How to Get a Half Dome Permit in 2025

You need a permit to climb the Half Dome cables, and roughly 225 day hikers are allowed up per day, per the National Park Service's current Yosemite wilderness and Half Dome rules. The main door is the preseason lottery: applications run March 1 through 31, 2025, with results in mid-April. The backup is the daily lottery, entered two days before your hike date while the cables are up. The cables typically run from late May into mid-October; the exact dates change with snow and conditions.

Conditions change — check the park's current Half Dome page before you build plans around any date here.

Why does the cable route need a permit at all?

The cables are two steel handrails bolted to the granite of Half Dome's east face, installed each spring and taken down each fall, letting hikers ascend the final roughly 400 feet of smooth rock. The Park Service capped day use at about 300 permits a day — 225 for day hikers, the rest for wilderness permit holders on multi-day routes — after crowds on the cables created day-long bottlenecks documented in the park's 2010–2012 visitor-use studies. Demand runs far ahead of supply on summer weekends, which is why the lottery exists. Per the Park Service, the route is 14 to 16 miles round trip from the valley floor with about 4,800 feet of elevation gain, and the agency grades it extremely strenuous.

How does the preseason lottery work?

One application per person, and the process is strict about that. Apply between March 1 and 31, 2025, on the federal recreation.gov permit portal, which administers the lottery for the Park Service.

1. Create an account at recreation.gov before March — do this early, not on March 30.
2. Enter the Half Dome preseason lottery and list up to three preferred hiking dates and group size (up to six).
3. Pay the non-refundable lottery application fee at entry — $10 per application per the Park Service's published fee schedule.
4. Watch for results in mid-April by email; winners then pay the per-hiker permit fee to claim the permit.

Everyone in your group must be named at that point, and a win covers one specific date. Midweek dates in June and September draw measurably better odds than summer Fridays through Sundays — the park's own lottery statistics have shown weekend applications outnumbering weekday ones by multiples.

How does the daily lottery work?

While the cables are up, a share of the 225 daily permits is released through a daily lottery on recreation.gov: you apply between midnight and 1 p.m. Pacific two days before your intended hike, and results post later that afternoon. It exists for travelers whose dates are already fixed — you're in Yosemite Thursday, you apply Tuesday. Per the Park Service's published rules, roughly 50 permits a day go through the daily drawing, with the remainder of the day allocation pre-assigned through the preseason draw.

Odds flex with the calendar: an October Tuesday outdraws a July Saturday comfortably, and in wet years the cables can close for days at a time, which shifts everyone's plans at once.

Can you skip the lottery entirely?

Partly. A wilderness permit for a multi-day trip that includes Half Dome — the classic approach is the Little Yosemite Valley route over two days — includes Half Dome access on the day you pass through, and those permits run through their own March lottery on recreation.gov. The Mist Trail day hike itself, up to the base of the cables, needs no permit at all; the checkpoint sits at the cables' base. What no route offers is a legal cables climb without a permit: rangers staff the base through the season, and climbing outside the permit system is both cited and genuinely hazardous — the rock is polished, exposed, and wet more often than photos suggest.

What does the day actually ask of you?

Plan on 10 to 12 hours for the full round trip from the Happy Isles trailhead in Yosemite Valley, longer from Glacier Point approaches, with the Park Service recommending a pre-dawn start: the cables are safest and least crowded early, and summer thunderstorms build through the afternoon over the exposed summit slab. Carry more water than feels reasonable or a filter for the Merced, and gloves with grip for the cables — leather or snug synthetic, not bulky. The park's safety guidance is blunt about the two real hazards: the granite when wet, and lightning on an exposed 8,839-foot crest. Turn around if storms are building. The dome will be there another season.

Trail facts: Half Dome via the Mist Trail, Yosemite National Park · 14–16 miles round trip · ~4,800 feet of gain · rated extremely strenuous by the National Park Service · permit required for the cables: preseason lottery March 1–31, 2025, or daily lottery, $10 application fee plus per-hiker fee, schedule per NPS as of the 2024 season · cables season late May–mid-October, conditions permitting · managed by the U.S. National Park Service. Conditions change — check before you go.