Yosemite plans mean fewer Half Dome hikes

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. -- There was a time not long ago when a climb to the top of the park's Half Dome was a solitary trek attempted by only the most daring adventurers.

Over the past decade, the route has been inundated with up to 1,200 nature lovers a day seeking to experience the iconic mountain that is stamped on the California quarter.

Now officials want to permanently limit access to the granite monolith, frustrating both hikers who journey there for a transcendent experience and advocates who say the plan doesn't go far enough to protect a federally designated wilderness area.

"At the end of the day, if the visitors and users of wilderness aren't willing to make sacrifices to preserve the wilderness character of these areas, then we just won't have wilderness. We'll have some Disneyfied version of it," said George Nickas of Wilderness Watch.

"If people want solitude in Yosemite, there's another 12,000 square miles to do that," counters hiker Pat Townsley, a Bay Area resident who has been to the top nine times.

Last week the park released its environmental assessment of options for the future of the Half Dome trail, the busiest by far of any in the national park's designated wilderness areas. The aim is to improve safety on the Dome and make the trail to get there less crowded.

Options range from doing nothing to removing cables that hikers use to pull themselves up the 45-degree final climb.

Nickas calls them "handrails in the wilderness," and says his agency might sue to have them removed if park officials don't.

The Sierra Club installed the first cables along the 400-foot final ascent in 1919 so that visitors without rock-climbing experience could hoist themselves to the summit, the size of 17 football fields, to drink in stunning views of Little Yosemite Valley, El Capitan, endless Sierra and the Valley floor.