We were at the park last April hiking Yosemite Falls. Five months later, we returned and went after Half Dome (HD) this time. We spent Friday afternoon canoeing on Tenaya lake for the first time. Saturday was set aside for the hike of the century. We left the trailhead parking lot (Bus Stop #15) at 6:47AM. We took the short-route Mist Trail (7.5 miles to HD) going up. It's a beautiful but very steep trail gaining some 1900 feet in elevation in the four-mile trek reaching Vernal Fall Top then Nevada Fall Top (at ~5910 feet). It took us two hours to get to this point from the valley below. We reached HD's first base by 11:32AM, had a 20-minute lunch break and ascended to second base where the 400-feet steel cable is stretched to the top. At 12:50, we reached the top of HD in 30 minutes by climbing on the outside of the cable in order to save time. Inside the cable, the line of hikers were long and very slow at moving upward... We could only afford to spend 20 minutes at the top and had to go down for a hike back to the valley. On the way back, at the Nevada Fall junction, we took the longer John Muir Trail down because it's not as steep as the Mist Trail hence less taxing on the knees and toes... We got back to the car by 6:53PM. All in all, we put in twelve hours, hiked some 17 miles up and down the mountains and burnt approximately 6500 calories combined ...