Glacier Point Hike & Other Common Trails

Glacier Point is lauded for one of Yosemite’s absolute grandest views, peering down at the Yosemite Valley and locking gaze with Half Dome from a cloud's perch.

Glacier Point Road has been open since the beginning of May, and generally closes due to snow by November or early December. The road provides fantastic access to a number of topnotch trails for those craving some Yosemite day hikes. Here are three of the best Yosemite day hikes along Glacier Point Road. 

Yosemite Day Hikes Along Glacier Point Road

1. Glacier Point

We’ll start with the obvious: the level, one-mile path at Glacier Point—right at road’s end. Most of the trail is accessible to wheelchairs. If you can be up here in the evening, you’ll be treated to the fantastic prospect in stunning sunset glow. The vista-stuffed walk also provides access to more strenuous hikes down to Yosemite Valley. 

2. Sentinel Dome 

The 2.2-mile round-trip hike to the crest of Sentinel Dome also rewards with stupendous panoramas—if conditions are crystal-clear, look for one of San Francisco’s signal peaks, Mount Diablo, far westward—but there’s another, nearer-at-hand attraction: the weathered bones of a fallen Jeffrey pine that's starred in innumerable photographs over the decades. The summit-top snag—the pine died in the 1970s and toppled in 2003—was most famously memorialized in a 1940 Ansel Adams photograph. 

3. Taft Point and the Fissures 

A striking cousin to Glacier Point, Taft Point lies to the west of its more-visited counterpart and shares a trailhead with Sentinel Dome (the hiking distance is the same). The vistas are—here we go again—outstanding, but Taft Point has its own unique drama: the staggering clefts called the Fissures, which open to thousand-foot plunges. Enjoy this geological spectacle from a safe distance! Without question, Yosemite day hikes along Glacier Point Road are among the best day hikes in Yosemite!