You should check out this article on the Ostrander Ski Hut. Why?
1. There’s an amazing night photo of the hut below a billion stars.
2. A comparison of Two Buck Chuck and Chateau Margaux.
Link to the photo
Link to the SF Chronicle article
It’s an unproven yet widely acknowledged fact that Two Buck Chuck decanted from a Nalgene bottle while snowbound in a warm and cheery mountain hut far from the nearest road tastes significantly better than Chateau Margaux sipped from Riedel stemware in a Michelin-starred restaurant.
Every mile it’s carried in your backpack through a wintry wilderness, it seems, adds five bonus points on the Robert Parker scale.
It’s a notion that was common wisdom a generation or two ago but now thought hopelessly quaint: Life’s pleasures are more intense and satisfying if you have to work for them.
And make no mistake - getting to Ostrander Hut, deep in the Yosemite backcountry, is hard work. I was reminded of this recently as my friends Tim and Shelley and I strapped climbing skins to the bottoms of our cross-country skis and huffed and puffed up a seemingly endless rise to the crest of Horizon Ridge.
But there came the first of our rewards: A forever, king-of-the-world panorama that took in a good portion of Yosemite National Park, from the back side of Half Dome to the snow-clad Clark Range to fingery Matterhorn Peak, 35 miles away on the northeast border of the park.