ple fell to their deaths, although one of them was a 4,000 foot fall from the top of Half Dome, climbers heard the scream on the way down. 2011 was actu­al­ly a pret­ty griz­zly year in Yosemite with 18 fatal­i­ties, most due to an influx of water from a larg­er than nor­mal snowpack.

See­ing Half Dome  for the first time up close was pret­ty impres­sive. A mas­sive wall of gran­ite 400 feet high with 2 cables run­ning up it. The peo­ple going up and down put things in per­spec­tive get­ting small­er and small­er as they go up until they dis­ap­peared over the top. I saw my friend Fred com­ing down the cables. He had got­ten there ear­ly to beat the crowds. Despite hav­ing a rest­less night due to the bear in camp. There weren’t many peo­ple on the cables, maybe 1 or 2 and me, so I was able to go at my own pace and grasp both cables at a time.

It was a lit­tle scary but more tir­ing. I had to take a break on almost every piece of wood to catch my breath. Glanc­ing down a few times I expe­ri­enced light ver­ti­go. Noth­ing too over­whelm­ing but the high­er I got the more I just want­ed to look at what was in front of me and not the drop behind. I did glance down a few times but nev­er for too long. 2–3 peo­ple passed me, going down but that was it. No wait­ing for some­one in front of me, nobody pass­ing me going up. Thank god! I’ve seen pic­tures and videos of the cables packed with people!

 

Before too long it round­ed out and got less steep and sud­den­ly I was walk­ing on the bar­ren sum­mit. It was larg­er than I expect and peo­ple have got­ten quite cre­ative with stack­ing rocks up here and then there’s the view! That was pret­ty much what went through my head. Well actu­al­ly the first thing was “I made it! That was­n’t so bad now.”

The Visor (usu­al­ly incor­rect­ly labeled as Dev­ils Div­ing Board)  is a rock fea­ture jut­ting out from the edge of Half Dome. If you’ve seen a pho­to of some­one on top chances are it was here. From a dis­tance it looks like you are on a tiny ledge jut­ting out with vast expo­sure. In real­i­ty it’s a pret­ty wide ledge and it looks much worse than it is. Still it was a lit­tle nerve wrack­ing and when I starred down for too long I start­ed to loose my bal­ance, not a good thing   when there is over 4,000 feet of air below you.

I wan­dered around on the sum­mit for almost an hour. Then I noticed more and more peo­ple arriv­ing. I want­ed to get down before it was too crowd­ed. I decid­ed to video the descent so I strapped my cam­era to my chest and headed

down.

Going down was so much eas­i­er than com­ing up, despite the 30–40 peo­ple. I sim­ply grasped the cables with both hands and leaned for­ward, my weight pret­ty much took care of the rest. I felt secure, being used to descend­ing on a rope from rap­pelling down canyons, this was­n’t exact­ly as secure but it was­n’t ter­ri­fy­ing. Much eas­i­er than going up. Some peo­ple com­ing up were scared stiff, wheez­ing, hold­ing onto the cable with a death grip. Most let me pass as I was going so fast. It was actu­al­ly pret­ty fun going down, def­i­nite­ly like rap­pelling. I told a few few peo­ple it’s much eas­i­er on the way down, then I thought “What if it’s just eas­i­er for me?” Oh well they need­ed some­thing to boost their morale either way. From the top of Half Dome to the bot­tom of the cables it only took me 9 min­utes, could been much faster if there weren’t oth­er people.

I had just fin­ished com­ing down sub dome when a ranger appeared from behind a tree, that’s no exag­ger­a­tion, he was sud­den­ly just there! Caught me by sur­prise. It was a law enforce­ment ranger with a gun, badge and quite the array of acces­sories around his waist. “Hel­lo” I said as I approached him. “Are you check­ing per­mits?” “Yes” he replied, I was already get­ting the per­mit from my pock­et. “I saw a pret­ty big bear last night at Clouds Rest Junc­tion.”  I told him “How big?” he asked.  I held my hand off the ground, “About this high at the shoul­der, maybe 3 feet and this long.” I held out my arms as far as I could (about 5 feet long). Ranger: “Yeah that’s medi­um size, they get much big­ger than that.” Wow I thought to myself, I’d sure hate to run into a “big” bear. The one last night was plen­ty big to me. Ranger:“We’ve been hav­ing trou­ble with him. We’ve shot him 27 times with rub­ber bul­lets.”  Now that’s a per­sis­tent bear. Alden “He came to my tent last night and when I heard him knock over my bear can­is­ter I chased him away.” Ranger: “Yeah they are pret­ty afraid of peo­ple. He broke into one of the bear can­is­ters.” Alden: “What?! How did he do that? Was it one of the approved bear can­is­ters?” Ranger: “It was but it is one of the less com­mon ones, I  had nev­er seen it before.” Alden: “Did they secure it prop­er­ly?” Ranger: “They said they did but I was a lit­tle sus­pi­cious. I looked at the hard­ware, or what was left of it. He bust­ed it up pret­ty bad.” “I’m check­ing per­mits” The ranger said as 3–4 kids came walk­ing up the hill, slow­ing when they caught sight of him. With­out say­ing any­thing they turned around. More peo­ple were com­ing down and the ranger moved on to check the next per­mit. I won­der what would hap­pen if I did­n’t have a per­mit but was on the way down?

As I made my way back to camp I remem­bered Lupi­ta had put a piece of gum in the side pock­et of my back­pack the day before when I start­ed on the trail. I had com­plete­ly for­got­ten about it. Hor­ri­ble sce­nar­ios of car­nage went through my mind, my back­pack torn apart, all of my sup­plies strewn across the ground a hun­gry bear sit­ting in the mid­dle amidst a cloud of down, let­ting out an annoyed grunt as I chased it away try­ing to sal­vage what was left. I’ve heard hor­ror sto­ries of bears tear­ing apart tents and in one such instance, full of boy scouts, just to get a tick tak, a troop leader being mauled in the process. After talk­ing to the ranger I was think­ing hard if I had left any­thing in my bag when I real­ized the gum was there. It was still anoth­er 2.5 miles to camp. Lupi­ta’s stick of gum would be the death of me!

When I got back to camp I rushed over to where I put my bag. There it was, in one piece, no bear had torn it apart. What a relief! I walked over to Freds tent, he was there chill­ing out, relax­ing. We had lunch and spent most of the after­noon chat­ting. A young girl and her dad wan­dered into camp and joined the con­ver­sa­tion. It was so hot in the after­noon I just did­n’t want to hike any­more. I was pret­ty tired too. One thing was for sure though, I cer­tain­ly was­n’t going to camp there again. I want­ed to get some sleep with­out a bear sniff­ing around my tent all night keep­ing me awake. You have no idea how nerve wrack­ing that is until it hap­pens to you!

After a lazy after­noon of eat­ing and sit­ting around I final­ly set off on the trail again. The sun was going down and I was­n’t sure where I would camp. I just want­ed to be at least a mile or two fur­ther. The for­est was dense, quite, peace­ful. Trees tow­ered above me. Some­thing caught me eye in the for­est, it was Fred’s tent, I said hi and con­tin­ued on the trail. I kept walk­ing look­ing for a spot to set up my tent. It was almost total­ly dark when I saw a fire a few hun­dred feet off the trail. They point­ed their head­lamps at me and offered me a place to camp. I could­n’t refuse. It was 4 guys from the East coast, one of whom I had met ear­li­er that day on the trail. We sat around the fire talk­ing. They were doing the trail in 2 1/2 weeks, much faster than me, some­thing that was pret­ty com­mon. Most peo­ple do the trail in 2–3 weeks. I want­ed to spend more time and do side trips.

It was a good day and even bet­ter once I got in my sleep­ing bag, look­ing for­ward to a peace­ful nights sleep.