Mount Dana, Mountain summit in Yosemite National Park, United States

Mount Dana is a 13,061-foot (3,981 m) mountain whose summit marks the eastern boundary of Yosemite National Park and the western edge of the Ansel Adams Wilderness. Its upper slopes are gray and brown rock and pale scree, with a lower, sharper outcrop to the left of the main rounded summit. Dark green conifer forest runs across the base, and the reddish metamorphic rock is mostly prebatholithic.

Mount Dana is named after James Dwight Dana, professor of natural history and geology at Yale. The name honours a geologist whose work on mountain-building and the classification of minerals shaped nineteenth-century earth science. The summit also marks the eastern boundary of Yosemite National Park and the western edge of the Ansel Adams Wilderness.

The summit holds a shallow stone-walled shelter and a summit register, where hikers leave their names after the 3,108-foot climb from Tioga Pass Road. The mountain is named after James Dwight Dana, professor of natural history and geology at Yale. Above the tree line only lichen, a few alpine plants such as Sky Pilot, grasshoppers, American Pikas and marmots remain.

The class 1 route from Tioga Pass Road climbs 3,108 feet over 2.9 miles, a 20.3% average grade, and the trail is not frequently maintained. Above the tree line a marked path leads over a ridge, then use-paths and ducks follow the easterly ridgeline; some southwestern segments are class 2. Snowfields can persist late into summer, thunderstorms arise suddenly and make the rocks slippery, and altitude sickness affects even experienced hikers.

The summit holds a shallow stone-walled shelter and a summit register, built where the route crosses bare scree above the tree line. Hikers who reach the top can look down on Mono Lake, Tioga Peak and the lakes of Dana Meadows. The mountain is the northernmost Sierra Nevada summit above 13,000 feet.