Hi Giulio,

adjgiulio wrote:
"Andreas Werner" wrote in message
...

Hi Andreas,


For hikers:
- The one and only: Half Dome! Only for hikers with good endurance.
- Yosemite Point: Also quite good, not as hard as Half dome. Use it
as a
warm-up for the harder hikes.


If you don't mind I'd like to ask you something more about these two hikes.
Are them considered long/strenuous/day hikes or they should be faced as
backcountry experiences?

Yosemite point is 4-6 hours depending on your shape. Half dome is 8-12 hous.
Don't even think about Half Dome if you didn't do several 6-hour hikes
in the last
time. Yosemite point is without any shadow for long parts of its climb.

Don't mix up hiking and sports: You might be an daily jogger or even a
marathon
runner. Still, you never use your feet continuously for 12 hours. I'm
6' and 230 pounds
(mostly not muscles), but I do more than 20 day hikes a year with 5000
feets level
difference. Frequently two on Saturday and Sunday. Still I have never
been able to
do long jump of ten feet;-) So these are different ball games and you
only know your
shape in hiking is by doing it.

Serionsly: Do some hikes before the trip if you don't hike frequently
anyway. If you
don't hike at least some weekends every year, don't try Half Dome. For a
real test,
do cloverleaf hike: find a place where you can do a real long hike in a
pattern around
the trailhead where you can "chicken out" at multiple places. That's my
way for setting
up hikes together with people I don't know. If you're on top of Half
Dome, there is no
other way than walking back all the way.

Technically (meaning difficult steps - dropoffs etc.) both are child's
games, maybe
except the top end of Half Dome, where you have to should be free from
giddiness
and where you need power both in legs and arms.

Once you're on the Nevada Fall's top, how many miles there are still to get
to the Half Dome?

Others already answered you: it's about half the way. On the other hand,
when you are
on top of Nevada Falls, you can recover on that nearly flat part to
Little Yosemite Valley
(hint: use the facilities there - last one on the way), and the next 1/3
of the level gain is
done in the forest. So in summer, the climb to Nevada Falls is more
strenuous than the
rest. I can't cope well with heat, so maybe others think different.

The last part with the ropes is really best seen in the report

http://www.rahul.net/kenton/fun/yosemite/

But: when you see the picture of the top part, it looks harder than it
really is. On my first
tour, I didn't dare to do the last part. It was my second year of
hiking at all, and I was
really out of power, maybe I was wrong, maybe it was better that way.
I've done it
three times since then. Two hints he Usually there some old gloves ar
the start of the
rope part. Pick out some, you need them more on the way down than
uphill. AND:
really have good hiking boots on your feet.

Can I ask you one more thing? Would you point out some "semi-hikers"
rewarding hikes in the Tuolumne Meadows area?

Sorry I can't. Smallest thing I ever did myself in Yosemite was Yosemite
Point. If you
travel more than 5000 miles for a hiking vacation, you don't go for the
easy loops. And
I never recommend hikes I haven't gone myself before. I mentioned all
small walks I
know in my earlier posting (That's the thing to do on the day after a
long hike).

Andreas