Well, it’s been a quiet week in Yosemite Valley. Winter has finally arrived with a paltry hostess gift of a dusting of snow. The mood in the valley prior to winter’s arrival has been one of anticipation, a collective holding of breaths. Will we get enough snow to open Badger Pass on time? There’s a lot hanging on it; shortened work hours mean smaller paychecks for the few of us that have decided, against all reason, to spend another winter in the park. You could feel the wind of the collective exhalation as the snow fell on Friday. But now the collective breath has been indrawn again, because it wasn’t enough. Down at the Lodge Food Court, Christian and I shared a table for lunch yesterday, talking about digital SLR cameras. Then he slides in a nugget of information. “They have 17 inches of snow at Badger, and they need 17 inches more to open.”
Badger Pass is the oldest ski resort in California, and what it lacks in black diamond trails it makes up in history. Families have been learning to ski for generations. I’ve decided to learn to cross country ski this year; This may be a mistake because I have a bad knee, a remnant of an injury involving a sofa, a street, and a husband with an overdeveloped sense of fun. But then again, it may enable me to achieve a personal goal; I want to photograph the February lunar eclipse next year, again from the top of Sentinel Dome.
This isn’t Minnesota; Winter here is mild in comparison to that brittle, bitter-cold landscape. But to our summer-warmed physiques, it’s cold enough by God, and when there’s a thin sheet of ice on the river by Stoneman bridge, we bundle up in down jackets and merino wool underwear, and put on our knit caps to cover our ears. We wouldn’t mind it so much if there was snow, too, and clear sunny days makes us wish for clouds to bring it.
So remember us winterfolks in Yosemite; Think snow.
And that’s the news from Yosemite Valley, where all of the stags are dangerous, all of the bears are hungry, and all of the cars look like lunchboxes.