On March 6-7, 2010 I went cross country skiing at Badger Pass in Yosemite with Kristian Eide, Marie Cardenas and Larry Wright. Here they are along with some random person who ended up in the picture.
And here I am. This is only my second time cross country skiing, the first time being Spring Break last year in Colorado.
Kristian wanted to go to Dewey Point, which we found out was blue (intermediate) on the internet, and had been upgraded to black (advanced) more recently. We were going to do something easy the first day and then check it out the second day, but Kristian ended up talking us into trying out the start on the first day. Up to this meadow it was still green (easy).
After that the black part would begin, but it was a mixture of easy, intermediate, and hard sections.
Here's the crew at the meadow. We didn't take pictures as it got harder. Larry and I took off our skis for the hardest sections, but I did try skiing down some harder parts, stopping by deliberately crashing. It worked pretty well and gave me some experience.
We reached Dewey Point and were rewarded with a stunning view of Yosemite Valley. This is one of the few major viewpoints I haven't hiked to before.
The view was a bit obscured by clouds. Here's Kristian at the point.
Myself.
Kristian and Marie together, with El Capitan to the right.
With Larry this time.
The boys.
Closer up.
You can only see half of Half Dome.
El Cap.
Marie doing a yoga pose.
On the way back. A wonderful 7 mile trip.
The next day the weather was much sunnier, and we stopped by the Tunnel View on the way up to Badger Pass.
This time you can see Half Dome and Clouds Rest clearly. We plan to hike to the top of Clouds Rest this coming Memorial Day weekend.
More yoga poses.
This time we planned to do a loop they had done last year, going up Glacier Point Road (green) and back down Old Glacier Point Road (blue).
The start of the harder route to Dewey Point, which we didn't try.
Glacier Point Road, with some peak in the distance we haven't identified yet.
The same, with me in the picture.
Larry got tired and decided to ski back to the resort, but the rest of us continued with the loop as planned. Here's part of the new section.
Gloves and ski poles in front of a meadow near the end. We ended up doing a little over 6 miles in 3.5 hours. Great fun!
