by AlmostThere » Wed Aug 19, 2009 2:08 pm
If you and your friends can't get reservable permits and are relying on first come/first serve do your best to get to the wilderness office the morning before you want to start hiking. Stay the night in the backpacker campground (5/person) and spend time walking around the valley. Get up in the morning and start hiking. If you don't mind crowds take the Mist Trail, but it will be very rocky and the falls are low to nonexistent. If you want a more gradual uphill on switchbacks take the JMT to Nevada Falls, though it is a mile or two longer it is less punishment on the knees for backpackers. If I backpacked it again, I'd go as early as I could, dump the backpack in a bear box after throwing up a tent to claim a site in LYV, and hit the trail for the dome, then have an afternoon recuperating in camp and soaking my feet in the river. Staying a night, hiking in the morning, and then packing out was a big mistake - we didn't start hiking until 4 pm due to some very slow to pack people, sun set around 5:30 -6 (it disappears behind the mountains earlier than actual sunset), two of our party came down so slow we didn't notice they fell far behind and got on the wrong fork of the trail and an older gent fell on the steps on the mist trail, could have been very bad if we hadn't sent a few folks back in the dark.
I did a night hike last week starting around midnight. When we reached half dome around 6 am, there were 30 people up there, several on the cables, and most if not all were drinking (NOT recommended prior to navigating the cables). You are not supposed to camp up there; apparently stargazing in sleeping bags doesn't count. When we started back down the hill around 7-8 am, the line of hikers coming up from the valley was pretty solid. But that was last Friday and Sat - Sun was a fee free weekend, so by the time you get there in late Sept - early Oct there may in fact be fewer people.
Take good gloves, plenty of water (even if it is cold, I drank two liters going up and we were hiking in 35-40F) and go as slow as you need to. The elevation gain is cruel.