Yosemite Winter Backpacking

The long awaited weekend of December 12th finally came, and we were able to go on our winter backpacking/cross-country skiing trip in Yosemite! We were looking forward to it for weeks, waiting for A) us to have an actual weekend off together and B) for Badger Pass Ski Area to finally open. Badger Pass is California's oldest ski area, and opening day was December 12th! There was a huge storm the day before and they got a ton of snow (yay!).

We woke up Saturday morning, dropped the pups off at their favorite doggy daycare place, and headed for the mountains. Its a ~4 hour drive to Yosemite, but it turned into more like 5 1/2 hours due to traffic and weather. Plus, we had to stop at REI and get some winter gloves since neither of us could find ours. Anytime I'm in REI it takes me forever, even if I'm only buying one thing. There's just so much gear to drool over.

We reached Badger Pass around 2pm on Saturday and there was SO MUCH SNOW! We stopped by the A-frame ranger station to fill out a wilderness pass (you need these for backpacking in the park) and the ranger was super nice. He did advise us though that they were expecting a huge snow storm on Sunday and that we maybe shouldn't spend two nights out there. Hmmm. After that we headed to the Nordic Ski Center and got ourselves a couple pairs of cross country skiis and boots. They gave us a military discount - completely free ski rentals for three days! So nice!

The trail: During the summer, Glacier Point Road takes you out to (you guessed it) Glacier Point, where you can see stunning views of Half Dome and the entire Yosemite Valley. During the winter, they shut it down to cars and it turns into a beautiful cross country skiing/snowshoeing trail, with multiple side trails attached to it. It's 10.5 miles out to Glacier Point and we were planning to take three days to make it out there and back. 21 miles on cross country skiis isn't bad at all, especially when you can just coast down the hills. It goes a lot quicker than hiking!

Glacier Point Road

We parked near the trailhead, donned our packs, and set off around 3pm. It was going great for the first 20 seconds before I promptly fell on my butt. Have you ever tried to roll back onto your knees/feet while wearing cross-country skis and a giant rucksack? Its not the most graceful sight in the world. I made it back up though, skied another 10 feet, and wiped out again. Did I mention this was my first time cross country skiing???

After those first two wipeouts I got the hang of it and we were soon flying down the trails. Holy cow. I can't even begin to describe how fun it was! And SO MUCH better than regular hiking with a heavy pack on your back! Skiing is way easier on the joints and you are able to go much faster. It was great.

"Pose by this squiggly sign!"

I will say this: the first mile of trail was less than lovely - hikers and snowshoe-ers had pretty much destroyed it. Past that though, it was completely pristine. There were only a few tracks from some other skiers and that was it. We made it three miles (in a little over an hour) before the sun began to set and it started getting dark - around 4:30pm. We didn't want to ski in the dark so we decided to find a campsite. We ended up near Bridalveil Creek underneath a beautiful grove of trees.

Bridalveil Creek

Our campsite

We immediately set up the tent before we got too cold, and started cooking dinner. We each had a mountain home meal (freeze dried backpacking food) - Nathan had the spaghetti dinner and I had the chili mac. Well, Nathan ate half of my chili mac too. All it requires is 2 cups of boiling water to make, so we boiled some snow in our JetBoil and had a feast. By this time (probably 6pm?) it was pitch black so we started getting ready for bed.

Tips for snow camping:
- Layers, layers layers! I wore a tank top, a wool underwear shirt, a longsleeve shirt, a fleece zip up, my snow jacket, two pairs of leggings, and three pairs of socks to bed. Call it overkill maybe, but it worked!
- Eat or drink something warm before heading to bed. It warms up your core temp! We headed to bed right after eating our dinner, when it was still warm in our bellies.
- Fill a water bottle with hot water, and pop a couple of hand/foot warmers to bring to bed to cuddle
- Use a sleeping pad. It protects you from the cold snowy ground and insulates you so that your body heat can't get sucked away.
- Raise your heart rate right before you climb into bed. If you do some jumping jacks and get your heart pounding so that you warm up a little bit, it will help you warm up your sleeping bag and tent. Otherwise, you will just be an ice cold popsicle climbing into an ice cold bed!

 We survived the first night and woke up to a beautiful frosty cold morning. We got dressed and packed up the sleeping bags and tent in record time. We didn't even bother with breakfast, we were too cold and just needed to get moving so that we would warm up. After skiing for about 20 minutes we were warm enough to stop on the side of the trail and make some coffee and snack on some breakfast CLIFF bars. JetBoil and instant coffee to the rescue. It was so, so, so yummy.

COFFEE!

 After packing back up we continued skiing but right around mile 4 it started snowing really heavily. We met some rangers on the trail that advised us to turn around if the weather got hairy because a huge storm was moving in and they were expecting 20 inches of snow.... our decision was pretty easy. We turned around. I was pretty disappointed that we weren't able to continue on and spend one more night out at Glacier Point, but we also didn't want to get stranded in a massive snowstorm, so.... ya know. By the time we got back to the truck it was snowing so hard we could barely see, with no signs of stopping. We reached the truck around noon after ~9 miles of cross country skiing and I will admit, I was glad we decided to bail.

We decided to head into the Valley and see how it was during the winter! First stop, Tunnel View:

Oh. Well, that looks a little different. For comparison, here's what it looks like in the summer:

That just shows how much it was snowing! We continued into the Valley and grabbed some lunch at the deli. It was more sleeting than snowing there and we got pretty wet and cold. We decided to make the short hike to lower Yosemite falls anyways, and I'm really glad we did. Normally that trail is absolutely packed, but in the winter we only saw a handful of other people so we were really able to enjoy it and take our time.

We drove around through the rest of the Valley while we contemplated whether or not we should camp for another night or just leave before the storm got really bad. Around 3pm when the snow still wasn't letting up we decided to just head home. GOOD THING WE DID! The roads leading out of the park were so awful. So, so, icy and the snow was really coming down hard. We saw an SUV drive off the road and had to help two other people who got stuck. It was a mess. The rangers were so busy trying to help people and get everyone safely out of there. Even people with chains were getting stuck! I'm so thankful Nathan's truck got us safely out of there! Even so, it took us 2 hours to get out of the park. I can't even imagine how much worse it got.

This was an amazing adventure!!! Yosemite is breathtaking in the winter, although probably a little safer when there's not a huge winter storm rolling in. We definitely want to go back to Badger Pass and do some more skiing. Its so nice that they offer free rentals for active duty military members because that saved us a lot of money. Even still, I think the ski rentals were only $29 a day which is not bad. Its worth it for the amazing memories!

snow lovers!