Fall Hike Plans and Half Dome Summit Memories

As the summer gets on, I’ve been thinking a little about some Fall hikes. We’re in the preliminary stages of planning but I have been thinking about Duncan Knob over in the GW Forest and then another Old Rag summit…we can do Duncan Knob on a weekend, but Old Rag is best during the week, probably in November. Proximity to these activities was a big part of our decision to buy the cabin.


These thoughts raised some nostalgia…it’s been nearly three years since Chris and I went out and hiked the Half Dome in Yosemite. Here is a hike map and some highlight photos.






First, a view of the mountain from Mirror Lake in the Yosemite Valley. The vantage point for this photo is accessible from most of the lodging and camping sites in the Park; it is a short walk from one of the bus route in the Valley. There is another vantage point that is always crowded with people. Which I find ironic, because it looks like blissful solitude abounds, but most likely the shot is being taken while the photographer is surrounded by 50 or more people! Of course I have a photo or two from there.




Next, a view as we approached the summit, about a half mile away and something like 600 to 1,000 feet left to climb. We did this in October 2005, while the trail was under construction and only open Friday through Sunday. The number of people in this photo is probably only 20 to 30 percent of the people who might be on this hike in the summer while school is out. Click on the photo and you'll be able to make out all the people on the trail - don't forget to nav back!

The third photo is of the famous cables (click on the photo for a better look, and nav back to this page!). This route is open from April to October every year – our hike was the last week in 2005. It is said that this route is unscalable to the average hiker without the cables. There are horror stories about people falling down, but the majority of folks can do this without much trouble. More likely there are traffic jams and the like that make this tough, as opposed to accidents. Not to say, there haven’t been any.






This last photo is Chris and me at the summit. It was a great feeling and a great place to be. While our training hikes were throughout the Shenandoah Valley, we’d not encountered anything quite like this (4,500 feet of elevation change, 17 mile round trip, etc.). As we started to climb the cables, clouds passed over and a wind started up, quickly dropping the temps to the mid-50’s, so we put on the long sleeves for the final ascent. Soon as we were up, the temp got back into the high 60’s and those duds had to come right off.


I think I will post a few more highlight photos of this trip during the next week or so. We lent to cabin to Chris and Jeanene this weekend, so we will have been away three weeks when we get back.