New In Town

Yes... if you have seen this movie you will get what this means exactly :D
I am equally bad (mad) at snow as the leading lady of this movie!!!

I haven’t seen snow in my entire life except in the freezer. It’s been almost 3 months the winter is freezing us but still I hadn’t done even a single snow activity. And I have a very genuine reason for that,
I have very good memories with snow from India and I didn’t want to ruin them. Whenever we say ice it has to be an ice cream, ice candy, ice Gola, ice tea/coffee or just the ice stolen from the freezer. It feels awesome cracking ice with teethes, sucking the gola and drinking the cold drink till its lastest drop!

But here the snow comes at brutal temperatures and wind chills. I had isolated myself from all this since last 3 months. And one more reason I hate it coz whatever trendy, cute, colorful top/dress you are wearing a boring jacket has to come over it :( I HATE that!

Anyway but after doing snow shoeing I kind of started liking snow, the weather where I have to survive for the rest of the winter!!!
On 30th Jan 2010 it was a full moon, so Yogesh’s colleagues had decided to go for a snow shoeing in the full moon. It’s the simplest snow activity. To do this all you need is good thermally rated clothes, shoes and the snow shoes. And you have to just walk putting your legs in it! That’s all about it, so I was pretty excited. We rented those snow shoes and did car pooling from Chris's house. We were 7 people me, Yogesh, Becky, Bryan, Greg, Chris and Melody. Out of which Becky and Greg were going to do the cross country skiing and rest of were just going to walk through the snow. And yap how I could forget, we had 2 more members Becky’s dog Mickey and Greg’s bird hunter dog Rosco. Mickey is huge dog, she is almost of elk’s size and Rosco is the regular one but he was totally jittery.

So we started at almost 8.30 or 9 in the night at Edison Park, it was little fogy when we started but got cleared up in first 15-20 mins. It was all snow, pine trees and some bushes popping out of the snow. Moon was glowing with its full wattage and the ice was sparkling in that clam light. Sorry people you have to imagine how it would have looked coz I could not catch it in the camera!!!! Well, few things are just meant to be felt!!!!

One thing I noticed about people around here is that they don’t talk much when they are doing any sports activity; they really don't know that they are missing a great pleasure of playing Antakshis, movie/book reviews or ghost stories while doing treks or taking walks :) I miss this part the most from my treks back in India.

Anyway back to snow shoeing trail... it was a bit difficult for me walk with those big duck like shoes. Some times when I put my leg in snow, just the regular shoes used to come out :D the snow shoe used to stuck in the snow :)
They were a little big for me but after a while I learned how to walk (again at the age of 26).

So finally at 11 in the night we reached to the shelter. It was well equipped with the wood stove and logs. It feels good when your tax is repaid like this!!!! The shelter maintenance is done by the park rangers. It felt really cozy when Becky lit up the fire!!!! She bought bread for everybody. she kept that over the stove and it turned out hot crispy and damn testy :) we had some discussions about bird hunting with the dog, Vegas should exists or not, how Californians suck, why Californians are so obsessed with the way they look, why chocolate tests great with black paper and fennel seeds liquor :D

While we were having these discussions, somebody had found an ice slider. Everybody did the sliding; it was just so awesome :) I felt like being a child again! It’s the simplest thing; it was plastic plate you have to sit in it and just slide over the ice, that’s all. Sometimes you enjoy things more when they are not under your control!!! Just go with the gravity and scream at the top of your lungs!
So with this little fun we headed towards our base camp and came back to home at 1.30 in the night!!!!

Just to make most out of the rent, we (Yogesh and me) decided to do one more trail in the day. It was a bright sunny day almost 50F, we just couldn’t sit inside the house, that would have been a sin. So did one more trail it was 'Virginia messier trail' bright sun light, warm weather and walking through the ice!!! It was all same as the nights trail but it feels good when the temperature is humanly! It was an uphill trail, from the top you could see a panoramic view of mountains and ice patched forest. On the background of clear blue sky the iced mountains looked just stunning.

It wasn’t an adventure, it doesn’t appear to be very exciting thing but this was my first snow activity so I have document it :)