I just talked to a friend who did the Half Dome hike on Friday. They got in very late the night before, because the construction delay on route 41 was much worse than reported...several hours long. Anyway, they got a relatively late start, and had an member of their foursome turn out to be unexpectedly slow, so they hit the cables at the worst possible time, i.e. noonish. And there was almost no one there. They passed only one slow hiker on the way up the cables, and passed no descending people at all on the way down, just a handful of people going up. This is amazing, if you remember the zoo it was like on any July Friday last year.
They also said that the rangers at the cable reported only 200 of the 400 permits had been exercised that day, and that they had been handed 45 unused chits by the ones that did show up! Does anyone know what this means? Can you just walk up there and ask if there are any unused chits?
Perhaps Friday is different, because people who ask for the four person maximum reservations are too optimistic about when their friends can get off work. Still, this seems like a lot of wasted capacity on this reserved hiking trail.