Half Dome by Moonlight

First, allow me to state the obvious. Yosemite Valley is beautiful. Breathtakingly beautiful, especially in the wet, tall, green and granite contrast to the open basin and range, the dry, high desert where I spend my time. But Yosemite is also Crowded, crowded, crowded. Campsites were full, backcountry units were full, parking areas were full. That's what I get for living in the middle of nowhere- I forget that when you travel to one of the nations most popular parks- you pretty much have to plan ahead. And we did not.So, although there was a collection of rain clouds holding tight to the Sierra Nevadas, we knew that the moon was almost full, so I suggested that we hike up halfdome in the moonlight instead of fighting the crowds up in the morning. No campsite? No sleep? No problem. We packed up, rain gear, thermals, and lots of chocolate covered coffee beans.

We started the hike at 10, on the last shuttle to the trailhead. Once our eyes adjusted (we were trying to go headlamp-less as much as possible) we made pretty good time up the very first few miles of the John Muir Trail (which I am now making plans to conquer- hopefully next summer) to the first enormous, moonlight-glowing waterfall. We crossed the stream and headed up a long series of steep, rocky steps past the second falls, only tripping occasionally on hidden roots and slippery rocks.

At the top of the falls we could see halfdome rising in the moonlight, and realised that we were way ahead of schedule. There was not much point in arriving at the summit before sunrise, it'd be too cold and windy to hang out long. So we stopped to nap several times, adding layers and cuddling into a 5-way spoon. After about half an hour of rest, we were too cold to continue and had to resume hiking to regain the feeling in our fingers and toes. So we just hiked slowly- enough to stay warm but not get to the top too fast.

We reached the first summit at first light, after another long rocky staircase. Then, the challenge of the tip-top peak appeared before us, two cable handrails climb the last 300-ish vertical feet along a slickrock slope of 50 or 60 degrees. We climbed it, reaching the peak as the sun just barely broke free of the clouds.

We thought that we would be the first ones to the peak, having passed a few other parties with similar, sunrise on the summit plans within the last half mile. I lead the cable climb, and to my surprise, found 4 guys in sleeping bags sipping coffee on the summit. Probably 15 more people followed us up, but the clouds on the horizon were still dark and omnious, so we choose not to linger. The idea of sliding down the already slippery rock in a rainstorm did not appeal, so we headed down.

The sun rose, and burnt off the clouds. About halfway into our victorious hike down, we ran into the first of several huge packs of dayhikers, the trail was literally packed solid with uphill moving hikers by 8 or 9 am. I am SO glad we hiked in the night's solitude.

We reached the park valley in late morning to discover that we still couldn't get a campsite or a backcountry permit, and that my car had been impounded for violating the no visible food in cars bear-protection rule. Reality sucks. Half Dome was awesome.
We got the car back, some pizza, more caffiene, and hit the Tioga rd back east, through some snowflurries and switchbacks until settling in to a campsite at a hot springs just north of mammoth lakes. We went to sleep at 7pm, and it was so worth it.