The Day I Found I Could See Half Dome and El Capitan From Near My House And Why it Was So Hard To Do So

Can you pick out Half Dome in the picture above? It's not easy...

Anyone who follows my other blog (Geotripper's California Birds) knows that I walk the Tuolumne Parkway Trail just about every time I have a free morning, watching for birds and getting exercise. Unfortunately, given the air quality of the Great Valley where I live, I cannot see the source of the Tuolumne River, even though the mountain crest is only 40 miles or so away. But once in awhile a storm blows through, and I am reminded again that I live next to one of the world's great mountain ranges. That happened this week as our first major storms of the season passed through, dropping more than three inches of rain locally, and several feet of snow on the very dry mountains above. The Tuolumne Parkway Trail climbs to the top of the bluff above the river to pass around the water treatment plant, and provides a nice view of the Sierra Nevada crest. I was impressed enough to snap some pictures. 

Later on, while looking at the pictures, I saw what looked like a familiar ridge-top. I consulted with Cal Topo, and by golly, I was right. I had captured a picture of Half Dome, and El Capitan right in front of it! It's not an obvious view, and you would need binoculars or a telescope to see it (or the zoom on my camera), but it's there. I had never noticed it before from this vantage point because both rocks get swallowed up in the rocky ridges behind (the peaks behind Half Dome are half a mile higher in elevation). The snow from two days earlier helped to highlight the summits of both Half Dome and El Capitan. The view of Half Dome from the valley floor is more obvious from other angles, even though the concept that it can be seen at all has been contentious at times...

Can you see it in the picture above? It's a challenge. Give it a shot and then consult the CalTopo wireframe below to see the identity of the peaks in the picture...

Zooming in and centering the two rocks makes them just a small bit more obvious, but it is still hard to see, given that we are only seeing the topmost parts of both Half Dome and El Capitan

Zooming in even more, the summit of Half Dome is even more obvious.

I've annotated the photo to help out a little...

They are from much closer and from a different angle, but the webcams in Yosemite Valley provide an idea on the snow pattern on Half Dome on the day I saw it from the Central Valley.

If you have a small bit of a wild place somewhere near where you live, visit as often as you can. You never know when a new discovery or surprise will be waiting. This week alone, I saw a beautiful Gray Fox in the wild corner of my campus, and a wildly out of place bird a few feet from where I took the pictures of Half Dome.

It Was That Kind of Day: Half Dome from the Central Valley

Update: I've added an extra image at the end that shows the satellite imagery in the view from Keyes Road. 

It doesn't happen often. I usually pass the right intersection once or maybe twice a week, but the most important factor is the air quality. It's almost always poor. Dust and smoke in the summer, fog and clouds in winter. There is a spot on the floor of the Great Valley (some call it merely the Central Valley) where one can see Half Dome and the other peaks around Yosemite Valley in the Sierra Nevada.

Today was one of those days. I was going to take my customary walk on the Tuolumne River, but I could see that the air was extraordinarily clear, so I headed south to the intersection of Keyes Road and S. Hickman Road. I wasn't disappointed. I could be wrong, but I think these are the clearest views I've ever caught with a camera.

The visibility of Half Dome from the valley floor has been kind of a contentious subject. There are plenty of people who think that it isn't possible, and there are some peaks that are mistaken for Half Dome off to the north. I was actually accused of photoshopping the pictures once, which if you know me is laughable (I don't do that kind of thing very well). The trick to seeing it is to know where to look (ENE from the Keyes/Hickman Road intersection), and to realize that while Half Dome is so prominent from the floor of Yosemite Valley, it is not even 9,000 feet above sea level. The peaks behind and around Half Dome are 12,000 to 13,000 feet high. Half Dome is most definitely not on the skyline. It's in the middle foreground.

The other thing to realize is that my pictures are highly zoomed images. The image below approximates what the scene looks like from just north of the intersection. Can you pick out Half Dome in the picture below? And if you know your Sierra Nevada geography, can you name the other peaks that are visible? See how you did below!

Here, courtesy of CalTopo.com is a guide to the peaks in the picture above.

POSTSCRIPT: Thank you for all the comments. Since there is still some controversy about whether this is Half Dome, it turns out that CalTopo also offers an image overlay on the viewfinder, so I have added it below. For those who feel the mountains in back are not "tall" enough, one needs to consider the curvature of the Earth over the 40-50 mile distance of the highest peaks in the view.

You CAN See Half Dome from the Central Valley. But You Have to be in the Right Spot

A field in the Central Valley!

Living in California's Great Valley has moments. Some good, some bad. It's really flat, and that isn't of much interest to a geologist (except the drilling kind). But on some days, when the storms have blown through, and the wind has pushed all of the smog and dust to other places, the valley is beautiful. The best days are when the snow-covered Sierra Nevada are visible in the east.

Some intense contrast brings out the mountains in the distance. This is about how Half Dome appears to the naked eye

I live directly west of Yosemite Valley, and the question has come up now and then whether Half Dome, the iconic rock of Yosemite, is visible from the valley floor. Half Dome rises 4,000 feet above Yosemite Valley, dominating the local view. But it is surprising to some to find that it is surrounded by peaks of equal or greater elevation, and as such, it is not easy to see from the floor of the Great Valley. But it is possible, if you are in the right spot...and have binoculars or a camera with a good zoom lens.

We start zooming in...the snow covered dome of Half Dome is dead center.

That spot is a narrow corridor that runs southwest from Denair through Turlock to Patterson. It's in this location because Yosemite Valley is angled in a southwest direction, providing a gun-sight towards the Central Valley. There are a handful of other spots, but this is the easiest to find. I was out at the junction of Keyes and Hickman Roads this afternoon, and although it was hazy, I was able to pick out the dome from the surrounding peaks. To see it in these photos took a lot of contrast and manipulation (but not of the Photoshop kind!)

Half Dome at 120x zoom. Note the mountains behind Half Dome.

The issue arose today because of the absolutely glorious day we had yesterday. A sharp-eyed employee at StanEmergency in downtown Modesto took a photograph of the gorgeous skyline, and in the center of the photograph was a prominent peak that looked a heck of a lot like Half Dome. He or she posted the photo on Facebook (here), and it quickly garnered more than a thousand likes, 800 shares, and more than a hundred comments. I had to do a double take, because that peak was unusual looking. Very Half-Dome-like, so to speak.

Credit: https://www.facebook.com/StanEmergency/

I was a little surprised, because I knew the peaks behind Half Dome are much higher, and that Half Dome shouldn't be so prominent from this angle. I had managed to get a shot of the same peak from my neck of the woods in Waterford the same day. I hit the maps, and asked for suggestions from Geotripper readers in my last post (this one). I got a good tip from twoeightnine, who suggested it might be Mount Clark, which would be almost exactly behind Half Dome from the perspective of Modesto.(UPDATE: Almost immediately after I posted this, another commentator, Lucas Wilkinson, posted this from CalTopo that shows that the peak in question is Volunteer Peak, not Clark. I was looking in the wrong direction!)

Mount Clark is 11,522 feet (3,512 meters), almost 3,000 feet higher than Half Dome, and it has a steep northern flank that could easily mistaken for the shape of Yosemite's iconic rock (EDIT: Unfortunately I don't have any closeups of Volunteer Peak!).

Photographer: Greg Cope (Prints for sale here)

Visitors who get out of Yosemite Valley and travel to Glacier Point are treated to spectacular view of the peak. It is a spectacular mountain, a marvelous example of a glacially carved horn, surrounded by glacial cirques, the bowl shaped valleys where glaciers originated (EDIT: If only I'd been right! But Clark is a pretty mountain).

It's really something that so many people took an interest in their geologic surroundings. And it was so nice to have such a dramatically clear day. We could use more of them. And thanks to StanEmergency for posting a great picture and mystery project!

Seeing Half Dome from California's Great Valley

It isn't easy to see...

There aren't many places where one can do it, and there aren't many days when the air is clean enough to allow it, but the iconic cliffs of Yosemite Valley, Half Dome and El Capitan, are visible from the Great Valley of California (sometimes called the Central Valley, and the southern half the San Joaquin Valley). I've posted on this before a few times.

Normally the best spot to see Half Dome is from Keyes Road and Oakdale-Waterford Highway near Denair and Turlock. I recently found another spot that works, a little former town called Hopeton on the Merced River east of Turlock. We passed by there on the way to Yosemite Valley yesterday. We stopped about a half mile west of Hopeton on Turlock Avenue.

A zoom lens helps...

It's actually pretty stunning how big the cliffs of Yosemite are: El Capitan has a 3,000 foot sheer drop, while Half Dome rises 4,000 feet above the floor of the valley. To put this in perspective, these cliffs represent a quarter and a third of the total height of the Sierra Nevada at this latitude. It seems like they would be more visible than they are, but they are surrounded for the most part by mountains of the same size. There are just a few spots where the canyon of the Merced River is oriented just right to allow a gunsight view of the rock towers.

Lines drawn in the air help too...

To figure out exactly what part of the Great Valley would require climbing the dome, a task I have not yet achieved. I would love to see some high quality images of the view from the summit towards the Great Valley!

Keep in mind that Half Dome doesn't look obvious from these sights. You have to be looking for it on a clear day, and binoculars or a zoom lens will help. The first picture above gives some idea of the challenge. The view in the picture below is at a 60x zoom.

But mostly I prefer going up there and seeing it up close...

I have been accused, mostly in jest, of Photoshopping these images. Frankly, I don't have that skill. But of course you can just go and take a look themselves.