Glacier Point, Yosemite

(Rudy, Artur & Meri)

If the weather permits at this time of the year it is worth going to snow camp at Glacier Point.

We passed the night of the first weekend of 2010 on this marvelous spot just in front of Half Dome.

It took us a little bit more than 4 hours to get to the parking lot of Badger Pass Ski Area. Luckily, we didn't need chains and the road was in very acceptable conditions. We requested our permits for overnight parking and camping in the park at Badger Pass ranger station and started hiking quite early, at 10am. The paved road that leads to Glacier Point in the Summer is the snow trail groomed for skiers and snow shoers in the winter. There are 10.5 miles to Glacier Point with some 800 feet of altitude change. The road was so perfectly groomed and the snow so compact that we actually didn't put our snow shoes on until the last meters at Glacier Point. Walking with boots was quicker than planned, so in ~5 hours we were at our destination. We looked for a nice spot to camp without being seen from the road (mandatory in this area) and had still more that one hour of day light left.

We could see the starred sky for few hours before the moon rose, at it was almost full, lighting all the incredible landscape we had in front of us.

The night was not as cold as forecasted; the temperature only dipped to 30F (-2C).

The next day the sun was shining so we had a perfect view of all Yosemite Valley, the waterfalls and the domes. In ~5 hours we got back to our cars. The road is really boring [Artur: and I mean really, really boring]. We would have preferred a nice trail.