00:00:23
I think it's
almost impossible
00:00:25
to walk around the Valley
in the Eastern end
00:00:27
when Half Dome is in view
and not look at it.
00:00:31
How do you not
look at it?
00:00:33
Like every time I
go to Mirror Lake,
00:00:35
you know, I'd
bike up there,
00:00:36
I'm kind of staring at the
pavement when I bike up there.
00:00:39
And I park my bike
00:00:40
and I stand up and I just
look up at the thing,
00:00:43
and it's like, gees,
00:00:45
okay, it's huge.
00:00:47
I'd forgotten
how big it is.
00:00:50
And that I feel like
that happens to me,
00:00:52
you know, at least once
a week with Half Dome.
00:00:55
Think about where Half
Dome actually is,
00:00:56
it's at the far
end of the Valley,
00:00:58
think about
all the things
00:00:59
that are starting to accrete
on one's imagination.
00:01:03
You have Bridalveil Fall,
00:01:05
El Capitan, Cathedral
Rock, Cathedral Spires,
00:01:08
Sentinel Rock, Sentinel
Fall, Yosemite Fall,
00:01:10
and then suddenly there,
00:01:11
as if you've seen it all,
00:01:13
just standing out there
stark against the blue sky
00:01:17
It does appear to be
almost a kind of design,
00:01:19
but it's the
happenstance of erosion
00:01:22
that things worked
out that way.
00:01:24
The first geologist to interpret
Half Dome kind of assumed
00:01:28
that the other
half of the Dome
00:01:30
just cleaved away in
one catastrophic event
00:01:34
and that would be kind
of a neat and tidy story
00:01:37
for how it formed,
00:01:38
but we really don't think
that it formed that way,
00:01:40
there's really not
any evidence for that.
00:01:42
So instead, it's a more
typical geologic story,
00:01:44
where there are several
different things going on
00:01:47
over really
longtime periods;
00:01:48
basically there is glacial
erosion, steepening the faces,
00:01:52
and there is this
process of exfoliation
00:01:54
and rock fall from
the sheer face,
00:01:56
that just slowly
changed the shape
00:01:58
of that rock formation
through time.
00:02:01
Everyone has that
sense that it's unique,
00:02:03
that there is something
literally singular about it,
00:02:08
there is no other place,
00:02:09
no other objects like this
on the face of the earth,
00:02:13
I think that's part
of the charisma.
00:02:15
I mean, let's face it,
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