The Wandering Hart

Last year my husband and I got great news: our friends won the lottery for Half Dome! It’s every California hikers dream! Well, except if you’re a Californian hiker who is mildly scared of everything and has little to no upper body strength. My first thought of course was, “oh no, can I make it up that?!?”

But I didn’t want to lose out on an opportunity to do something amazingly cool! So I researched and I prepped and in the end I had an amazing trip and successfully summited Half Dome. I’ll always be so proud of that moment and in the interest of helping others do the same, here are my top tips for making it up in one piece:

1. Don’t do it all in one day! Honestly if you have any ability to camp or backpack I’d highly recommend getting the backpacking pass to camp overnight in Little Yosemite Valley. Specifically, I’d recommend hiking in on day 1, doing Half Dome on day 2, and hiking back out on day 3. This allows you to rest up after the first half, leave all your stuff somewhere safe while you do Half Dome, and most importantly beat the crowds! Which leads me to my next tip.
2. Get to the cables early. If you get to the cables by 8am you have a much better shot at being able to go up and down with minimal interruptions and even being able to leverage both sides of the cables most of the way! Of course, this is way easier to do if you backpack in and stay overnight the night prior. By 10am the cables will start to get packed and it’s way more stressful with a ton of people going up and down at the same time!
3. Bring gloves. Hopefully this one isn’t news to most people but you will not be able to go up the cables without gloves — you would destroy your hands! Coated gardening gloves will work fine.
4. Get yourself used to using just one side. My biggest mistake going up was that I wasn’t prepping myself for the way down! When we were going up it wasn’t crowded and I could use both sides of the cables at all times. On the way down people were also coming up — I would have felt so much more confident if I had practiced a few parts going up using just one cable.

Other than those tips, I’ve had some people ask if I recommend clipping in. Honestly, I don’t unless you’re going with children or something. Clipping in will make the whole process take way longer and if you’re at all scared will give you more moments to freak out.

Overall if you get the chance to go, do it! It was an amazing experience!