Snow Day with Treats

Yesterday, Treats (http://www.treatssf.blogspot.com/) and I headed up to the mountains for a lovely snow day. No surprise the place in the Sierra's that we headed to was Yosemite. There is a ski resort in the national park called Badger Pass. They have all kinds of winter activities available (cross country skiing, downhill skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing, tubing, etc.). Our plan was to make a game time decision as to which activity we were going to do when we got there.

In preparation, I dusted off the old snowboard setup and threw it in the Benz Friday night. It has been a while since I have actually been to the snow, so I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to find all of my snow gear. I was also really looking forward to taking the Benz to the mountains for the first time.

We left at 5:15 or so in the morning. The drive was uneventful and beautiful. We did of course stop at the famous Scotty's Donuts for the traditional morning snack. I had my favorite maple donuts and we made a quick stop at Starbucks for some morning caffeine.

Once in the park we made some of the Signature Tanya stops. I was quite impressed at the amount of water that was flowing in some of the waterfalls (the first waterfalls of my 06/07 season). While we were stopped at the Upper Cascades pullout we checked the park literature to see if anything interesting was happening. We discovered that there was a ranger led snowshoe walk that started at 10:30 up at Badger Pass. We high-tailed it up to the resort so that we could be a part of that walk.

We made it just in time. I strapped on a pair of snow shoes for the first time (and helped out a couple of other people strap theirs on as well) and the group headed off on a 1.5 mile walk to a vista point off the old Glacier Point road which had a gain of 1200 ft. I never knew how much work snowshoeing was. I like it though and I will go again. I burned off 1100 calories according to my Garmin GPS trainer. The bad thing is I managed to irritate my right knee. This meant that my snow activities were pretty much done for the day. Treats wanted to go snowboarding so she tried on my snowboarding boots to see if they fit so she wouldn't have to rent some and they fit! She borrowed my board and did a few runs so that she could get the feeling of snowboarding again. She hadn't been boarding in quite a while either so she was just trying to get back in to it without getting hurt. While she was having fun with that I hung around and people watched. I did make a small snow man while I was hanging out. I named him Bob.

After we were done up at Badger Pass, we drove back down to the valley. We had thought we might go ice skating but the temps were dropping very fast. After a couple of pictures of Half Dome in the evening winter light we went to the Mountain House Lounge at Yosemite Lodge for some food and warm beverages followed by the long drive home.

It was a great day and I had a blast. Treats is always good company :-)