Permit lotteries, insurance covering altitude and rescue, acclimatization schedules.
Yes — you need a permit to hike the Half Dome cables, and about 225 day hikers get one per day: apply in the preseason lottery between March 1 and 31, 2025, or take your chances in the daily lottery two days ahead.
Yosemite issues roughly 300 Half Dome permits a day, and most hikers land theirs months ahead through a preseason lottery. Here's how the lottery, the daily backup drawing, and the backpacker add-on actually work.
Weather at T-minus 5, gear shakedown at T-minus 3, permits and itinerary filed at T-minus 1 — the countdown that catches everything a forgotten plan misses.
Start from 3 miles per hour and add an hour per 1,000 feet of climb — the Book Time formula, plus the corrections for pack weight, altitude, and terrain.
Passport validity, hut bookings, insurance proof, and the seasonal window — the international hiking checklist that keeps a foreign trek from unraveling at the border.
Map every source, verify the season's reliability, and carry the carry-capacity the driest gap demands — the three-step method that ends water anxiety.