YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. — Yosemite National Park might not seem like an ideal winter destination, particularly if you’re from a part of the country where you’d like to trade in road salt for rim salt on your margarita.
But Yosemite in winter is magical, as I discovered last year on a trip there with my family just after Christmas. There’s snowboarding and skiing, both downhill and cross-country, as well as sledding (pick up a plastic saucer at a sporting goods store on the way). You can also ice skate at a rink in the shadow of the famed granite formation known as Half Dome. Park rangers also lead snowshoe walks (free with $3 suggested donation).
Many of Yosemite Valley’s shops and restaurants remain open. And at the Majestic Hotel, one of the country’s most storied national park lodges, there are holiday decorations and a seven-course dinner with costumed performers called the Bracebridge Dinner. The wood-and-stone hotel, formerly known as the Ahwahnee, opened in 1927 and has hosted everyone from Presidents John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama to Queen Elizabeth and Walt Disney.
Naturalist John Muir once wrote that Yosemite was “full of God’s thoughts.”
Driving in, thick forests of snow-dusted pine and fir trees block your view at first of the park’s famous granite monoliths towering over Yosemite Valley. But there’s nothing like that first glimpse. El Capitan rises 3,600 feet from the valley floor, more than twice the height of the Empire State Building. On the other side of the valley is Half Dome, rising 4,700 feet off the valley floor.
