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Snow. Being in a tent while it's snowing...sucks. Several years ago I was in the Sierras in October. It's a fantastic time of year to be there. Awesome fall colors, especially the aspens. And NO BUGS. But it can be a crapshoot regarding the weather, and at times will get down below 20 degrees. At this point I was still an avid tent camper. I was the last one in my regular group of camping buddies, including my brother. Temps had been as low as 18 degrees. I was with my girlfriend (now my wife), and two dogs in our large family-sized tent. We had a catalytic heater, but the tent was too big and too cold for the heater to work effectively. So I constructed another "tent" inside the big one using old tent poles and emergency blankets. It was just big enough to cover the air mattress, and the heater was able to keep up. At any time after sunset, you could look in there and find the dogs (and the girlfriend) snuggled up in relative warmth. They looked at me like I was crazy, but I had a point to prove. I had spent the prior 3 days ragging on my brother and his buddies. They all had nice travel trailers, I was the only tent-camper in our group, and when they said I was crazy, I dove deep into trash talking. I called them all "&%$#@!", laughed at their rigs all stacked up next to each other in the little trailer park at Lundy while I was in a beautiful site surrounded by trees and nature about 50 yards away. And these folks were worried about bears, even though they were mostly cops (and armed), sitting in their trailers sipping hot chocolate while my girlfriend, dogs and me were "roughing it"...no firepower, no electricity, our provisions away from the tent but not really secured from the big critters. This is how I had always done it since childhood, and I was goofing on all of them for crossing over to the dark side. Some time around 9pm it started snowing. My dogs were now also looking at me like I was crazy, and wouldn't come out from the tent-inside-a-tent. Yun (my girlfriend) began asking "what-if's". I tried to keep everyone calm by showing them how easy it was to simply stand up and knock the snow off the tent from the inside. See? Piece of cake, we'll be fine. Well, the snow started coming down heavy. I reassured her that we would be fine, we weren't going to be crushed, it was all good. Until I realized I needed to knock the snow off every 15-20 minutes to keep the tent from collapsing...and the snow that slid off was piling up on the sides. And I wouldn't be able to sleep because of this 15-minute drill. It dawned on me that my pride had gotten the better of me, and that I had no options. I told Yun to grab the dogs and all the dry bedding and head for the truck. She noted astutely that there wasn't enough room for all of us to sleep there. I knew this, but kept my mouth shut. My earlier trash talk was about to come full circle. We drove out of our spot and into the trailer park, and I went and knocked on my brother's door asking for some floor space to sleep. I tried to block out the comments. "Who's the &%$#@! now?" The next morning, we went back to our campsite to find the tent collapsed and buried along with the rest of our stuff. Ugh. And there was more snow in the forecast. I was lucky. There had been a cancellation for one of the large, permanent trailers at the resort and we slid right into artificial comfort. Our site was a wreck. We went back after the snow finally stopped to dig everything out. While driving around to waste time waiting for others to arrive, my brother had spotted a teeny little travel trailer for sale in Mono City. It was really small and old, but in good shape. And it had a shower. I bought it on the spot, and we still have it. The dogs and the wife are much happier, but I feel like I've lost something. Other than when out on a bike adventure, this was the last time I tent camped. I've also crossed over to the dark side...but it's warm and dry here.

No ride report would be complete without a video, right?