On February 21, two friends, 45-year-old Jason Torlano and 40-year-old Zach Milligan, completed the first full descent of Half Dome from the top of the dome to the floor of Yosemite Valley . The descent, which is 4,800 vertical feet, took the pair five hours on skis and included a couple of rappel sections, as well. Snowboarding legend Jim Zellers is the first to have completed the descent of the upper “dome” portion of Half Dome, but as far as the history books go, no one has ever attempted to ski or board the entire way down to the valley. It truly was a death-defying feat: one slip could have sent Jason or Zach tumbling down to the valley floor a lot quicker than the five hours it took for them to do it and live to tell the tale.