Back in mid January, as the strange winter continued to provide interesting opportunities to backpack in Yosemite, I had set up a tentative weekend to join Chick-on for an adventure of some sort. Since neither of our teams made the super bowl, the weekend became fixed, and we headed up to explore an area east of Wawona. Chick-on had been doing some exploration in that area, and had been up the trail before, but had not made it to a granite cliff/dome structure adjacent to and north of the intersection of Iron and Johnson Creeks with the South Fork of the Merced River...that was our goal. If all went well, we might even explore up Johnson Creek and return via Crescent Lake and the Chilnualna Falls Trail.
The storm that (finally) came through on Thursday had us push our trip start from Friday to Saturday. We met at Wawona, the skies were clear, there was a light dusting of snow on the trees, and the thermometer in my truck read 29 degrees. We hit the "trail", which is on the north (sunny) side of the canyon at about 9:30. It started off pretty much snow free, and went from dry to snow and back to dry as we hiked up stream, the snow lingering in the protected areas and on the trees, melting as it warmed in the sun. Since the "trail" has not been maintained in a very long time, there is lots of overgrowth, and despite it being a dry day we had plenty of snow fall on us and our packs as we went through the overgrown route
At the few spots where the "trail" got closer to the South Fork it looked like this
And from the drier areas higher upslope from the river we could see our goal, being the top of the cliffs
Which we made late in the day, as the clouds were starting to close in. We still had a nice view back down canyon towards Wawona
After a windier than expected night, Super Bowl Sunday dawned cold and cloudy. I was feeling beaten up by the hike the day before, the weather wasn't looking great, and the route up Johnson Creek looked more challenging that we (or at least I) could do and still have fun
So we decided to save it for another trip. We enjoyed the views further up the South Fork of the Merced:
and then headed back down canyon via a slightly different route, which included this:
this
and fighting our way through some of this (look for the orange spec drowning in the sea of manzanita and snow)
which led to more pleasant slabby stuff like this
And we were back in the cars in time to be able to listen to almost all of the Super Bowl on the radio on the way home. Another great weekend trip!
The rest of the pictures are here
The details...well...the "trail" went variously from nice... to overgrown with Mountain Misery.... to easy walking on a carpet of Black Oak Leaves.... to crawling over deadwood.... to crawling under deadwood.... to walking through snow...to where the heck are we going. Closer to the high point of our route we were obviously bushwhacking as, by all reports on the "trail", it ends somewhere before our destination. On day 1 we did not wear and did not need microspikes, didn't wear and probably should have worn gaiters. Day 2 we wore both. The deepest snow we saw was maybe a foot in sheltered areas at 6200 feet. Snowshoes would have been deadweight on this trip and we left them in the car.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/03/2014 07:09PM by Bearproof.
I'd probably be staying home too if I hadn't already made plans with friends to go.
At least it wasn't cold (30 or so).
)
And send sibs a picture of the moment.
