If you're hiking the Four-Mile Trail from bottom to top, here at the trail gate is where you'll get your first wide-open views of Tenaya Canyon and Half Dome. You'll catch glimpses of this vista through the trees on the turns preceding this stretch, so your expectations will start building and you'll have a premonition that something extraordinary is coming up, but it's still a little overwhelming to round the corner and find this view - which is so vast in person that I've had to split it in two - in front of you. It's like sitting in an IMAX theater before the show watching videos on your iPod and then looking up to see the IMAX screen lighting up a hundred feet high.
This spot is about 1.5 miles (2.5 km) from Glacier Point.