Another View of Half Dome

The sun had set behind the mountains and darkness crept through the sequoias at our campsite.

We already had the tent set up and I had turned my headlamp on so I could begin writing the tale of our ascent of Half Dome some hours earlier.

As I began scratching out the opening sentences, Andrew walked over to me with a funny expression on his face.

“I wonder what it’s like up there right now?”

I paused.

It would have been easy to shut down the idea with a laugh and then get back to writing.

Instead, I considered.

Half an hour later, we were going up the trail. Our headlamps were off to save battery. The dark gave a solemn feeling to the hike, less that it was an adventure, more that it was a pilgrimage. We spoke few words as we navigated the patches of moonlight and the shadows.

Occasionally, I’d glance up and see the starscape through the branches. Beyond them, the silhouetted form of Half Dome stabbed into the sky.

The orange sliver of the moon sank low over the mountains as we climbed the steps up the sub-dome. Soon that small source of light was gone and a mist of stars appeared in its place.

There was no stairway to those heavens, but there were the two steel cables climbing up the rock toward the summit.

We grabbed some bread and water at the base. A cold wind blew over our position on the exposed rock. I put my parka on.

Climbing up the rock in the dark was not so different from climbing in the daytime. One difference was that Andrew and I had given away the gloves we had used earlier to some Dome-bound hikers. I had my thinner cotton cloves on in lieu of the rubber padding I had earlier and so I had to grip the cable a bit harder. Andrew was barehanded.

Another difference I noticed hiking in the dark, was that I had to pay more attention for the ledges that would appear in front of me all of a sudden.

 At the top, our view of the stars was mirrored by the twinkling orange lights in Yosemite Valley a mile below our feet, and then the further lights of distant towns. It was strange and wonderful, but not a place we wanted to linger long.

Going down the cables proved to be far more worrisome than it had been in the daylight hours. We spent about 10 minutes just looking for them in the dark. Finally, we got our grips and started back down again. I was in front, watching Andrew's headlamp up above me. Looking down wasn’t optional here; I regularly swung my headlamp over the smooth rock below me so that I could look out for cable switches and ledges. My hands were beginning to tire from the effort of maintaining their grip. I would turn my headlamp around expecting to see the bottom only to see it fade away in the darkness.

The batteries were getting weaker too, shrinking the scope of the visible world around me.

As I began to feel my nerves creeping in, I thought of the Arioso by Bach. Letting the gentle melody loop through my head was a comfort and helped me keep a clinical view of the situation.

Come on. Let’s finish this. I thought. The cable seemed to have grown twice as long. It occurred to me that this could be some kind of elaborate afterlife punishment — descending forever in the darkness, always expecting a bottom that never comes.

It was a disturbing thought. But then, my foot came across a familiar ridge of stone and I knew I didn’t have far to go. The end of the cables appeared before my headlamp. I lowered myself the final dozen feet and let go of the cable. I turned around to look up into the stars.

A single headlamp beam moved against the other lights, descending toward solid ground.