Half Dome

Yosemite National Park, California

The iconic Half Dome is one of the most amazing mountainous features I have ever seen.  The dome and other domes in the National Park were created by intrusions of magma millions of years ago.  During Ice Age, Half Dome was carved by a glacier that carved its way through the canyon.  Generally there are two ways up Half Dome.  The first is up its huge granite face.  This has long been the mecca of climbers from across the world.  For many it can take days and for some of the elite hours.  Some like Alex Honnold even do it without a rope.  The other way up Half Dome is a long hike culminating with a climb up the "cables".  The cables as seen in the photos below, allow the hiker to pull themselves up the granite dome utilizing cable anchors.  By yourself, this can be scary, but add a line of very scared and relatively inexperienced hikers to the equation, and the cable climb (and descent) can be quite frightening. The scariest moments on the cables were listening to some of the people on them talk about how they couldn't go on or down despite being halfway up.  It took a great deal of focus to get the idea out of my mind of one of them falling on me and bringing me down and others too.  The great thing is that everyone up there was super helpful, courteous, and encouraging and almost as a team formed 10-min in the past, we got each other up. Amy had on an alpine harness and clipped into the cable with a sling and carabiner for some piece of mind.