Nicole's Blog

This past weekend I surprised Sven with a trip to Yosemite. Even though he has lived in SF before he never made a trip to Yosemite, crazy. So I just had to change that. I told him two days before we left and just like his mom he guessed what I had planned. My parents let us borrow my old A4 and we left on Friday morning after quickly packing that morning. We drove the 4 hours into the mountains through small town in California. We arrived in Yosemite and it was a beautiful sunny day. We went and checked-in to our cabin in Curry Villeage, located in Yosemite Valley. I haven't been to Yosemite in about 10 years, and I had forgotten how big the rock walls really are. Sven spent a lot of time just looking up and relating to all the many articles he has read about climbing in Yosemite.


After checking-in we put on our jackets and went for a walk in the valley and went to the visitor center. We figured out some good hikes for the next few days and then walked back as the sun was setting over half dome, so pretty! We had dinner at the pizza place in Curry Villeage and then went back to our warm cabin and played cards and enjoyed some wine.


The next morning we got up late (at least for Sven) and put on our snow/hiking gear. We drove up to Badger Pass and started off on our snowshoe hike. Only problem was that there was not that much snow. I tried to snowshoe but it was really not necessary. Instead we just walked on the compact snow. I did fall once and I have a nice bruise on hip. We hiked out to Dewey Point which overlooked the Valley, it was amazing. Our 4 hours hike was great!


We went back to our cabin, had a quick nap and then got ready for dinner. We had a very special, lovely birthday dinner at the Ahwanhee. We were a bit early so we had a drink at the bar while we enjoyed a jazz band. Then we went into the amazing dinning room and enjoyed a wonderful food. We both had fish which was lovely. My highlight was the boysenberry pie, yum. We then sat by the biggest fireplace we have ever seen while we waited for the bus to take us back to our cabin. It was a wonderful dinner and evening, well worth the money!


On Sunday we packed-up and went over to camp 4 where we started our hike up the Yosemite Falls trail. There is 65 switch backs up the side of Yosemite Valley. We didn't even go all the way up, but we did get high enough up to have a spectacular view of the valley. And it was amazing that we saw no else on the entire hike up. Winter is the best time of year to go to Yosemite, it is so peaceful. After we went down the switch backs, Sven read all the different things in camp 4. I had no idea this was such important place for climbers.

We then drove out of the park with snow on the roads from the previous night. We went to go see Hetch Hetchy dam, which was fun to see after hearing so much about it. It was also beutiful. We then drove back home with a quick birthday lunch/dinner at In-N-Out Burger. It was a wonderful weekend. I think we are going to need to make a winter to trip to Yosemite a yearly event!

Labels: vacation