We decided to climb Lembert Dome today.  We hiked out of the campground and across the Tuolumne River where the kids practiced their rock skipping:

Lembert dome in the distance.  We’re going to climb that!

Erratics under The Unicorn (left) and Cathedral Mountain (right):

Seems like we have lots of “taking a break” photographs:

Eventually we cleared the trees and began our ascent of the dome:

Looking West towards Tioga Pass:

At last we summited the dome.  While it wasn’t too steep where we were standing, the dome falls away to sheer cliffs in all directions except the way we came up, so an unarrested fall would have a fatal outcome.  Several times we sat down to settle our shaking knees.

The massive Rim Fire could be seen in the West.  Some days, when the winds blew our way, the air would smell of smoke and visibility would be half a mile or so.  Pretty amazing considering it was 50 miles away:

Tuolumne meadows from the summit:

We all breathed a sign of relief when we came down off the dome.  We came down via the Eastern trail to Tuolumne Lodge.  Then it’s a dusty hike back to the campground:

Here are our hike stats: