Winter in the Sierras this year has been unusually dry; there has been little snow, and more days that feel like spring than like winter. This means, among other things, that a rare set of conditions has held: Gold Lake Road, which is not plowed during the winter, is still open, giving us access to hiking trails much higher up than normally, but there is (or was at Thanksgiving) still enough snow left from the early storms on those trails for cross-country skiing and snowshoeing. So during Thanksgiving weekend my mom and I borrowed some snowshoes, loaded the dog into the car, and headed up the mountain for an afternoon in the snow.
We started at the Round Lake Trailhead, and found that the old snow, which would have been too heavy and sticky for comfortable skiing, was easy to negotiate in snowshoes. The dog had a harder time of it, but his enthusiasm was up to the challenge. Read More