Half Dome isn’t a ski objective. The gentlest slope off the iconic 8,839-foot summit in Yosemite National Park is a 45-to-60-degree granite wall—usually hiked over the course of a long ...

Photograph by Jimmy Chin, National Geographic Five months later, he free soloed the northwest face of Half Dome, a 2,000-foot granite wall, an ascent featured in the short film “Alone on the ...