Half Dome- Yosemite

I just got back from my trip out to California, and on June 9th, my friend and i hiked Half Dome as part of our 2 and a half days in Yosemite park. We arrived at the happy isles parking area at around 7:45 in the morning and planned on hiking the mist trail to check out vernal falls and nevada falls, which would be about a 6 mile hike and 2000 foot elevation gain. it looked to be an easy hiking day due to the fact that my partner had a little cough/sickness. So we started up the trail, and it went up pretty quickly into the ravine at the end of yosemite valley and before long we came to vernal fall. The mist trail is just as it sounds, it is a wet trail that skirts the cliffline around the waterfalls. A lot of people were wearing trashbags or rain coats as they were hiking to keep dry. So we went up over vernal falls and that lead to a lookout directly over the falls, which was a nice view straight down. We then climbed up and over Nevada falls next, which was also large and impressive, and lots of water as well with all of the snow melting up in the high country. At the top of the falls, we connected with the john muir trail which leads to half dome. We were only 4.5 miles from the top of half dome, so we decided to start walking that way and see how far we would make it.
As it turns out, the half dome hike from the parking lot is over 17 miles long and about 4800 vertical feet. So we kept walking the john muir trail for a while on mostly flat ground, which was a relief since the first few miles went up 2000 feet. After a mile and a half or so we came to the high country campground and started seeing a lot more traffic from the people who had camped out overnight. We started going up a gradual grade for the next couple miles and then came out to a clearing at tree line and saw the end of the hike. it was two massive slabs of granite sticking straight up into the air! my first thought was, how do we get up there? and where's the elevator? After another 15 minutes of climbing, we got almost to the top, but the cables were down for repair, so we settled for almost the top. there were a few brave/insane people that went to the top without the assistance of the cables, which in case you do not know, the cables are a few ropes strung up that help you get to the top by holding on to them for balance. so, at that point we descended to treeline and checked out the view while i ate a box of cookies and a hunk of cheese for lunch. after my legs stopped shaking, we headed down the mt, and had a nice quite hike until we hit nevada fall again. all of a sudden there were about 300 tourists that had shown up to check out the waterfalls, the place looked like a zoo. we had a nice leisurely stroll down the john muir trail to the bottom and talked to a nice guy from monterrey for a while, which was our next destination. the 17 mile hike turned out to be not as hard as i thought it would be, it took about 4 hours to go up and 3 to go down, and the legs didn't feel too bad the next day. here are some of the pics http://eshare.hpphoto.com/en/home/welcome.asp?JobID=32bc46a0-54fa-448f-9bf5-1ce0f8ddd1dc

King Tut -
Nice report and cool pics. I was there about 8-9 years ago and only did tourit hiking to the falls. I am amazed that people hiked to the top of Half Dome and the cables were not there...yikes!! Pictures sure show some strong looking waterfalls...I was there in the late summer and the flow was not nearly that strong.