Climbing Half Dome at Night in Yosemite
I am 27 years old, and after this trip I wonder why I waited so long to finally go to Yosemite.
The place is awesome and the whole valley looks like a postcard. You can literally see exactly where the Glacier came through and carved out the valley. Yosemite is also home to 3 famous mountains. El Capitan and The Sentinel are great mountains, but we were here to conquer none other than The Half Dome.
Now most people will start around 6 am and hike through the day to summit and then come back down in the afternoon/evening. We decided to take a little different approach. We started just after 9 pm and got to the base of Half Dome around 3am.
We camped out below the dome until we couldn’t take it anymore and finally scaled the remaining thousand feet or so by cable to get to the top just before sunrise.
It was definitely a surreal moment looking down a vertical mile to the valley floor on either side of you as you hold on to an old steel cable attached to the top of a rock. Its a rush and even more so at night, but absolutely worth it when you get to the top and look around a gorgeous valley below as the sun starts to peak over the eastern mountains. I highly recommend it.
I usually try to tie all my adventures and trips into business somehow, but for this post I think I will just leave it at this.
Go see some damn nature, you’ll feel better.
Mat
Filed under Backpacking/Hiking, Travels · Tagged with el capitan, half dome, half dome yosemite, hiking, hiking half dome, the sentinel, yosemite, yosemite california
Written By : The Surf Bum
A former Inc. 100 corporate finance manager turned Adventure Capitalist, Mat now travels the world in search of warm water, big waves and powder snow. A firm believer in one's ability to change their reality, only several years ago, Mat found himself burnt out in the business world at a young age. Although successful, he remained unsatisfied. He left his... Read More
The Surf Bum has written 70 articles
That’s cool man.
We would love to try climbing mountain sometime
“Go see some damn nature, you’ll feel better.”
Some definite words of wisdom right there!