Spring 2002: Toulumne

 Enough city time in Seattle, studying for Econ 401, and doing dishes at the sorority house, it was time to hit the road to spend the entire quarter visiting National Parks through independent study courses. My good friend Larson and I were taking a full course load with classes in Biology, Earth Sciences, and American Indian Studies. We would study all of these courses as we visited National Parks and spoke to superintendents, tribal chiefs, and visited with the rocks.
We exited a dreary March day in Seattle to take I-5 all the way down into California. Along the way, we even were interviewed for a local tv spot on the local news about gas prices and how they were affecting our Spring Break plan. Not much, as we were taking a full spring break. We drove as far as we could until we found our way to a campground a little south of Sacramento. The next day we awoke and finished the drive to our destination, Yosemite National Park.
Our goal on this trip was to never pay for camping, so after looking around the Valley for a while getting some work done for our classes and preparing for the next day of hiking, we went back down the road to where there was a forest service campground. It was now pouring down rain on us which made us slightly nervous for the next day. We met some permanent campers, a family that asked us to come over and visit. So we did and their tent smelled like a greyhound bus. We felt sorry for the kids living in this environment.

We got up the next day to a cold, drizzly day. We drove into the Valley and got our permit. They were happy to give it to us, but curious about our route. The previous summer I had worked at Yosemite, so I knew this hike well. I remembered the notches on the trees for winter travel. We were going to hike up from the Valley to Tuolumne passing by the face of Half Dome along the way. The trail switchbacked steeply at first. We were snowshoe free for the first mile or so, but soon that was over and we were slogging through the snow. Then we got the joy of having snow start coming down on us. We spent the entire day just slogging through the snow until our energy and the light gave out on us. We were prepared for this and spent the evening winter camping in a snow storm. It was semi exciting and we actually slept pretty well. I awoke to see my stuff floating in a pool of water at the end of tent. Luckily enough, this stuff was in a dry bag and I was glad that I had been smart enough to bring that. We continued our hike through a foot of fresh powder. For skiers, this is a dream come true. For hikers, not so much.
Eventually, we were able to pop out to Olmstead point and take a look down on Cloud's Rest and the now much whiter Yosemite Valley below us. Having endured the snowstorm, we would now have to endure a long trip on the snow covered Tioga Road. This was fine with us as the route finding of the day was now finally over. We could relax and just follow the white powder snow to our final destination. The views from the road were not too incredibly bad anyway.

 The peaks, trees, and frozen lakes were all around us. One of the highlights of this hike was being able to walk across Tenaya Lake. This cut off quite a bit of time as instead of skirting around it on the road, we walked on top of the frozen water just hoping the entire time that the ice was not too thin and it would drop us down into a freezing pool of water. That would ruin the day quite quickly.
We made it just fine across, but were inspired by it and when we saw some old tracks going into the woods, we decided that they may be a short cut to Tuolumne Meadows. Nope, they lead us away from the road and into some heavy deep snow. We got a little testy with each other here as we were both getting exhausted from two days of just snowshoeing, but we used our map reading skills to eventually find the road again. This was putting us rather close to dark, though, and we were debating whether to camp for a second night. Instead, we put on our headlamps and finished the last hour in the dark. When we got there, we found one other person there, a backcountry skier named Lance. He offered us a beer and I was glad to take it from him for my first legal beer. You see, this was my 21st birthday and I was spending it doing exactly what I wanted to do. I was having an adventure with a good friend out in the wilderness. It was the best tasting beer I could have. But honestly, I was extremely tired, sunburnt with the most painful chapped lips ever. I was happy to have a good rest in the comfort of the toasty ski hut.
We had grand ambitions originally of climbing one of the 12 or 13000 foot peaks that dominated the landscape from Tuolumne, but instead, we were just happy to have a day to take it sort of easy. We decided to instead just snowshoe over to where my summer tent cabin was. This was interesting to see as just the floors remained from a small community of summer cabins. We then decided that we had to get on top of something to get some views. So we decided on a March ascent of Lembert Dome.
Lembert Dome was the first peak I climbed in Tuolumne when I arrived there. We were now going to go up it in the snow. We actually had to lose the snowshoes since the all granite peak would not allow us to use them. The snow had sloughed off in so many places that it just would not have been practical. Getting to the top of this peak still filled up a bunch of our day and I was glad that we had not tried to fight our way to the top of Mt. Dana or Mt. Gibbs.

Instead we got to take our time and enjoy the views at the top. You could really see for miles as we enjoyed a clear brisk day. We spent the rest of the evening relaxing in the ski hut. Lance wanted me to try to break into the safe at the ski hut since it doubled as the campground office I had worked at the previous summer. I could not remember the combination, though, so I disappointed him. That evening the ski hut was filling up with cross country skier coming out to enjoy the fresh snow. I was happy we were getting out the next morning as their body heat really made it stuffy and hard to sleep.
With a few hours of sleep under our belts, we awoke the next morning to a glorious day. We said goodbye to Tuolumne and the amazingly pristine landscape that existed after that wonderful snowstorm. We were said to see it go, but so happy we got to have the experience. On this day, we were really moving quickly. We wondered if another day was going to have to be spent camping out in the snow, but no, going downhill was so much easier.

We flew on the road by not taking our "shortcut" through the woods, though we did take another trip across the lake. The peaks were so white with snow and we enjoyed it, but soon we were on our way down from Olmstead Point. This was even faster as the gradual downhill from the road gave way to the steep downhill of the trail. There were places where breaking trail was a ton of effort and now we were literally running down them in our snowshoes.
In late afternoon, we were happy to see the green of the Valley show its face. It was amazing to spend a couple of days in the white country of the high Sierras, but in March it was time to spend some time in a snow free landscape. We were able to get our campsite from a couple days ago and spent another day in Yosemite doing hikes on our own. Funny though, we both chose the same hike, going to the top of Yosemite Falls. We were sad to see this part of the trip end, but it was time to get to some warmer weather and some desert conditions.