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The Ascent of Half Dome

No one conquers Half Dome; Tissiack lets you pass.

—Rick Deutsch

Since the whites entered the valley in 1851, they dreamed of getting to the top of Half Dome. There are no indications that any Native Americans ever made it to the top. In 1869 Josiah Whitney, the chief geologist for California, looked up and said, Half Dome is “perfectly inaccessible, being probably the only one of all the prominent points about the Yosemite which never has been, and never will be, trodden by human foot.”

Many early settlers attempted to scale the 45-degree back side of Half Dome, including James Hutchings and Charles Weed in 1859. They brought Weed’s photography gear but were unable to ascend the steep mountain. In the early 1870s John Muir’s climbing buddy, expert climber George Bayley, also tried with the same result. This shows the difficulty of the task; Bayley was later the first to reach the top of Mount Starr King. Perhaps John Conway’s sons got the closest. In September 1873 Conway, who also later crafted many trails at Yosemite, had his young sons attempt the feat. Led by 9-year-old Major Conway, the lizardlike boys, as described by John Muir, scrambled barefoot up the rock and inserted steel rods into cracks to which they attached a rope. Major reached an elevation of about 300 feet above the saddle, but father John mercifully called him back when he reached a steep point where he could find no projection to attach the rope.

It was just five years after Whitney’s proclamation that George Anderson, a Scottish immigrant and former sailor, set out to top the mountain. Third-party accounts and writings years after the event have blurred the facts, but we believe Anderson quietly set up his work area in a small cabin he built nearby (the location has not been discovered but is believed to have been near a stream on the east side of the current Half Dome trail). Another cabin, where Anderson later lived at Foresta, is now on display at the Pioneer Yosemite History Center in Wawona.

George Anderson’s cabin at the foot of Half Dome; credit: The Pacific Rural Press, 1881.

Working alone, he brought his forging station up and crafted dozens of 7-inch iron eyebolts on-site.

Anderson ascended Sub Dome and began his quest using remnants of the Conway rope. He pulled himself up as far as he could safely manage. Using a method called single jacking, he held a chisel and hit it with a hammer to drill shallow holes (about 0.5 inch wide and 6 inches deep) into the granite.

He slid small wooden pegs into the holes and then hammered in the eyelet spikes. They were placed about 5 feet apart. Next, he attached a rope to the eyelet and himself in case of a fall. He had to balance himself and stand on one spike to drill the hole for the next spike above. Each spike only stuck out about 2 inches. Up and up he went, building a crude ladder with about 40 of these eyebolts. Occasionally, some irregularity in the curve of the rock or slight foothold would enable him to free-climb 20 or so feet independently of the rope. He progressed more than 450 feet up the sloping granite, belayed only by the rope he tied to the spikes.

Once his spikes and pilot rope were in place, he returned to the valley to rig up a more sturdy rope. He modified a 900-foot-long rope by knotting five strands together with a sixth strand and a 3-inch sailor’s knot a foot apart to allow a hand-over-hand traverse. This was a convenient space for future climbers to grasp as they made the ascent. Anderson used his mule to haul the new rope up to his cabin, and he carried it to the top using the spike ladder. He tied one end to the uppermost spike and slowly uncoiled and attached the rope to the eyelets with lashings. Although it was a crude device, it worked. At 3 p.m. on October 12, 1875, he erected a crude flagstaff and stood on top of Half Dome, “waving the starry flag of his adopted homeland,” according to the Mariposa Gazette.

During all this, his shoes proved to be too slick, so he tried wearing just his socks, and then he wore bags coated with pine pitch tied below his knees; however, the pine pitch was too sticky to allow progress. He then tried wearing moccasins with pine pitch only on the soles. This technique appeared to work best and enabled him to adhere firmly to the smooth granite. But again, while the pitch prevented him from slipping, it also required great effort to move his feet and almost proved fatal several times. He settled on barefoot. Think of the pain of standing on 2 inches of the spike while balancing and hitting a sledgehammer to drill another hole. Pure determination. The way to the 13-acre summit was now in place. We don’t know exactly how long all this took Anderson; estimates of a month seem reasonable. Each day he would work long and hard, and then return to his cabin area to forge new spikes and sharpen his chisel.

In the valley, Anderson’s absence had been noticed and there was concern. A search party was sent up to look for him. On the trail near Nevada Fall, Anderson encountered the men and informed them he had reached the summit. The news quickly spread.

In the days following, he escorted several English tourists up the mountain. Soon after, he took up Galen Clark and Sally Dutcher, who became the first woman to climb to the top.

John Muir is believed to have been the ninth person on Half Dome. Muir later wrote of his November 10, 1875, experience in his books The Mountains of California and The Yosemite, as well as the November 18, 1875, edition of San Francisco’s Daily Evening Bulletin, excerpted below:

On my return to the valley the other day I immediately hastened to the Dome, not only for the pure pleasure climbing in view, but to see what else I might enjoy and learn. Our first winter storm had bloomed and all the mountains were mantled in fresh snow. I was therefore a little apprehensive of danger from slipperyness of the rock, Anderson himself refusing to believe that any one could climb his rope in the condition it was then in…. I therefore pushed up alone and gained the top without the slightest difficulty. My first view was perfectly glorious. A massive cloud of a pure pearl lustre was arched across the valley, from wall to wall, the one end resting upon El Capitan, the other on Cathedral Rocks, the brown meadows shadowed beneath, with short reaches of the river shimmering in changeful light. Then, as I stood on the tremendous verge overlooking Mirror Lake, a flock of smaller clouds, white as snow, came swiftly from the north, trailing over the dark forests, and arriving on the brink of the valley descended with godlike gestures through Indian Canyon and over the Arches and North Dome, moving rapidly, yet with perfect deliberation…. I have always discouraged as much as possible every project for laddering the South Dome, believing it would be a fine thing to keep this garden untrodden. Now the pines will be carved with the initials of Smith and Jones, and the gardens strewn with tin cans and bottles, but the winter gales will blow most of this rubbish away, and avalanches may strip off the ladders; and then it is some satisfaction to feel assured that no lazy person will ever trample these gardens.

Anderson’s feat planted the seeds of the big-wall climbing mecca that Yosemite has become. His climb marked the debut of bolt placements in the American climbing scene. It opened an inaccessible mountain to many Yosemite visitors and made Half Dome a destination for hiking and climbing enthusiasts from all over the world.

Yet Anderson did not rest on his laurels. He presented the idea of building a wooden staircase to the Yosemite Board of Commissioners. They set aside $2,000 for the project, but nothing came of it. Anderson even talked of building a steam-powered tram to take his guests to the top.

In the months that followed, others tried Anderson’s route. However, the elements took their toll on the rope until it became unusable in a few years.

In the spring of 1884 Anderson died of pneumonia and was buried under a granite rock in the park cemetery. With Anderson gone, the hope was that “some venturesome member of the English Alpine Club should come along and have the goodness to replace it,” as Alden Sampson wrote in a letter to author James M. Hutchings. Enter two true cowboys of the era, Sampson and A. Phimister Proctor. They arrived at Yosemite in search of fishing and relaxation and a try at going up Half Dome. When they heard that a Brit was being sought to replace the rope, Sampson said: “This aspect of the matter, I must own, galled our pride; and the more we thought it over the less we liked this solution of the difficulty. Should we, forsooth, wait for foreign sinew to scale for us a peak of the American Sierras? Not if it lay in our power to prevent so humiliating a favor!”

After a short rest below Nevada Fall, at La Casa Nevada hotel, they rode their horses up the trail and arrived at Sub Dome to survey the situation. They saw that most of the original Anderson spikes had come out, making it difficult to ascend the smooth, steep sides. Being skilled cowboys, they used a rope to lasso higher spikes and rock holds. Proctor took the lead. The technique was to lasso a spike and then pull himself up. Amazingly, he did this barefoot because his cob nail boots were cutting in. Showing immense strength, he then did a jackknife to put his toe on the spike and worked his hand out. He would then lean precariously into the rock. All went well until they approached a bare stretch of a hundred feet, where every pin had been carried away. Gently clutching shrubs 8 inches high, the two gingerly hugged the rock. After many tries, Proctor finally snagged a rock edge and pulled himself up. They then were able to bring up their rope and secure it. Half Dome was open once more! However, the Proctor-Sampson rope also suffered from the harsh winters and soon became unusable. A replacement rope was installed by Thomas Magee Jr. and Stewart Rawlings in 1895, but it also frayed. Ropes put up in 1901 and later were successful to varying degrees.

A. Phimister Proctor; courtesy A. Phimister Proctor Museum

A. Phimister Proctor went on to become a world-class bronze sculptor. His focus was on life-size animal- and western-themed monumental designs. His Teddy Roosevelt and buckaroo renderings are among my favorites. The Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming, houses many of Proctor’s artworks, and the Proctor Museum in Seattle continues to preserve his legacy.

Vintage photo of the single rope system; courtesy of the Yosemite Research Library, NPS

Looking for attractions to draw tourists to his Camp Curry, David Curry pressed for an easier route to the top. In 1910 the Sierra Club placed a single rope down Half Dome’s slope and removed the older ropes.

Ascents continued off and on, depending on the condition of the rope. On August 7, 1915, Arthur “A. C.” Pillsbury led a group of 17 young Stanford students (including 6 women) up the back side of Half Dome. They used the rope remnants from previous explorers, their own rope, and a few of the George Anderson spikes that were still present from his first ascent in 1875. The group improved the route by placing a new half-inch Manila rope from top to bottom. Pillsbury snapped photos and motion pictures on top. He reportedly was suspended by rope to take some of the photos. Pillsbury was a Stanford graduate who had a studio in Yosemite. In his career, he invented key photographic tools, including the circuit panorama, the time-lapse, the microscopic motion picture, the X-ray motion picture, and the underwater motion picture cameras.

Construction of the Cable Route