The Cables Route is the standard day hike up Half Dome. It's an all-day affair and is no joke - particularly in inclement weather conditions. Yet another reminder to be careful out there - even on seemingly easy terrain. Weather can turn even the tamest of routes into a nightmarish epic.
From LA Times:
Late Saturday afternoon, when Manoj Kumar fell to his death while attempting a descent of Half Dome within Yosemite National Park, there prevailed what a park spokesman described as a "perfect storm" of circumstances.
Saturday is the busiest day of the week on a cabled ladder system that enables climbers to negotiate the 425-foot sheer granite dome to and from its summit.
But by early afternoon it had become cold and blustery, with rain and fog and sporadic hail. Many hikers had aborted their climbs but some had not. The granite and the cables had become slippery. Some hikers froze in fear. Others tried scurrying around on the outside edges of the cables.
An investigation continues to determine exactly what caused Kumar, 40, a Northern California software engineer, to let go and plummet nearly 200 feet, but he might have been on the outside edge of one of the cables.
After Kumar fell, 41 climbers were assisted in what the park called a "controlled evacuation" that lasted until dark.
Scott Gediman, a park spokesman, said Saturdays can be tricky even in good weather because it gets so crowded. It's not atypical to have 70 hikers on the three-foot-wide cable system by early afternoon. There's no scripted order within the cables, although most hikers ascend on one side and descend on the other.
