A February Ascent of Yosemite’s Most Famous Dome
By John P. DeGrazio
On Thursday I had an opportunity to do something I’ve never done before in Yosemite, summit Half Dome in February. After carefully selecting a group of friends, we set off on our journey from the trailhead parking lot. We were so confident we’d be back in about 8 hours, but something happened along the way. We were having too much fun. We spent an extended period of time on the summit celebrating several milestones including a birthday, a first winter ascent for 3 team members, and my first February climb up the cables. This is significant for me because I have now been atop Half Dome in every calendar month. When I took this photo of Pat descending the cables, I didn’t realize how much I liked the image. This was the day before the great storm of 2015 so the clouds were dancing all around us.
Here are some other panoramas from the day including one from a place I call Motivation Point and two other from the summit. This day confirmed many of my feelings about friendship & teamwork and also helped us all realize how fortunate we are to live in such an extraordinary place. To have the ability to wake up and take a short drive to hike Half Dome is is one of the great benefits of living in the Sierra Nevada as well as finding solitude in the beautiful wilderness.
Contact us soon if you want to join us for a Half Dome hike and take your own dramatic photographs. The permit lottery begins in March.
