Mountain · United States
Half Dome
Half Dome is a giant granite rock in Yosemite National Park, USA, rising 2,696 metres tall. It looks exactly like its name: a huge dome that seems sliced cleanly in half.
Picture credit: Jon Sullivan (Public domain) · lamblukas (CC BY 2.0) · Eric Kilby (CC BY-SA 2.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Half Dome?
Half Dome is part of the Sierra Nevada.
You will find it in: United States.
Summit: 37.746° N, 119.533° W
The story behind it
Half Dome is made of solid granite that cooled slowly deep underground millions of years ago, then was uncovered as the rock above it eroded away, and later carved into its dramatic curved shape by huge glaciers grinding past during past ice ages, not actually sliced in half as its name suggests. Long before tourists arrived, the Ahwahneechee people who lived in Yosemite Valley considered the rock sacred and told stories explaining its unusual shape. For decades it was thought impossible to climb, until a Scottish sailor named George Anderson drilled a line of iron eyebolts up its steep back slope in 1875 and became the first person to reach the summit. Today thousands of hikers each year use steel cables bolted to that slope for the final, extremely steep climb to the top, a route so popular that Yosemite now limits daily permits.
Find it on the globe
Half Dome is there as a small peak with its own shape — a horn, a ridge, a volcano — standing on the surface. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
How tall is Half Dome?
Half Dome stands 2,696 metres above sea level, rising about 1,450 metres above the floor of Yosemite Valley below it, a dramatic wall of solid granite.
Where is Half Dome?
Half Dome is in Yosemite National Park in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, USA, overlooking Yosemite Valley, a short hike from the valley floor.
Is Half Dome really cut in half?
No, it just looks that way. Its steep, flat face was carved mostly by ancient glaciers grinding past, not by the rock actually splitting in two.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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