Ice Is Nice But Snow Is Better

That ice looks terrifying.

I like the quilt cape.

Beautiful! Echo Valley, Long Valley, camping by Sunrise Lake. Truly the center of the universe.

Good to get out of the house. Besides no crampons, any other changes to your winter gear list to account for milder winter conditions and reduce weight?

I was able to save quite a bit of weight due to the warmer-than-average forecast and the lack of snow:

-No snow shovel
-Groundsheet instead of bivy
-Smaller pot since we knew we wouldn't have to melt snow. Also a lot less fuel (8oz total).
-Just a NeoAir XLite instead of the XLite + Z-rest. Fortunately we were able to camp on dry ground both nights.

I still brought my 5F quilt and warm puffy (Montbell Mirage), just in case. It is January after all.

My pack weighed 22 lbs at the trailhead, with 2.5 lbs of snowshoe, 5 lbs of food, and 1/2 liter of water.

How many miles did you do total? I've been thinking about going up lil yose towards merced, up to tolumne and back down but I didn't know how difficult it was in winter.

What snowshoes were you using? 2.5 lbs is a lot lighter than my 4lb evos.

We probably did about 40 miles total. 12, 10, 18 approximately each day. The snowshoes are Northern Lites Elite, I think 42 oz/pair. They are really light, but the crampons are sub-par compared to MSR's.

In a normal year it's difficult to get to Toulumne via the Merced River. There's a fair amount of avalanche danger in the canyon (particularly near Bunnell Point), but you can get around it by taking the JMT & Sunrise Lakes connector trail. It's a long way – about 20 miles to Tenaya Lake.

It's a lot shorter to take the Snow Creek Trail to Olmsted Point, but there is unavoidable avy danger at Olmsted unless you are willing to make a long detour on the May Lake road. There's also significant avy danger on the road just past Tenaya Lake, though you can avoid it too by taking the Murphy Creek trail around Polly Dome. Of course it'd be nice to have a normal snow year, but a side benefit is there is very little avy danger – the slopes above Olmsted were bone dry… now would be a good time to get out to Tuolumne…

Excellent! Makes me wish I still lived down in CA.

Thanks for posting, Andrew. It was a fun, challenging trip. It sure did not feel like winter though. Hopefully there will be a lot more snow for the next one.

"there is unavoidable avy danger at Olmsted"

In the old days we used to ski past Olmsted Point, but we had to spread the group out at 100 yard intervals. That doesn't completely avoid the avalanche danger, but at least it spreads it out so that the majority of the group is not instantly wiped out.

Yes, the May Lake detour is awfully long. Don't ask me how I know that.

–B.G.–

Looks like an awesome trip.
Work is killing me :/