TR: Yosemite Valley-Cathedral Range Circle...with Bears! 12/2-12/7-2024

[paul]

Nice! And impressive that you made it through those long nights without a canine heating element.
Slogging through that deep soft snow is about the most strenuous kind of travel, with or without the snowshoes. And you use muscles that you otherwise mostly don't unless you happen to run the high hurdles pretty often.
I don't know if there is any reliable way to avoid snow and ice sticking to snowshoes, something that will last a few days. I use Maxiglide on my waxless skis, and that works for a while, but whether that would help if you smeared it all over your snowshoes I have no idea. Maybe a liberal coating of wax, melted, poured on, rubbed in ? or maybe sno-seal? But now that I think about it, I bet there is a snowshoeing forum somewhere online where that very topic is discussed at great length.

[Harlen]

Hello Paul, thanks for the comment. Glad to hear that you too find that sort of deep snow slogging difficult. You're right about discussions out there; here's one or two ideas I found:

"I've used glide wax and spray Silicone with pretty good results. It doesn't last all day, though, depending on snow. I haven't had a big problem with it (Northern Lite shoes don't have a really aggressive claw, so I think that minimizes snow build up). You could try to duplicate the antibottes sold for crampons (basically a rubber sheet anchored to the crampon)."

I don't know what he means by the rubber sheet idea. Here's another interesting one:

"I've had good luck with spray-on cooking oil (garlic flavored) in the catskills on my Sherpas..."


Seems like this guy also likes to attract Bears?

[grampy]

Ian -
Thanks for this - it's really cool you got to see (and follow) bears! Too bad you didn't get to see the fox, but maybe just as well (for its own sake) that it's so good at NOT being seen.

Cool to see the Hemlock cone ... was it sort of soft and papery-feeling ? Odd that it combines the "winged seed" design (reminiscent of Maples and the like) into a conifer species. And of course you tasted it ... I would be disappointed with anything less . My wife and I collected a couple bags of Single-leaf Pinyon cones this October when we camped in the White Mountains; almost not worth the effort to pry out the nuts, shell them and toast them, but it was fun AND they made some very tasty pesto when we were done.

[paul]

The crampon thing is not really rubber but a sort of semi flexible plastic, with a convex shape, so that when you put weight on that foot it compresses and flattens out , and when you lift that foot it pops out and dislodges any snowthat might otherwise stick. Which may work pretty well for the small area under a boot but probably can't be adapted to the large area of a snowshoe.
Maybe the bears in the Catskills don't like garlic? I guess that's not as bad as smearing your snowshoes with venison fat.

[Harlen]

Grampy writes:

Ian -
... it's really cool you got to see (and follow) bears!

Yes it was Mike, and I got to see them 5x, counting the last sight of their eye-shine.

After first spotting them, I gave them some space before continuing up the trail; and they popped out again about 70 yards above-- still on the trail. Then ten minutes went by, and I saw all of the mom, just off the trail. This was now pretty close to the top, where the forest opens up, and there are many paths they could take. I hoped they would disappear for the night deeper into the forest. Instead, 15 minutes later, after hiking off the trail and onto the broad terrace that heads toward Mt Watkins where I like to camp, there they were again! This time, just 50 yards away, and I could see both of their entire bodies, as they walked side by side out toward the end of the terrace. The terrace drops off in cliffs on the south and east sides, so I knew that they would be passing by yet again, and now it was dusk. I love seeing bears except around my camp at night. Oh well.

As described above, I heard them moving about, walked toward them with a bright headlamp, and kind of chased them away with clapping, shouting, and that piercing marine whistle. I would have much preferred to just waved goodbye earlier in the day.

p.s. We too covered ourselves in Pinyon Pine sap for the sake of handfulls of nuts this fall around Canyon de Chelly. They are about our favorite nuts in the world!

[Harlen]

grampy wrote:

Cool to see the Hemlock cone ... was it sort of soft and papery-feeling ? Odd that it combines the "winged seed" design (reminiscent of Maples and the like) into a conifer species.

Yes, the Hemlock cones are uniquely soft things. They are narrower and more flexible than all the pine cones that I can think of. As for the "wingedness," you'll note that the Jeffrey Pine cones I showed in a photo attachment early in the report also sport winged seeds. I believe most conifer tree species have evolved this wing attachement to their seeds. It is, of course, a method of seed dispersal to help prospective new sapling trees get out from under the shade of their parents, to bask, and grow up in their own light. .... The human (teenage) version of this is the automobile.