February 20, 1999
Snow Wheelin
You can see Yosemite in the background
We left the cabin at Pine Mtn. Lake around 8:30am and it was a beautiful sunny day with a few distant clouds. On the way we stopped for gas and were handed fliers of the three missing women; Carol Sund, her daughter and their foreign exchange friend. We told the man that we'd keep an eye out for them. We continued towards Yosemite and then turned off on a very steep and windy road. The views from the elevation we were at was spectacular. You could see the whole canyon with the Stanislaus River running through the bottom. There were some really neat waterfalls that could be seen as well. After we crossed the bridge at the bottom, we started up the other side of the mountain, which had even more turns in it. I drove really slow in my Jeep because the stock manual steering isn't that great and this was one of those roads where you wouldn't want to make any kind of a careless mistake. It was a LOOONG way down!!
Another 15 miles or so we found some trails off of the main road. There were patches of snow and plenty of creek crossings. The real fun started when we drove even further up the road and found some trails that had areas of snow that were 4-6 inches deep! The further we went down the trail, the deeper the snow seemed to get. There were hours of trails and wheelin to do here. The clouds started moving in and snow flurries were coming down. We then got into an area where the snow was about 7-10 inches deep and it started snowing..........alot. It took some time to make it up this one hill that was covered in snow. Tracktion was a problem here. We all made it up after a good hour and half and made it back to the main road. It was really snowing now!! The road had about 3 inches of fresh snow, making it a little hard to see the pavement. This was my first trip snow wheeling and I had a blast!! My CJ5 did everything I expected of it, including fogging up the front window!
 I got to be the snow plow of the group. My EZ locker really paid itself off! |
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 Elio's '82 CJ8 Scrambler |
 David's Chevy had tracktion problems, even after being aired down to 15 lbs. |
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 We decided to stop and then the snow was flying |
 This trail just kept getting deeper and the snow was falling fast. Approx. 5000 elev. |
 John's '85 Toyota |
 We woke up the next morning and it had snowed all night and was still going. The two Jeeps spent the night in the garage. |