Lost Post!-Locations for Beginner Snow Camping- Close to SF Bay Area

[Bruce Tolley]

I wrote a long post in response to a question about good place for beginners to go snow camping where the poster might be able to have a fire. It seems to have gone totally missing???

First, I find the SnowLands list of backcountry ski trails a good planning aid. Most of the shortish, easier tours can be turned into shortish snow shoe hikes that include an overnight of camping; See http://www.backcountryskitours.com/pages/find_tours/find_index.htm

On to specific recommendations:

YNP Glacier Road, Badger Pass TH. You need to get a wilderness permit when you enter the park or from the ranger hut at Badge Pass and you must travel 1.5 miles from the TH and be I think 1/4 mile from a trail.  Glacier Point Road is closed and occasionally groomed so it is an easy snow shoe and sometimes it is firm enough that you can just use boots.  There is also fairly accessible snow camping near Crane Flat and one of my backcountry ski friends reports that there is a piped spring that flows in winter that mitigates the need to melt snow.

Carson Pass.

From the Meiss Meadow parking lot, you can go south, southwest to Woods Lake. From the Meiss Meadow parking lot, you can also follow the PCT north towards Meiss Meadow.  Other possible routes are listed at the URL above. Note that there is a Plant Conservation zone marked on many of the maps and more or less posted on the ground. You can be cited for camping in the conservation zone

Ebbets Pass. Well really Bear Valley. There is a sno park site where Highway 4 is closed.  I know that folks camp in the valley near Poison Creek but there might be some avalanche risk there after heavy snow fall. Perhaps the easiest place to go is to walk down hill to Lake Alpine. The views are spectacular from the western shore esp at night once the snow mobiles leave.  There are also places to camp at the east end. The snow mobile noise on the groomed trail is a bother but if the weather turns nasty, you have a very good navigation aid to find your way back to the car.  If you camp a couple hundred yards from the road, it will get more and more quiet. Note that heavy snow impacts your travel time too. If there is lots of powder, even with snow shoes you might only make 1/2 to 1/4 mile per hour. So if you want a quick bailout, do not travel too far from your car. There is also Duck Lake, a bit south and over the ridge from Lake Alpine.  You can take a compass bearing from Highway 4 and aim for the obvious gap. There is some sort of signed trail (colored dots on trees) that takes you around the lake, not over the ridge.

Fires.  AFAIK fires are legal in all areas managed by the USFS in the winter, Fires are banned in YNP.  For the Wilderness Areas, I am pretty sure that the elevation bans are still in effect in winter.  My recollection is that Duck Lake is right on the Wilderness Boundary.  If you want a fire, you should take a fire platform.  Not Lightweight.  I can usually find enough downed wood (twigs and tinder) for a small cooking fire. Once or twice we have wanted a camp fire, so we hauled wood in on a pulk (sled). I have used galvanized garbage can lids and aluminum roasting pans for the platform. The latter work well for a cooking fire and fit easily inside a pack. In all cases the platform needs insulation under it. For a cooking fire, a couple of wooden garden stakes under the aluminum pan work and can be reasonably LNTish. The stakes also double as deadmen for the tent and you take them home. In the case of a campfire, you need to put 2 or 3 or 4 pieces of large firewood underneath the non flammable platform to insulate the fire from the snow. One year even with the platform and the insulation, over two nights our campfire melted its way down 8 feet into the snow. That is all a lot of work and not very Leave No Trace. Also the Forest Service and the lumber industry do not want folks hauling wood from the Bay Area into the forests that might harbor pests that can do damage to the forest. (we bought our wood in Arnold on the way to Lake Alpine.) For the sake of simplicity, I often default to just bringing my Bush Buddy and making a very small fire inside it from downed twigs and such. The Bush Buddy can do double duty melting snow as well.

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