Trail Head: Yosemite National Park, Tioga Pass Road
Date: February 6-7, 2021
# Clients: 7
# Days: 2
Distance total: 6.14
Weather conditions: clear and sunny. Only got down to 33 at night.
Snow conditions: soft and slushy. Deep from massive storm a week prior.
Issues: figuring out how avoid the sled poles from hitting my butt
This was the first guided trip on 2021 and our first snowshoe trip up to Gin Flat, so we were really excited and a bit nervous about the logistics. The road had just opened to traffic the day before. We had been waiting to see if they were going to open the road at all the week prior. Thankfully they did just in time, but we were concerned that with he vast amount of new snow and the amount of work the park need to do to clear up after the storms we were not going to have enough space to park cars. After some scouting the day before (3am car ride up to the mountains) we decided with some luck we would have just enough space for over night parking without having to park way out on 120.
The theme for me during this trip was pulling the sled for the first time. We have this bright red expedition sled we use on trips incase a client becomes ill or injured and requires assistance evacuating from the mountain. I had always assisted or lead the group on trips, but never pulled. It was surprisingly less difficult than I expected after reading a number of other blogs.
My biggest issue was going down hill and having the ends of the poles poke me on the upper portion of my butt every time the sled would jump forward or I wouldn’t pulling evenly. Couple things were wrong with the setup. 1. There was about 1.5 inches of slack in the rope connecting the poles to the hip belt allowing too much lag in fed back from me to the sled and visa versa. 2. The poles were attached at points directly behind my back. I realized if I moved the connection points to the sides of my hips it directed the energy away from body and not into poking me in the butt. After about the 30th time of getting stabbed by a pole I was ready to figure out a better set up.
In the end it was a really great trip and I couldn’t have asked for better conditions.
