It was a warm spring day in mid-March, and I didn’t look like a
typical BART commuter. I shouldered a full-sized (though ultralight)
backpack crammed with cold weather layers, a zero degree sleeping bag
and a bear-proof food canister. In my hands I carried a canvas bag
with an awkward jumble of snowshoes, hiking
stick,
snow shovel and fleece-lined snow boots.
After multiple
seasons of drought, national
park shutdowns and some nasty health issues thrown in for good
measure, the stars had finally aligned for this trip. Fresh Sierra
snow awaited, more was forecast, and I was going snowcamping in
Yosemite—
hooray!
Exiting the train
station for my carpool meet-up, I balanced the bags on a shady cement
seating area and scanned for a similarly geared up stranger. I fished
a Purell wipe out of a pocket and washed my hands. A few texts later,
I located my Sierra Club carpool crew and we launched into
introductions.
The previous week
had been a roller coaster of unsettling headlines.
The WHO had declared a pandemic the day before, and no one knew what
to make of it. As our car cruised through sparse highway traffic, the
backseat passenger noted that school closures had just been announced
in San Francisco.
I switched
off my phone and beseeched my two cohorts not to share virus updates
with me during our trip- just a short respite from the unspooling
apocalypse.
I’ve never taken my phone backpacking because I appreciate being
off the grid and feeling present in the wilderness. Bad news can
always wait.
Our pre-hike lodging
just outside the
park had hand sanitizer pumps mounted at every
public entrance, and my soft-spoken roommate snored seismically. In
the morning, our 7-person group caravanned to the winter road closure
on
Glacier Point Road and parked at the Badger Pass resort. Tantalizing
powder frosted the hill but the lifts were deserted. Patches of snow
and ice contoured the car-closed continuation of the road, though
nothing appeared deep or treacherous, so most of us ditched our
snowshoes & cautiously plodded on in snow boots. We encountered a
handful of cross-country skiers—
carrying their skis—
on their way to the coveted Ostrander Ski Hut, and we swapped phones
to snap
group photos. After a short
section of road walk, we veered off onto the snow-blanketed
winter trail to Dewey Point and bid farewell to the skiers.
Our trek followed a
tight cluster of footprints overlaid around
faint ski tracks, like a frozen trail of 3D sheet music. When our
route
became indistinct, we searched
for the bright yellow winter trail markers
sporadically affixed high in the tree trunks. Traipsing through a
marshmallowy white meadow, we navigated across the shallowest
crossings of snow-crusted creeks, testing for
solid footing before lumbering across with full
packs. Some trail sections meandered through prickly tendrils of
brush that snapped back behind you and threatened to whack
tailgaters.
A few hours —
though just two and a half miles —
later, we reached an open expanse above
the Yosemite Valley rim with a stunning
panorama
of granite peaks. Dropping
our packs to worship from
the Dewey Point overlook, we feasted on private views of El Capitan,
Cathedral Rocks and the dramatic tips of Cathedral Spires. Walking
in, we’d encountered just a few fellow hikers exiting the
backcountry, and we reveled in the celestial
solitude.
Back
from the rim, in a clearing framed by sentinel evergreens, our trip
leaders scouted a deep snow deposit where we would construct a
communal camp kitchen. We set up our individual tents in dry-ish
private nooks around it, and then shoveled and formed snow bricks to
build a three-foot-high amphitheater snuggled beside a long snow
table. As daylight receded and stars popped into view, we tied a line
between the
trees and draped a rope of colored lights overhead to make sitting in
the cold darkness more festive. After eating dinner shoulder to
shoulder in
our tightly
packed social zone, we shared whiskey and
alfajores cookies.
Before
melting snow to rehydrate or cook our dinners, we’d strolled to
nearby Crocker Point, where we reveled
at the gushing white line of Bridalveil Fall and the distant
silhouette of Half Dome. Aqua
blue sky descended into puffy clouds on
the horizon, casting
dramatic shadows and texture onto a never-ending vista
of snow-capped
knobs
and sheer
rock walls. Looking
down
into
the
Valley chasm,
avalanche gullies
streaked gray paths through precipitous slopes of forest.
Because it’s home
to so many opportunistic
(habituated) bears, Yosemite is one of
the few places in the Sierra Nevada to require bear-proof food
storage in
winter. Before turning in for the night I
puzzled over the best location to cache
my bear canister so it was far enough away from camp (no overnight
food raids, please!) but not so distant that it would be impossible
to locate after the morning snowstorm to
come.
I began hearing
drops hit the tent as soon as I’d donned four clothing layers and
zipped into my puffy down mummy bag. Though the temperature was close
to freezing, the rapid taps sounded like rain, so I gathered my boots
further under the rain fly and felt a wave of gratitude
for my warm dry shelter. The wind picked up & stayed active all
night, battering my low profile tent like a pesky speed bump.
 |
| My Dewey Point campsite in the morning |
I awoke at daybreak
to
the sound of a zipper and the crunching of snow
fading off
towards the Valley rim. I peeked out to see a white dusted world
and the foot of my tent sagging under hours of accumulated snow.
Exiting my shelter,
I knocked off the snow drifts and located my blue food canister in a
seemingly new locale.
My food partner was already up and boiling water for coffee and
oatmeal, and I remarked at how decadent it felt to have someone
making me breakfast in the backcountry.
The hike back was a transformed
landscape of fresh unconsolidated snow
and the footprints our group left behind in it. We unintentionally
demonstrated the myriad ways to gracelessly posthole, at
least once extracting someone buried up to their waist. The snow
continued
to fall, gusting into our faces and
fogging up glasses and goggles.
As we
departed Yosemite, arriving visitors were
being stopped for tire chain controls,
and we felt fortunate that we’d never had to chain
up. On the drive back home, I silently
ticked off some
personal landmarks along Highway 120: the impossible-to-spot
sign for Rainbow Pool, the white-knuckle descent of the Old Priest
Grade, the melancholy remains of Chinese Camp, plus
a helpful new traffic light at the junction of Highways 120 and 108.
A few
days later, San Francisco Bay Area residents were ordered to “shelter
in place,” as if an active shooter had taken the entire region
hostage. Soon after, Yosemite itself was closed and the governor
enacted
a statewide stay at home order. Looking
back, the trip
seems like an improbable fantasy, a
distant
history where it was reasonable to venture out
and
explore the world, meet new people and
talk face-to-face, masks weren’t ubiquitous accessories, and
people didn’t cringe
when strangers
walked
less
than six feet away.
