Half Dome — mountain
Image by cyndipadilla from Pixabay

Half Dome

  • Elevation2,693 m
  • 2 min read
  • 37.746° N 119.533° W

Interesting facts

  • The logo of the outdoor brand The North Face, designed in 1971, is a stylised outline of Half Dome.
  • On 10 April 1927 Ansel Adams photographed the sheer face from a ledge called the Diving Board, creating his celebrated image Monolith, the Face of Half Dome.
  • In 2008 Alex Honnold climbed a variation of the Regular Northwest Face free solo, with no rope, over 23 pitches graded 5.12a.
  • The 1957 first ascent of the Northwest Face took Robbins, Sherrick and Gallwas five days of climbing.
  • In 1876, only a year after the first ascent, S. L. Dutcher of San Francisco became the first woman known to reach the summit.
  • A party led by James Mason Hutchings in 1877 included his 65-year-old mother-in-law, Florence Sproat, who made it to the top.
  • Another reading of the Ahwahneechee name links it to a young woman's face stained with tears, an image drawn from the dark lichen streaks on the wall.
  • The cable route itself was added to the US National Register of Historic Places in 2012.
  • Half Dome featured on a 25-cent US postage stamp in 1988 and on the California state quarter of 2005, alongside John Muir and a condor.
  • The exposed summit attracts lightning: in July 1985 a single strike there killed two hikers out of a group of five.

Why it is worth it

Seen from the floor of Yosemite Valley, Half Dome looks as if a giant granite dome had been sliced cleanly in two and one half carried away. Three sides are smooth and rounded; the fourth, facing north-west, falls as a sheer, nearly vertical wall of pale rock. The summit stands at 8,846 feet (about 2,696 m), and at sunset the face catches the last light long after the valley has gone into shadow, glowing orange and then pink above the dark forest. The Ahwahneechee people, who lived in the valley, called it Tis-sa-ack, usually translated as "cleft rock".

The rock itself is quartz monzonite, part of a batholith: a vast chamber of magma that cooled and hardened deep underground about 93 million years ago, in the Cretaceous period. Over tens of millions of years the ground above it was stripped away, the granite-like mass was exposed, and erosion cut through it so thoroughly that the dome was left looking bisected. The result is one of the purest shapes in any mountain landscape, and one that changes character with every viewpoint around the valley, a blade from one side and a dome from another.

For a long time it was thought unclimbable: the state geologist Josiah Whitney called it perfectly inaccessible. In October 1875 George Anderson proved him wrong by drilling holes into the granite, setting iron bolts and hauling himself up the rounded east shoulder; John Muir followed within weeks. Anderson's line became the ancestor of today's cable route, first fitted with steel cables in 1919, which lets hikers pull themselves up the final 400 feet of steep slab after a long day's approach of around 8 miles from the valley floor. The sheer face tells the other half of the story: in 1957 Royal Robbins, Mike Sherrick and Jerry Gallwas climbed the Regular Northwest Face, the first Grade VI big-wall climb in North America and a starting point of the Yosemite climbing tradition.

Getting there

Half Dome rises at the eastern end of Yosemite Valley in Yosemite National Park, California; the nearest sizeable town is Clovis, about 103 km away in a straight line. The nearest airport is Mammoth Yosemite (MMH), roughly 62 km away across the Sierra crest; Fresno Yosemite International (FAT), about two hours' drive, is the main gateway from the south. By public transport, YARTS buses connect with Amtrak at Merced and run to Yosemite Valley, where the trails to Half Dome begin.

Plan your visit

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in California 36The Most Beautiful Places in the United States 228The Most Beautiful Mountains in the United States 9The Most Beautiful Natural Wonders in the United States 68The Most Beautiful Mountains 91The Most Beautiful Natural Wonders 580

From the encyclopaedia

Half Dome is a quartz monzonite batholith at the eastern end of Yosemite Valley in Yosemite National Park, California. It is a well-known rock formation in the park, named for its distinct shape. One side is a sheer face while the other three sides are smooth and round, making it appear like a dome cut in half. It stands at over 8,800 feet above sea level and is composed of quartz monzonite, an igneous rock that solidified several thousand feet within the Earth. At its core are the remains of a magma chamber that cooled slowly and crystallized beneath the Earth's surface. The solidified magma chamber was then exposed and cut in half by erosion, therefore leading to the geographic name Half Dome.

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37.74600, -119.53317per Wikidata