I have always wanted to climb Half Dome in Yosemite National Park and until this Spring I thought I would be going up the normal hiking trail and up the cables to the top on the normal route.
After Sara and I got back from Costa Rica however my friend John put out an email asking if anyone wanted to rock climb Half Dome via the Snake Dike climbers route. This was way not on my radar but as soon as I read it I thought “could I do it?”
We drove up to Yosemite on Friday, May 17th to setup camp in the valley a short walk from the trailhead and chilled out by the fire…
Here is a picture of the side of Half Dome where the snake dike rock climb is on. We started on the bottom right side of this picture past the waterfalls and started climbing by the tree’s on the bottom right side of half dome to the top…
Here is a closer picture of the climb up the Snake Dike route on Half Dome…
On Saturday we got up at 3:30 AM to get dressed, eat some oatmeal and get our gear set for the hike. It was dark and cold, we guessed about 38 degree’s. We left camp at 4:15 and hiked about a half mile to the trail-head…
The hike to the base of the Snake Dike climb started in the Upper Pines camping area on the valley floor
past Vernal Falls
past Nevada Falls
Next it is off the main trail to a climbers trail that takes you by lost lake
Cairns guided our way on the trail once we got out of the forest
to the approach area to the base of the rock climb.
We got to the base of the climb at about 8AM and met two other climbers at the base. We decided to start climbing together and John started up the first pitch.
Snake Dike has 8 pitches and then what they call endless slabs to climb up to get to the top.
Video of Climbing Snake Dike on Half Dome – you will love this 🙂
We got to the top and were very happy to take a rest, take a look around and get some pictures taken… like this one of John and I out on the edge….
or on top….
The hike down started by doing a sort of rappel down the cables on the other side of half dome which hikers normally use to get to the top…
Then it is a hike back down through the forest to get down to the valley floor again….
We got back to camp 14 hours later, very tired and hungry and ready to unload our packs. Luckily the fire was going and there was still daylight left to cook some food.
It was a great weekend of camping and climbing..can’t wait to come back
On a sad note – when we were driving out of the park on Sunday we saw many rescue vehicles in the meadow just below El Capitan. We got out and started talking to the Rescue spotter and he said there was an accident where a climber had fallen and was hanging from a rope.
Here was the view from a telescope at the scene…
He had been hit by rocks that pulled off the wall and had fallen a long way…they brought in a helicopter to asses how he an his climbing partner were doing…
Unfortunately the climber was dead. It always gives me pause to the level of safety that needs to be maintained while on the rock.
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