After a young woman falls to her death in Yosemite, Half Dome’s risks on everyone’s mind





Half Dome’s cables have been around for more than a century. The cables are crude and dangerous — and have fascinated adventurous souls from the start. (Jack Dolan / Los Angeles Times)

By Jack Dolan
Staff Writer
Aug. 8, 2024 3 AM PT

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK —

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A fall from that height — on the climbing cables that mark the final 400-foot ascent to the summit of Yosemite’s Half Dome — could easily be fatal. So I clenched my fists tighter and inched toward the top. The only relief came from irregularly spaced wooden slats drilled into the rock that provided desperately needed footholds.

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Last month, while descending the same stretch in a sudden rainstorm, 20-year-old Grace Rohloff slipped on the slick rock and she lost her grip on the cables. In a flash, she slid past her father’s outstretched hand, and he watched helplessly as she plummeted hundreds of feet to her death.

She wasn’t the first: At least 10 others have suffered fatal falls from cables, usually when the rock is wet.

In a phone interview last week from his home in Phoenix, Jonathan Rohloff said he kept asking himself during their perilous descent: “Why is this wood so far apart?” He guessed it would cost a few thousand dollars to double the number of rungs. That’s a sum he figured could easily be collected from the 50,000 people who pay for $10 permits to climb Half Dome each year.

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