The Half Dome Nighttime Rock Climb

On the night of August 1-2, 2025, I organized another nighttime Yosemite photoshoot with Griff Joyce. On previous trips, he got 50 of his friends to hike up the Half Dome cables at sunset and descend in the dark in celebration of his 50th birthday, in addition to other adventures. This time, Griff and and Justin Leech rock climbed up Snake Dike, which is on the opposite side of Half Dome from the cables that hikers use. Four photographers with a total of 11 cameras spread out to document the climb. I was at Glacier Point, Kurt Lawson took position at Eagle Peak, Matthew Saville was on the JMT near Nevada Falls, and David Hunter scrambled up Mt. Broderick. We coordinated with two-way radios. The climbers started climbing at 9:30 PM and arrived to the top five hours later at about 2:30 AM. They reached the valley floor well after sunrise. While Griff and Justing were climbing, Mark Vierra and his daughter Kelli hiked down the Four Mile Trail from Glacier Point to the valley floor, creating another light trail.

The resulting video is below:

 

I had a continus stream of people walking past me at Glacier Point until about 1 AM. Many of them were confused why I was running four cameras at once. Below are my resulting still photos. Clicking on the photos will take you to Flickr, where more information about each can be found.

 

Shot with a Sigma 15mm f/1.4 fisheye loaned to us by Sigma. This lens was crazy sharp!

 

A behind-the-scenes photo of my cameras at Glacier Point. They were tight together because I was crowded by hundreds of people at sunset, some of whom were annoyed at me taking up even this much space.

 

Below are the photos taken by Kurt from Eagle Peak:

We got lucky with someone ascending from their climb up the Royal Arches (on the left side) and someone else hiking up Sentinel Dome (in the top right) in the middle of the night. Mark and Kelli produced the excellent trail down the Four Mile Trail.

 

Unlike the other photos on this page, this one was edited by Kurt.

 

 

This was Matthew's view from the John Muir Trail just below Nevada Falls. Surprisingly, no one hiked past him during the night.

 

David had a rough time finding the route up Mt. Broderick. He kept cliffing out. As a result, he nearly missed the start of the climb. Fortunately, he managed to summit Broderick get some good views too. We chose this location because it placed Polaris, the North Star, directly over Half Dome.

 

As always, prints and timelapse video licensing are available for purchase.