Into frozen, northern Yosemite

On Sunday I went into Yosemite NP with the grad student I originally interviewed with, Andrea, and her field assistant. We left from Tuolumne Meadows and headed north about 10 miles, the second half of which was off trail. There is a ridiculous amount of snow up there, and hiking through it can be really slow goin. We arrived at a small lake called Conness Lake (the A on the map) in the late afternoon, and immediately began catching frogs. When the sun goes down, it gets colder than it already is, and the frogs go down into the bottom of the lake for the night where we can't get at them. We caught 14 adult frogs and swabbed em' all so that through DNA analysis we can determine the bacterial communities that live on their skin, and through that try and figure out what bacterium help the froggies overcome the deadly Chytrid fungus that is killing so many of them off. It was really fun catching the little guys, even if they weren't having very much fun. We camped in the only snow free spot within at least a mile, and from which we could make out the north face of Half Dome in the far distance. This morning we hiked out by a slightly different route and once we were out of the snow, wound our way through the amazing Tuolumne Meadows. (By that time, we were at mile 12, and I was more thinking about how sore my feet were than the scenery haha)