In California, everything popular is so crowded you need a lottery just do a 16 mile hike because apparently they cannot build a road any closer or add more parking or whatever.

So now tourists are doing the lottery and climbing up cables (why not add fucking steps?) in the rain because they won the permit lottery and they might not otherwise get a chance to do it. The National Park would rather let people die than put in steps or a more sturdy way to get to the top.

I'm not from Cali but anon told me this isn't even the best view in the park, that's from elsewhere, but that's the most reputation-famous so people all do it.

The father-daughter duo had hiked together countless times and over thousands of miles — up to Angels Landing in Zion National Park, down into the Grand Canyon and all over mountains across their home state of Arizona. So when Grace secured a permit to hike Half Dome through the daily lottery system on July 11, they were ecstatic.

They cleared their schedules to drive from Phoenix to Yosemite the following day, and on the day after that, they set out on the strenuous 16-mile trail at about 8 a.m. A ranger told them there were storms in the forecast, and at times, they did notice clouds overhead. But when the pair reached the bottom of Half Dome’s famous cables a little after noon, the sky was perfectly clear, Rohloff said.