White Christmas

Since we don't have family living close by, we decided to spend Christmas in Yosemite with some friends. We stayed in the beautiful victorian Wawona hotel in the park, and went snowshoeing. The weather was in our favor, as it had been snowing for days and it was still snowing when we got there. This made for few visitors and a sense of solitude in the otherwise overcrowded Yosemite Valley. We set off in chilly and windy conditions, looking for the powder. This is Ross, Roxanne, Sabine and Ed waiting to head out.


We snowshoed along the bike path and on the road that was no longer used in winter, and got to the Merced River. The scenery was magnificent, if ever there was a reason to call something a Winter Wonderland, this was it.





The snow was ideal for playing around, with snowball fights, random falls, etc.



It started clearing, so we could see the surrounding mountains, which made it even more impressive. The meadow was perfectly white, the powder up to knee-deep, which made for strenuous snowshoeing, but the beauty of the valley made up for the effort. Sabine deserved the grand price for keeping up with everybody despite being almost 6 months pregnant.





We had a late lunch and drove to our hotel, where we had an awesome Christmas dinner. I walked around the meadow around the hotel the next morning in the brisk cold, but the sky was clear and the sun came out, and I couldn't stop taking pictures of the creek and the trees.



Because of the sunny weather we decided to drive back to the valley. We stopped at the famous Tunnel View parking lot, and I have never seen it this beautiful:

We started our snowshoe trip on the meadow between Yosemite and Curry Village, where we found an untouched patch of powder. The forest was amazing, with every branch covered in snow. Yesterday we thought it wouldn't get better, but we were wrong:






Awesome views of North Dome and Half Dome made for a perfect scene; we passed by the Ahwahnee Hotel and finally made it back to our car after more than 2 hours. Again, Sabine kept up with all of us, and deserved the hot chocolate in the Ahwahnee.





I am not sure if we will ever see Yosemite again with this much snow, it was too beautiful for words. We drove back home with a big grin our face. Merry Christmas :-)