Bloody Canyon-Yosemite Route
Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 3:46 am
Hi
We skied that route over Christmas 1983/New Year 1984 over a nine day period. Got pinned on the east side of Mono Pass for 3 days in a heavy storm. Spent New Years' Eve alone in the middle of Tuolomne Meadows...
Lemme see if I can dust off my memory...
Bloody Canyon is very pretty, not your typical granite canyon. There are some avalanche danger zones at the top of the pass.
From there, we crossed Tuolomne Meadows and went up past Cathedral Peak. There were some frightening avalanche debris zones in that area, slides that came off granite crests and traveled for a long, long ways.
After passing Cathedral Peak, the route is foggy in my memory. Is there a place called "Sunshine" up there? I do remember that we descended into Little Yosemite and then followed the trail down into The Valley.
We chose this route after carefully considering the avalanche danger at that time. We felt that Bloody Canyon posed less of a risk than other routes (such as skiing up the road from Lee Vining). And other than the huge slides above Cathedral Peak, we saw very few avalanches along that route.
Route finding? We had no trouble, and this was long before the day of GPS.
Visiting Tuolomne before the summer crowds was great. It was nice to have the whole place to ourselves. Not another soul in sight.
Have a great trip.
We skied that route over Christmas 1983/New Year 1984 over a nine day period. Got pinned on the east side of Mono Pass for 3 days in a heavy storm. Spent New Years' Eve alone in the middle of Tuolomne Meadows...
Lemme see if I can dust off my memory...
Bloody Canyon is very pretty, not your typical granite canyon. There are some avalanche danger zones at the top of the pass.
From there, we crossed Tuolomne Meadows and went up past Cathedral Peak. There were some frightening avalanche debris zones in that area, slides that came off granite crests and traveled for a long, long ways.
After passing Cathedral Peak, the route is foggy in my memory. Is there a place called "Sunshine" up there? I do remember that we descended into Little Yosemite and then followed the trail down into The Valley.
We chose this route after carefully considering the avalanche danger at that time. We felt that Bloody Canyon posed less of a risk than other routes (such as skiing up the road from Lee Vining). And other than the huge slides above Cathedral Peak, we saw very few avalanches along that route.
Route finding? We had no trouble, and this was long before the day of GPS.
Visiting Tuolomne before the summer crowds was great. It was nice to have the whole place to ourselves. Not another soul in sight.
Have a great trip.