The day after we returned from San Diego was spent shopping, preparing and packing for our trip to back to Yosemite. We've never gone to Yosemite in December but since we survived the cold and snow
back in November, we thought that we knew what we were getting into.
As usual, we slept a couple of hours and then drove through the night. I took a turn driving so that Christian could get in a power nap and we arrived in Yosemite with the sun. We stopped to take some pictures at the overlook after tunnel view. It was icy and cold out!
Most of the waterfalls were even frozen. Yosemite Falls was still flowing but the water was supercooled as it fell and turned into a pile of ice/snow at the bottom.
It was pretty neat to see. When we were here last month, we were taking pictures at the base of the upper falls. It would have been interesting to see the difference now.
We arrived at Camp 4 to pick out and register for our campsite. The whole campsite was covered in snow. I forgot to take a picture of it. We were dismayed to find out that the rangers closed off the main restrooms and left only two stalls in the back for the 40 or so some odd groups of campers to all share. It was kind of ridiculous. Although, it was no where near to being filled to capacity, there were still plenty of people in the campground.
We knew that we were in for it when we arrived into the valley. It had just snowed again a couple of days before we arrived and so there was snow everywhere. Unfortunately, we had decided, for some inexplicable reason, not to bring our snow boots! We even brought them in November, although we didn't really need them, but we definitely would need them on this trip! We had to pack down a patch of snow just to set up our tent. We paid for two night and left the third up in the air.
Originally, we were going to do some climbs either on Swan Slab or on Glacier Point Apron. We found both walls to be wet and icy so that wasn't going to happen. We decided to go grab some hot cocoa and consider our options.
We went out to the El Cap Meadow to check out who might be climbing and to warm up in the sun.
Of course we took a lot of pictures and the girls got to play in the snow a bit. We could not let them go too crazy though since we did not have our snow boots and only Caitlyn brought her snow gloves (although she didn't wear them most of the time).
Unfortunately, there was not much sun to be had as it was already disappearing from our end of the meadow. We then opted to find a climb that we could do. We decided on some practice aid climbing routes on the famous LeConte Boulder.
The first route was called The Hooker; a short 40' A1 route. Christian had no problem going up. I attempted it but only got about halfway or so. It is a slightly overhanging route and I had trouble reaching the next bolts while trying to hold myself up using a fifi hook. In the end, I got too tired and frustrated to continue. Emily went up next and she managed to make it to the top using an adjustable daisy to keep her up. It worked a lot better than the fifi. Caitlyn decided to stay in the comparatively warm safety of the car. Emily spent most of her time in there with her except when she ran over to do the climb.
Next Christian worked on the famous Kor Practice Aid Ladder. No one else made the attempt as it is much more overhanging than The Hooker.
At least the snow kept the crowds at bay. A bunch of cars did stop by to do some sledding next to where we were so that was a bit annoying. I couldn't feel my fingers or toes so we got back into the car to warm up and went to the grand Ahwahnee Hotel. From there, we found the approach for the Royal Arches.
Unfortunately, the start of that route was also totally wet and iced up. The sun was starting to go down by this time and we decide to go back to camp for dinner. We attempted to go to the Lodge for our usual Ranger Evening Program but they were doing some lame promotion for Skiing at Badger Pass with a movie of a bunch of delinquent adrenaline junkies. We left after only a few minutes. We took advantage of the facilities at the Lodge before turning in for the night. We had our heater and our winter sleeping bags so we were pretty comfortable.
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We were not in too much of a hurry to get going the next morning as we were not terribly sure what we were going to be able to do. Most of the climbs were wet and icy and most of the hikes were too snowy for us. The thermometer in our car read 13
℉...and the sun was already up. We had breakfast and drove out to Knob Hill in the Lower Merced River Canyon to do some investigating there. It turned out to be just what we were looking for. We found a bit of sun and the climbs were clear and dry. We hiked around to see if we could find some of the climbs that we were looking for. Caitlyn came up a little with us but stopped and played at some point while we did our scouting. She made a mini snowman.
We had our lunch and headed back down to the Valley for a Ranger Walk. The walk with Ranger Brandon Adams was a about trees in Yosemite. It was pretty interesting.
Christian went into the gift shop at the Ahwahnee to buy some cards. Then we went back to the Ranger Station. Christian had some additional things he wanted to discuss with Ranger Adams as he was also a climber. We walked back to camp as the sun was starting to set. We had dinner and headed over to the Lodge to see what they were doing. Apparently, they were still doing the promotion for Badger Pass so we did not bother going in. It was New Year's Eve, so there were lots of parties and things springing up. We decided to retreat to the relative safety of our camp and turn in somewhat early. The campers were pretty loud and stayed up quite late. Of course, we were unfortunate to be next to the loudest group in the campground, as per usual. Most of the campground settled down by 11:pm (except for our neighbors). They all yelled Happy New Year and most of them turned in at midnight (except for our neighbors). But eventually, they turned in (or passed out).
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The next morning was New Year's Day and we decided to pack up our stuff. Honestly, we did not want to camp next to those morons another night. They came in in the middle of the night on our first night waking everyone up as it was. Also, it was supposed to be a bit breezy today and it was going to get a bit windy the next day. It is cold enough without the wind blowing at you in those temperatures. We never really found out how cold it was. I got Christian an anemometer for Christmas but it was a piece of junk and did not work at all. I planned to return it once we got home.
After we packed up, we headed back to Knob Hill to do some climbing. We climbed Anti-Ego Crack (5.6).
Everyone did the climb. It was pretty fun. Christian headed up from the climb for a bit to investigate but I guess it wasn't that great so he came back down and we had to traverse over to a rappel station from a tree across the way. That was a little scary but we didn't have too much trouble with it.
It still takes us quite a while for all four of us to climb. The chilly breeze made it a little uncomfortable at times. I think we definitely made the right choice to leave tonight rather than stay for the windy day tomorrow.
We still had a little daylight left and Christian wanted to do one more climb. It was called Pot Belly (5.7). It was a shortish climb and only Christian was going to do it, so we figured we had enough daylight left but it proved to be a lot harder than they claimed the climb to be. The start of the climb was the problem. A lot of people do not take into consideration the first 15' when rating a climb but if you can't get up the first 15' feet, you can't climb the route! There was no where to protect it either so that made it even more dangerous and difficult. All there was was a thin crack up a slick steep slab. There was an alternate start but it wasn't any easier and had other complications to it. In the end, we ran out of time and gave up. Christian wasn't too happy about it.
Then, as we were driving back down to the 41 to leave, we almost got into a head on collision with some tourists who were driving on the wrong side of the road. We were driving down hill on ice and when we tried to brake, we started sliding down towards them. It is only by divine providence that we did not hit them. Apparently, there was an accident on their side of the road and although they got past that, some of the cars were either going too slow still or decided to stop in the middle of the lane because they didn't know if they wanted to keep driving on the icy road or the moron just wanted to take a picture or text a friend and the car behind him decided to pass them on our side of the narrow icy mountain road.
We got control of our vehicle and continued to head out of the park. The line behind the accident went as far as our eyes could see. We were a little conflicted as to whether we should continue driving with these crazy reckless people on the icy roads or head back in to stay another day. In the end, we just opted to continue on. We were very tense and stressed out the entire way but we did not have too much more trouble and returned home without further incident. There were a few speeding, impatient drivers but we let them all pass and stayed away from them as much as we could.
We did stop in Fresno for some dinner. Christian's sister gave us gift cards for In-N-Out for Christmas so dinner was on them.
