Photograph Half Dome from the spot Ansel Adams stood in 1927
In April 1927, Ansel Adams climbed to a ledge above Yosemite Valley with a glass-plate camera, a heavy pack, and only a couple of plates left. He fitted a red filter, waited, and made the photograph he later called Monolith, the Face of Half Dome. The ledge is real, and it is still there, near a granite outcrop called the Diving Board on the valley rim. There is no trail sign or railing, just a rough route through boulders and manzanita that most maps mark as unmaintained. The rock has not moved in ninety-odd years. Your knees will remember the twelve hundred metres of climb before the rock does.
Practical
- Cost
- $35 per vehicle (park entry)
- Best time
- Late June to early October, once the high trail is free of snow
- Difficulty
- Hard
- Time it takes
- Full day, roughly 10–14 hours car to car
- What people get wrong
- People underestimate the unmaintained upper section past Illilouette Creek, which has no signage and requires route-finding over granite slabs; they also start too late in the day and run out of daylight or water, since there is none past the last creek crossing.
- With
- Alone