Yosemite adds Half Dome cable permits on weekdays

Concerns over safety prompted the National Park Service to require hikers to obtain a permit seven days a week for a shot at the hair-raising push up the summit cables to the top of Yosemite's Half Dome.

The climb up the 400-foot summit dome attracts thousands of climbers every year as much for its vertigo-inducing qualities as the spectacular view at the top.

The National Park Service began issuing 400 permits a day on weekends and holidays this year in an attempt to reduce dangerous overcrowding on the final ascent to the top of the world-famous peak. It worked so well, said park spokesman Scott Gediman, that climbers started crowding the trail during weekdays.

"People obtained the permits, the cables were less crowded, it was a better experience and we received overwhelmingly positive feedback on it," Gediman said Tuesday. "But one of the effects was that on the days that did not require permits, we were seeing higher numbers of hikers - 800 to 900 on some days. To address those weekday crowding conditions, we decided to extend to seven days a week when permits are required."

The permitting system was implemented for the first time last spring because of an enormous increase in the number of people climbing Half Dome over the past few years. An average of 840 people a day made the grueling 17-mile round-trip in 2009, with as many as 1,200 squeezing onto the cables on peak weekends and holidays. That's compared to an average of 575 climbers on Saturdays in 1994.

The weekend menagerie on the sloping, 8,842-foot-elevation hunk of granite turned one of the world's signature hikes into a flirtation with death as masses of climbers jostled around on the summit cables. Four people tumbled from the cables to their deaths in recent years.

The permits will be available starting March 1 for climbs in May, when the cables are back in place. The permits can be ordered three months in advance on www.recreation.gov or by calling (877) 444-6777. Each person can order up to four permits, which will each require payment of a $1.50 service charge.

Gediman said the 400-permits-a-day system is considered an interim measure until the Park Service finishes an environmental assessment in 2011 and recommends a permanent policy.

E-mail Peter Fimrite at pfimrite@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page C - 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle