Facing Fear on Half Dome

When I saw them, I felt all the blood drain from my body. A pile of worn gloves laid at their feet. The twin cables ran seemingly straight up the sheer face of Half Dome. Running nearly 500 feet, the cables are the sole route to hike to Half Dome’s summit. The park service cheerily advises that “only a few people have fallen to their deaths” from the cables.

Continued from Part 7: Sunrise to Clouds Rest.

Ninety miles of hiking has come to this: the ascent of Half Dome. My ninth day on the trail began with loud voices, as the first of the day’s hikers partied their way up the trail near my campsite. It was about 5 a.m. I wanted to lie in the hammock some more, but it was time to go. I prepared my daypack the night before, so I was on the trail before sunrise. As it stood, I was just 1.75 miles, but nearly 1,800 vertical feet, from the summit. I was ahead of the crowds, as planned. The crown jewel of this grand trip was underway.

The trail climbs quickly through the trees on the southern slope of the mighty dome, which revealed itself only fleetingly. The trail turns west and follows the curve of Half Dome’s northeast shoulder. After a mile (and 700 feet of climbing) I arrived at a spectacular viewpoint at 6 o’clock.

From there, the deep gash of Tenaya was still dark, and lofty Clouds Rest stood beneath the clouds, themselves painted shades of pink, purple, and orange by the rising sun. The summit is the rounded ridge to the left, upon which it appears the clouds are resting before the new day rouses them to take flight.

I stayed at that point for about 15 minutes, watching the shadow slowly fade from the forests and granite laid about the mountain like some great Christmas tree skirt adorned with gray gifts. The clouds began to whiten while beams of the sun’s light struck the higher, east-facing peaks. Alpenglow was beginning to show on my destination. I dashed higher, hoping to find a viewpoint to see it clearly. I found one.

From this vantage point, the lower dome (about 0.4 miles away) remains in shadow. To reach the saddle between it and the final pitch to the summit, the trail takes a steep, 500-plus-foot climb up a wicked series of 423 steps — yes, I counted them — and an exposed granite slab dotted with tiny, gnarled trees. I reached the first step at 6:20 a.m. As I climbed the 423 leading up Half Dome’s shoulder, rays of sun danced across the arched face of Mount Watkins, spilling into dark Tenaya Canyon below.

The crowns of Mount Hoffman and Tuoloume Peak were already aglow from the rising sun, while the morning clouds began to disappear. The play of light and shadow upon the vast granite face of Mount Watkins and its cloak of trees evoked Tolkein’s imagined Middle Earth, vast and wild, fantastic yet grounded, and real.

Just when the steps were getting tiresome, they disappeared altogether. The last step ends at a shallow, sand-filled depression with no obvious place to step next. For five minutes, I was stymied by what path I should take, believing that there were additional steps just out of view. Yet the surrounding granite was hopelessly tilted in ways that made me queasy. I scanned up the steep slope, now in bright, contrast-less sunlight, and it appeared sheer and scary. Way up, beyond some scattered stunted pines, was a jumble of boulders beside some low scrubby plants. Upon the highest boulder was a trail duck. The path is a simple one: head straight up.

Warily, I climbed up onto a granite slab, noticing the remnants of a metal pole that once stood there. Perhaps a sign, or a handhold, or the attachment of a chain — whatever it was, it’s long gone. At times on all fours, I headed up, careful not to look down, zig-zagging across the granite from “safe” place to “safe place”: a crack, a slab raised above the rest, a tree, a less titled spot, until I reached the trail duck. The whole dizzying ascent, including picture-taking, catching breaths, finding my way, and summoning the courage to take it, had consumed 25 minutes. For a second, I admired how quickly I had climbed nearly 500 feet. Instead of being tired, my nine of days of backpacking had given me some stronger legs. The glow of that accomplishment vanished fast.

Out of all the hours and months and years I had planned this trip — reading guidebooks, scanning maps, perusing photos, visiting web sites — only one thing evoked nightmares and cold sweat. Not bears, or snakes, or lightning, or rockfalls, or snow, or stream crossings. These things were not to be feared (appreciated and approached with caution, yes), but now the object of fear stood between me and my goal. The second my eyes spied The Cables, I felt the blood drain from my body, down through the smooth granite upon which my now rubbery legs stood, and flowed deep into the earth, never to be recovered.

I approached, descending from the hump along a narrowing saddle to the base of the cables. There were three people upon them. One, a guy, had left a second, a woman, behind and was hastily rising to the top. The woman was sitting in as close to a fetal position as one can get into in and not tumble from the slope, sobbing quietly. The third, another woman, was climbing up to her. She was perhaps 75 feet up, unable to go on. She descended uneasily as her friend climbed on up. She later told me she was part of a group of 10 or so, and they were all on top. “There’s no shame in not getting to the top,” she said, and she started climbing the hump to a higher vantage point, from which she shouted encouragements to her friend.

There was a pile of gloves at the base of the cables, just below a sign warning of the danger of lightning. I pulled the gloves — golfing gloves, actually — I’d brought for this task from my little backpack and put them on over my sweating hands. I stood now, inside the cables, as they begin flush to the rock, rising slowly until they reach the first of many pairs of poles. I looked up at where I had to go.

I looked again at my Footjoy gloves. “May they grip the cables better than my driver,” I muttered, and, with a forced breath, I summoned the courage to begin my ascent. The cables rose to just below hip height and the slope steepened. I was the only person going up or down. The cables were surprisingly loose; my weight upon them dropped them nearly a foot closer to the rock. My boots, which I bought specifically because of their grip on granite surfaces, struggled to maintain full contact with the heavily worn mountain. I passed the first couple of 2×4′s, which lie across the route at most (but not all) of the pole pairs. I didn’t want to think about what became of the missing poles.

About 45 feet up — less than 1/10th of the way — my left boot slid, and the cable buckled under my weight. I frantically locked my grip upon the right cable and stomped my foot back upon the rock. With a stretch, I let go of the left cable and re-took it several feet higher up. What little courage I had left fled, and I found myself alone, frightened, and exposed upon the most famous mountain in the park. No one was shouting encouragement for me, and no one would’ve seen if anything happened. I swallowed hard. I made it up to the next 2×4 and stopped. And I could go no further.

Nevermind that I had come all this way, and hiked 90 miles, and faced lightning and hail (twice) and a bear and snakes and rushing rivers and ice and failed gear and lost sticks and uncertain routes and tricky creek crossings and boulder hops and narrow summits and those damn stairs and that scary granite slab and had passed all those tests. Nevermind I was several days and many miles beyond my longest solo backpacking trek and had managed all the transportation connections and summoned the strength to do much of what I’d planned.

No, that one slip, and the buckling of the cable, and my own frantic effort to right my listing body, only 45 feet from where I started, not even 1/10th of the way up and nowhere near the steepest part of the route, that was enough. My mind pictured me slipping and sliding much higher up. As I looked up, the cables just disappear over the hump. Fear without end. I swallowed hard again, turned around, tucked my tail between my legs before it struck the rock, and headed for the bottom, practically holding my breath at every step until the cables touched the rock, and I was back on terra firma.

I sat on a rock about 50 feet from the cables’ anchors and thought about my predicament. This was to be the crown jewel of the trip. In fact, the route was set up so that it would be a final triumph, practically a life statement, and now I sat humbled by a challenge which seemed greater than I could handle. Though I had been solo for almost all of this trip, I never felt so alone as that moment. I could go no further. I closed my eyes and once again called upon my courage, and it hid when I opened them, and saw the terrible obstacle again. I took off my pack, pulled off my gloves, and put them away. Defeated, I turned and walked up the slope to the hump, and I didn’t turn back until I reached its round top.

There would be no summit walk today. No grand achievement. No crown jewel. No photo from the top, standing on the summit nose with a sheer drop all around. No GPS track or waypoint from the summit. Nothing that said I climbed Half Dome. I looked at it one last time, and then headed down the fearful granite slabs to the bent-over tree which marked the end of the steps, then trudged down all 423 of them, careful not to peer away from them, lest I would see the dizzying height and angle I was at.

Once off the stairs, I felt better. The crowing achievement was the whole of this trip. I didn’t do everything I came to do, but I still had done more than I’d ever pushed myself to do, and done it mostly alone. Clouds Rest, a higher peak, would be the literal and figurative high point of the trip. I explored the lower saddle, beneath the massive climb I dubbed the “hump,” looking for some cool views that most visitors would miss. Virtually every hiker to pass this area sticks to the trail, which follows the ridge to the bottom of a set of stairs, either because they are eager to reach the summit or return to the trailhead.

The stairs head up the hump, following the criss-crossed cuts in the granite before reaching those little trees, which look like they’re on top from this vantage point. As for the summit, here it appears as two distinct noses. The higher, and closer, one is the true summit. The other one is the famous place to stand on, as it’s a sheer drop down to the Valley from there, and a very photogenic one indeed.

About an hour had passed since my slip on the cables. I had explored the side of the hump overlooking Tenaya Canyon and offering tantalizing views of the north rim of Yosemite Valley. I trekked across the granite to see if the other side offered good views of Little Yosemite Valley and the peaks south. As I crossed the trail, I saw two hikers coming up. They looked familiar.

Joel and Scott, two of the guys who let me share their campfire at Sunrise Lake, called out to me. “You summit already?” Scott asked. “How is it up there?” Joel asked.
I looked down at the ground. “I didn’t make it up,” I replied sheepishly. “I chickened out on the cables.”

Joel grabbed my shoulder. “Come on! We’re going up!” Off we went, a renewed energy flowing through my every step, bound for the summit of Half Dome.

Continues in Part 9: Triumph Atop Half Dome.

The complete trip report:
Part 1: Yosemite Valley and Glacier Point Dayhikes
Part 2: Porcupine and Yosemite Creeks
Part 3: Entering Yosemite’s Grand Canyon
Part 4: Walking Among the Waterfalls
Part 5: Glen Aulin to Cathedral Lakes
Part 6: The Tempest
Part 7: Sunrise to Clouds Rest
Part 8: Facing Fear on Half Dome
Part 9: Triumph Atop Half Dome
Part 10: The Final Miles
Part 11: From Woods to Wharves
Part 12: The Streets of San Francisco
Part 13: Muir Woods and Foggy Shores

Potentially related posts:

• Half Dome
• Half Dome From Little Yosemite Valley
• Half Dome Cables
• Heading Down From Half Dome
• Morning Alpenglow on Half Dome
• Half Dome and El Capitan
• Yosemite Valley From Half Dome