Snake Dike to the top of Half Dome - any climbers dream. Mark Phagan first made me aware of this route in 2002, and we quickly decided that it had to be on the to-do list for 2003. With the reputation of being a minor climb in a major hike and with a nickname like "Snake Hike", both of us were weary about the hike in. Luckily Dan Zimmerlin planned on doing this hike with Josephine. I quickly decided to tag along and got Mark with me.
With an early wakeup call at 5:00 am and leaving camp at around 5:20 we felt that we had a fairly early start. With a few people passing us we got a little concerned that we weren't the only climbers with an early start, but the few people that passed us turned out to be hikers. The hike itself is fairly strenuous in the beginning, and Mark struggled early on. Maybe the altitude or just getting early up in the morning got to him. In any case we were not making as good time as we were hoping, but Mark brave as always struggled on. Hiking can be dangerous and hiking in the dark is that much more dangerous. This was unfortunately well illustrated by a party of several women that after just passing us had one of their members break an ankle. She just stumbled and landed in bad way. Unfortunately I had not added the Vicodin to my emergency pack. It is now... This incident made us maybe step a bit more careful as we made our way up. Dan decided to take a slightly longer but easier route.
Finally up at Vernal Falls we got a great view of the route.
Dan then led us safely into the climbers trail up the start of the route. You should be passing the Lost Lakes and then head up to start a traverse that goes left on a ledge (sort of). When you are traversing aim for two big (seemingly) dead trees.
We arrived at the base of the climb at around 11 am, much later than we were hoping for. Mark was very drained at this point in time, so Dan made a Leaders decision. He would go back down with Mark and Josephine and I would climb together. This was very hard for all of us, but it was the right decision.
