back to the Photo Gallery

Half Dome rises 4,000 feet above the east end of Yosemite Valley. The dome formed as a result of several different weathering and erosional processes. The rounded summit is the result of sheet jointing, or exfoliation, caused as rock cracked in sheets parallel to the surface of the exposed granite. The sheer northwest face was caused by a vertical fracture, or joint. The rock of the "missing half" (more like a missing third) was quarried away by the glaciers that passed along the base of the cliff during the Pleistocene Ice Ages. Boulders of the Half Dome granodiorite can be found throughout the valley downstream.