Three feet of snow had fallen through the night, and flakes were still fallingSnowbound in Yosemite National Park, California
Keir Roper-Caldbeck finds that Yosemite National Park in California provides both beauty and adventure in winter.
By Keir Roper-Caldbeck
Yosemite in the winter is very different from its summer incarnation. The vast car parks that teem with vehicles in the warmer months are empty save for the occasional car spinning its wheels on a patch of ice in the corner. The paths that criss-cross the valley floor are free of crowds and swept by freezing winds; the litter bins are unmolested by bears.
But Yosemite in winter is also spectacular. My wife and I drove up to the Badger Pass ski area, hired snowshoes and shuffled, bow-legged, through silent woods to a viewpoint overlooking the valley. The warm afternoon sun gave a benign cast to the view in front of us: vast, monolithic slabs of granite, arranged in ways that it would take a lifetime of studying geology to understand.
We returned to the ski area on a high and spotted an entry on an information board for the Ostrander Ski Hut, which provided spartan accommodation for backcountry skiers 10 miles from the trailhead. Maybe we could snowshoe out and stay the night? We asked the advice of a young park ranger. Would we be biting off more than we could chew?
"No, you guys look fit enough. It'll be great."
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Wasn't there snow forecast for the next evening?
"Maybe a few inches, if any."
And it was great. A clear, blue sky ranged overhead the following day as we strode along a groomed cross-country ski trail for the first five miles, before turning off and heading up through the woods. The going was steep and the effects of altitude kept us to a snail's pace.
But the trail was clearly marked and the snow smooth and firm under our snowshoes. We had a spectacular view of the Half Dome – Yosemite's most dramatic granite rock formation implausible in its geometric perfection.
We made it to the hut in the early afternoon. Built in 1941 as part of a New Deal work relief programme, it has a steeply pitched roof and stone walls, combining the outward form of an Alpine chalet with the utilitarian charm of a time when the phrase "public funding" didn't reduce the American body politic to a cat fight. Situated in a glacial cirque, it overlooked a small, frozen lake. We unstrapped our snowshoes and stumbled through the door.
Two men sat at a wooden table that ran down the middle of the room. One had the lean, sinewy frame and flowing grey beard of a backwoodsman. This was Howard, the hut keeper. His companion, Guy, was of a similar age but with a clean shaven, boyish face. Incongruously, given the chill of the room, he was wearing a pair of extremely brief corduroy shorts.
After welcoming us, Howard became concerned that our snowshoes would not be adequate for our return journey if there were a heavy snowfall during the night. I repeated the ranger's prediction that there would be a few inches at most.
"Hmm," said Howard.
The next morning I put on my snowshoes, stepped off the sheltered porch, and disappeared up to my thighs. Three feet of snow had fallen in the night, and it was still falling in thick flakes. The soft mounds that covered everything merged with the low, diffuse cloud into an eerily silent continuum of greys. Howard decided that it would be unwise for us to leave that day. The next was to be clear and then the weather would close in again. We would leave early the following morning. We felt like snowbound polar explorers. I began to consider the boots lined up by the door in terms of their nutritional value.
By late afternoon the snow had stopped and Howard suggested that we start breaking some of the trail for the next day to save us from having to force our way through the deep snow right from the front steps of the hut. He strapped on huge wooden snowshoes that were a rebuke to the small, aluminium contraptions fastened to our feet.
We set off, Howard pounding a deep groove through the soft snow with Guy following, stripped to the waist and steaming in the freezing air – he had the metabolism of a blast furnace. After a mile – and two hours – we turned around and toiled back up the trail we had created to the hut for a freeze-dried dinner and an anxious night's sleep.
My wife and I were ready to go as the next day dawned clear and cold. Once we had reached the end of the trail we had broken the previous evening, it proved extraordinarily hard wading through the snow, but the weather held and we knew we had the whole day, so while we bickered about whose turn it was to go in front, we didn't panic. When we reached the cross-country trail we found that it had already been groomed. The last miles would be easy. Then we heard a familiar voice:
"You guys were truckin'!"
We turned to see Guy skiing down the last few feet of our trail. He stripped off his overtrousers and we set off for the trailhead together, the two of us trudging behind while Guy cruised ahead wearing nothing but ski boots and his corduroy hot pants.
Read: telegraph.co.uk/travel/activityandadventure/8773388/Snowbound-in-Yosemite-National-Park-California.html
