Month: January 2010

one-legged man, fancy dance.

I’ve been super busy trying to crank out a paper, it’s almost done. Thank goodness gracious.

I never finished the rest of the Yosemite winter adventure, so here’s the cliffs notes version:

We went XC skiing at Mariposa Grove on New Year’s Eve, a beautiful part of the park I’d never been to before. It was pretty awesome–the Grizzly Giant tree was the peer of the trees in Sequoia NP. I can handle myself fine on the uphills with XC skiis, on the flats I’d give myself a C+, on the downhills, a good solid D. I can’t seem to control the skis very well. I blame the too-wide boots rather than my own lack of coordination.
 
We had an excellent celebratory NYE dinner at the Wawona. I ate a big bloody steak. The Wawona was a happening place for NYE, with a big ball later that night and this piano player, note that I was too embarrassed to be around for this picture.

That night we wrung in the new decade (perhaps?) in the fog-coated valley. At midnight we looked at Half Dome but Half Dome didn’t seem to care.

The next day we hiked the Snow Creek trail (after taking a ridiculously circuitous route to the trailhead). It was the perfect trail because we could see lots of snow-covered mountains (like the underrated quarter domes) without actually having to hike on ice.

Through binoculars I took this picture, which is a different viewpoint and a different time than this picture.

I cajoled N! into climbing pretty high up on the trail. I wanted to see the waterfall, but decided not to risk falling off the mountain to look for it. The sun came out as we were descending, casting a nice evening light on Half Dome and the quarter domes.

The next day we visited the Ahwahnee Hotel, drank some hot cocoa before getting a closer look at the ice-encrusted Yosemite Falls (down a bit in volume from this). We even got a nice rainbow at the lower falls, a fine farewell from Yosemite NP.

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