Recent Hikes

There are many more pictures not in the following pages for your perusal from December in Mammoth, solo, with some dramatic shots of the Sierras and Whites, and February tours with OCSS.

President's Day Weekend in Yosemite 2006

A great trip with the weather cooperating, the snow fresh, and the time grand.

Yosemite, President's day 2005

Great people, wonderful snow. Too busy enjoying it to take pictures. The pictures have been shrunk and compressed so it does not take a week for the page to load, but you can request a link to the original or I can send it.

Inyo Craters Route Finding

Mammoth Dec., 2005, involved lessons (no time for camera), a cold snow camp, a bunch of touring, so I finally buckled down and did some documenting route finding on the Inyo Craters Cross Country Ski Trail.

Our OCSS tour out toward Obsidian Dome followed the road part way out, then we played and explored, and looked at animal tracks. Various canine, squirle, mouse, rabbit and other tracks were followed and examined. Conditions ranged from icy on spots of the road, through breakable crust, and cold powder. We made it back to the trail head dead on schedule for most to head back south, while I went snow camping.

Minneret Summit is a great class O tour, with a spectacular view, and a large area to play in that frequently has great snow conditions. The green area shows some good areas for beginners to play, with wide open top to the north, and a sheltered area to the east with some short steeper slopes ending in open, deep powder in the bottom much of the time.

	An alternate that remains class O follows a road south from the junction, marked 31, a ways without the traffic and with a big bowl to play in and a large area with a great view north and west (in green) to play in. You can tell I had some fun before lunch.