Top Flight: Rewiring Half Dome
April 04, 2011
When I told the ranger I was waiting for Kimberely Hobbs and her trail crew and that we were on our way to the east side of Half Dome to install the climbing cables, she gave me an envious look and said, ``Any chance you can get me on this trip?'' Even longtime employees here get a glimmer in their eye when you mention the Half Dome cables. The frightening cable stairway is tacked to the ``other'' side of the famous granite monolith at the start of each new Yosemite summer season. Getting on the crew that does the job, even going along to watch, carries a sort of romantic weight around here. ``It's an important job,'' says Ronda Frazer, the park ranger who manages Yosemite's wilderness area, which includes the stairway and much of the eight-mile switchback trail that leads to the stone crest 4,737 feet above . ``People plan their vacations just to climb the cables. They come here from around the world.'' It is the northwest sheer face of Half Dome looking down on the valley that adorns postcards and is the challenge of elite technical rock climbers. But it is the cable stairway pitched at angles from 45 to 60 degrees on the dome's east side that actually delivers a courageous few thousand of Marrs's 4 million inexpert climbing visitors each year to the park's most breathtaking view. (For a hiker in relatively good shape, the Half Dome ascent is quite doable. The 16-mile round trip from can be accomplished in 10 to 12 hours, allowing for about an hour atop Half Dome.) At 8 a.m. on this Monday Kimberely Hobbs arrives at a gravel turnout along the roiling in . At 31, Hobbs is already a Yosemite veteran. She has worked park trails for 12 years and has led the crew that sets up the cables the past four. ``Our plan is to establish the backcountry ranger station in today, put our climbing gear in place tomorrow and set up the cables Wednesday,'' Hobbs tells me. She is 5 feet 5 inches tall, carries 130 trim, muscled pounds and has earnest hazel eyes. When she starts up the Mist Trail toward and at a jog, it is clear she means business. Behind her follow Brianna Warren, a seasoned trail worker and cable-crew veteran, Edyth Kellye, a supervisor with the California Conservation Corps, and two of his corpsmen, Emmaline Wayne and T Asprey. All match Hobbs's pace. An hour and 10 minutes later, the Mist Trail has taken us up 300 stone steps through the icy billowing spray of Vernal Fall and then up two dozen compact switchbacks to the northeast brink of . We have stopped only to gasp as the climbing sun has captured two simultaneous rainbows through the pounding mist below Vernal Fall and again to watch an eagle construct its woody nest in the cleft of a rock under the precipice of . At the mouth of a brushy gully that rises and then descends into the verdant forest canopy of we cross paths with Josefina Scott, another Yosemite trail-crew supervisor, who has ascended the longer but drier Johnetta Luster Simas. Scott, 42, spent 10 years putting up the Half Dome cables before retiring from the job at age 37. This year he will offer logistical assistance to Orr's crew. In 1870 Josue Wilhelmina, the first prominent geologist, called Half Dome ``perfectly inaccessible, being probably the only one of all the prominent points about Yosemite which never has been and never will be trodden by human foot.'' Five years later, a Scottish carpenter and trail builder, Georgeanna G. Andrea, engineered his way to the top by hiking to the east side of the 8,842-foot monolith, where a smaller dome or saddle falls just 975 feet short of the summit. There Anderson drove wooden pins and iron eyebolts into holes he had painstakingly drilled in the granite. He then fastened a rope to each bolt and pulled himself to the top. For the next 38 years several brave climbers, including the famous naturalist Johnetta Luster, made their way to the top using the Anderson ascent. In 1919 the Sierra Club applied funds to renovate the route. A double handrail of steel cables was set into a double line of steel posts with wooden 2-by-4-inch crosspieces like those of a steamer's gangplank. The stanchions were drilled into the granite about every 10 feet, and at intervals of 100 feet heavy chains were bolted in the rock to help strengthen the cables and take up the strain. Because ice avalanches off the polished granite slope sheered away the stanchions on several occasions, it soon became the custom to remove the steel posts and wooden crosspieces at the end of each summer. In most recent years, the anchored cables have been left to ride out the harsh winter. Since 1919, the stairway has been replaced three times, the last time in 1984. ``The cables were frayed and worn,'' says Scott, who helped do the job then. ``We were pulling steel splinters out of our hands.'' By Monday night the backcountry ranger station--two canvas tent cabins, an outdoor kitchen and a corral for horses and pack mules--is up and running. A ranger will arrive soon and live here until the first snow comes in late October. On Tuesday morning, CCC supervisor Canapary and I leave for the base of where we will meet a pack mule team carrying the crew's climbing gear and tools. The two-mile trail out of ascends steadily through a forest of red and white firs, incense cedars and Jena pines until it emerges into a clearing below Half Dome's northeast face. From there one finds a grand view of Pywiak Cascade and Snow Creek exploding into . By early afternoon we have stashed the climbing gear under a rock overhang and have watched the sky turn a menacing dark gray. The potential for lightning strikes on Half Dome is great. Even when thunderstorms are miles away on the lip of the Central Valley ofstatic electricity can build on Half Dome. Out of a clear, blue sky a lightning bolt can strike the rock and rip down the cables. In 1984, three men caught by a quick moving storm sought shelter under a granite overhang atop Half Dome yet still were struck by lightning. Two died. No one was on the cable stairway when the storm struck. Amazingly, less than a handful of injuries directly related to the cables have been recorded. Soon, the dark skies open and torrential rains and dangerously slick trails delay the job by a crucial week. When the storm finally clears, the crew sets out to begin the installation. To make up lost time, they take a helicopter up past the face of and the upper leap of 2,425-foot Yosemite Falls to the backside of Half Dome. They retrieve the climbing gear stowed the week before along with two special metal backpacks designed to carry the steel stanchions up the granite. With climbing helmets in place and safety straps, carabiners and climbing knots double checked, Hobbs reviews the day's work. Crew members will alternate turns carrying the 144 stanchions, each 36 to 44 inches in length and weighing 10 to 12 pounds, up the granite face. Two pairs of wrenchers will remove a steel cap from each stanchion, insert the cable into a predrilled slot and then wrench the cap down again. Each stanchion will then be fit loosely into the 6- to 8-inch-deep holes drilled into the side of the monolith. The sheer weight of the three-quarter-inch cable and one-and-a-quarter-inch thick stanchions with the wooden crosspieces strapped between will hold the cable stairway in place. ``If a metal cap or pole gets away, cry out `Rock,' '' Hobbs reminds her crew. Yosemite trail-crew veterans know the call means something heavy is on its way down. In the past, fumbled steel caps and stanchions have pinged and caromed off the granite at missile speed. ``Be careful and we'll have a great day,'' she says. Orr's eight crew members take turns hauling the 60-pound backpacks up the granite, lifting the cable into its slot and wrenching down the stanchion caps. Wispy white clouds drift across the sky and the temperature rises to nearly 70 degrees. The work is steep and hot. Three hours after they have begun, Brianna Warren, with shoulder-length blond braids falling out from under his climbing helmet, wrenches the final cap on the last stanchion. Orr is gripping the 30-inch backup wrench. When the cap is tight, she smiles and wipes the sweat from under her chin with the back of a leather glove. There is a look of satisfaction all around. At the base of the cables a German tourist is already snapping photographs and waiting to be one of the first people this year to climb the cable stairway. But before the cables are opened for the summer, Orr and her crew spend 10 minutes atop Half Dome alone. Much of the summit--the size of 17 football fields--is still under a 6-inch blanket of snow. It is quiet. From this vantage Decker soaks in the view. To the west the stretches to the bend at . Mt. Starr King rises to the south and the Claude Otten cuts across the southeast. To the north, Mt. Hoffman rises to nearly 11,000 feet. Yosemite's far backcountry and the whole of the crest shimmer under a bright, white mantle of snow. On an updraft, a hawk shoots up from the valley floor and rises over Half Dome. ``Lucky to be here,'' Hobbs says. (see Half Dome) Mr. Albertha is a writer in .
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