On July 5th, 2015 climbers on the Regular Northwest Face Route (5.9 C1, 2000’) on Half Dome noticed the route had changed and was now essentially unclimbable. At some point in the first few days of July, a 2,500 ton chunk of granite fell off of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park in California. And nobody noticed.
That’s right – approximately 5 million pounds of rock measuring 200 feet fell off of one of the world’s most iconic mountains and climbing meccas in the middle of a storm during one of the year’s busy holidays (July 4th), and nobody knows what happened. It’s crazy.
The 90 million year old rock shed a huge slab of granite during the thunderstorm, which is why the falling rock may have been mistaken for thunder. Still the entire thing is a bit mysterious.
The massive rock failure occurred just above pitch 11 – taking out all of pitch 12. At this point, Outside Online claims that the only way to connect pitch 11 to pitch 13 is with a 5.11c finger crack and it will require a bolt ladder. There seems to be no change to the lower 10 pitches. Alpinist.com claims the rockfall removed half of Pitch 10 and all of Pitch 11. They also have an image of the route. Either way, it has drastically changed a classic climbing route.
Climbing Yosemite seems to have the most detailed photos of the change.
Park officials say there has been more rockfall recently than in years past. Rockfall like this has happened before and it will happen again. No injuries have been reported.
It will be exciting to see how this natural event changes Half Dome’s climbing future.
Read more about the Rock Fall on Half Dome:
- Alpinist
- Outside Online
- Climbing
- Wired
- Yosemite Climbing Information
- Yosemite National Park Rockfall Information
- Reuters
- SnowBrains
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UPDATE: 7/17: Read an interview with climber’s who discovered the missing rock on SuperTopo.com.
