Winter in Yosemite

 

By the end of this week, my daughter will come to visit for three weeks. I can't put in words you how very excited I am. As you can imagine I have a ton of things to do before that, so I will write only one blogpost this week and share it to the blogs of Bleubeard and Elizabeth, Rain and Nicole. Most probably I won't be much in blogland until well into the second half of February because I would like to make the most of the limited time with Kaefer.

Today I'm taking you to Yosemite, the place we like to call "the national park in our backyard". When Kaefer was little, we used to spend every MLK-weekend in Yosemite. It is around my birthday and I didn't want to get any gifts, just a weekend in the snow and some wonderful nature. We have visited Yosemite in every season, but winter remains my favorite time there.

Be warned: This is a VERY photo-heavy post! These photos were taken over several years and some of them were still made using film.

There are three landmarks that make Yosemite famous. One - and maybe the best known - is Half Dome. It is popular to hike up on top of Half Dome - every summer, cables are put up that make it possible getting up onto the granite dome. You actually need a permit for that and if you're not leaving really early, you will be stuck in a "cable jam" at the foot of the cables that you reach after an already long and exhausting hike. I have never done it - I prefer to keep some mystery about this beautiful huge rock.

The second landmark that is extremely popular with climbers all over the world is El Capitan, a sheer wall of granite that goes straight up. Almost always you can see some figures hanging in the wall, trying to scale it. Maybe some of you have seen the movie "Free Solo"? If not, here is the trailer with some impressive images of El Capitan. The movie itself is very worth watching.

Then there are the many waterfalls - landmark no. 3 - of which Yosemite Falls is the most popular one. With a total of 2,425 feet (739 m) it is the tallest waterfall in the continental US. It has three drops: Upper Yosemite Fall, Middle Cascades and Lower Yosemite Fall. In the following picture you can see Upper Yosemite Fall with its huge cone of ice and snow at the bottom of the upper tier. In the winter, sheets of ice break off the rock wall during the day and you can hear the loud boom throughout the entire valley.

In the winter, you are only able to visit Yosemite Valley (and Badger Pass for skiing), whereas the High Country is not accessible because snow closes Tioga Road that leads through the High Country. That part of Yosemite you can only visit from late spring to the middle of autumn. We once camped in the High Country in the middle of October and we ended up camping in the first snow of the season. Tent camping, by the way.

So we spent winters in the valley. I always loved the almost magical winter mood there, walking across the snowy meadows and listening to the booms of the ice sheets from Yosemite Falls.

Early mornings when the sun hasn't climbed high enough to reach into the valley provided some wonderful sights.

The white trees against the dark rock on the shady side created their own special magic.

The snow sparkled and there were so many beautiful ice crystals to admire. You just had to open your eyes and look for them. They were everywhere.

Little treasures were found in the snow.

I loved the snow caps on branches, wood and especially on the rocks in the Merced River.

There were beautiful reflections in the river - the Merced River can be pretty wild, especially in the spring, but in the winter I have often seen it very calm.

This little girl was extremely excited about the snow. We always brought her wooden sled with us (that we had bought in Germany when she was still a baby) and she enjoyed sledding down the hills so very much! I share this with Nicole's Friday Face Off.

When evening came, people gathered on Sentinel Bridge to take pictures of the setting sun on the face of Half Dome with the reflection in the Merced River. Later, the full moon would climb up in the sky.

Of course there is quite some wildlife in Yosemite. The Yosemite Black Bears seem to be the smartest of them all. Not only are there bear-proof trash bins and food lockers everywhere, you are also not allowed to leave any kind of food or smelly stuff like toothpaste in your car. If you do, you pay a heavy price since these bears know how to break into cars and you get fined by the National Park on top of it. Even the smallest candy wrapper can be "smelled out" by the bears. If you want to leave your car in a parking lot and leave for a hike, you need to store your food in the food lockers provided at every parking lot. We sometimes saw bears strolling through campsites in bright daylight, looking for food and trying to get into trash cans (that they haven't figured out - yet). The deer are plentiful and not shy, neither are the ravens of which there are a lot (if I'm not mistaken - I hope David doesn't tell me that this is not a raven, that would be such a disappointment), and of course I have a deep love for the coyotes. If I have something like a spirit animal, it would definitely be the coyote.

All of this is even more beautiful because I was able to experience it with these two people. Can you see the pink scarf around Kaefer's neck? Rain's prompt is scarves this week!

Without any more words from me, here are a few more atmospheric images of Yosemite:

Since I mentioned that I'm sharing this with Bleubeard and Elizabeth, I need a drink for T Tuesday - for me, the best drink in winter is hot chocolate. If it has whipped cream on top, even better. And look at my new cat mug!

For Rain's Thursday Art and Dinner Date I'm sharing a recent dinner I cooked - fusilli pasta with Italian sausage, carrots and fennel. I didn't use a specific recipe for this - just browned the meat, sautéed the carrots and fennel with some herbs, and then threw it all together. It was delicious and the leftovers will be turned into a different dinner.

I leave you with the famous Tunnel View over Yosemite Valley at sunset.

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