Some Recent Ramblings: Yosemite; The Polar Journey

Factor #1: 5+ hours in vehicle

Factor #2: Friday is becoming Saturday

Factor #3: Euphoria about Yosemite

Result: Impersonations

Bear

Blowfish

Turtle smoking a cigar? (Work with me here. My second guess was a small Chinese woman with a bad joint)

Katie, Jess and I drove to Yosemite Friday night. The plan was to stay in Curry Village with about 17 of Katie’s friends in one tent cabin.

The tentative plan for locating the overstuffed tent cabin (There are probably 800 of these things in Curry Village a

nd opening the door to the wrong tent cabin could present an awkward situation) was for Natalie to leave a not on her car indicating which lucky tent cabin would be hosting 17 college students.

What actually happened was Natalie’s phone worked in the Valley, she texded us the cabin number(s) (thrift had given way to reason and two cabins were reserved) and we found our posse without a hitch.

For anyone who’s never been cross-county skiing, it’s not as easy as you might think. I’ve downhill skied for years and might fall once or twice in a day. On our 6 mile loop to Dewey Point, I face-planted, bruised my shin with my skis, whacked people with my poles and nearly took out a tree…or maybe the other way around, a la Sonny. We climbed up hill, fell down hill, dodged trees and skied through a huge meadow. As we approached the Point, someone commented, “Don’t ski off the point”. “Ok”, I said. I’m not gonna lie, I hadn’t really thought about skiing

off the point. We hugged the middle of the chute heading down to the point. When we arrived I looked back and noted that it really would have been very easy to ski off the point. With mounds and mounts of snow, it was impossible to decipher where the end of sold ground was and where a large overhanging snow drift began.

Our reward for 2 hours of work was a sweeping winter view from Dewey Point. After photos, high-fives, beef jerky, peanut butter, chocolate, carrots, and anything else that passers-by might hand out to us, we headed back. On the way out to Dewey Point, we stopped over

and over to dig our heads out of the snow after face planting. I’d say between 17 people, there where a combi

ned 1,237 falls (if you count the times where will gave out and people scooted, crab walked, or rolled down hills). On the way back, I witnessed 5 total falls. That’s a delta of 1,232 if you’re counting. I’m not sure what the difference was, but we raced back to the lodge.