Cook,
I'm sorry I got so upset. Friends? As you say - where its hard and level sleds save carrying the weight on your back, but they do slow you down. If you go light, it takes less energy to carry it than to dreg it. I took my mountainsmith sled up glacier point "road" with Tom D, but I made him pull it on his snowshoes.

Tom,
Since your Yosemite trips have been on the Glacier Point road... As soon as you get off "road" it ain't level too much. You were OK in San Jacintha because you had plenty of everything, but you were not "at one with the snow" because you had too much and it was having to deal with all that stuff and the sled that was the main problem.

I no longer carry a shovel because I go alone mostly and it would be hard to dig my self out with it, and the only other thing I would use it for is to level a snow platform and I don't dig a platform, I stomp a platform on top of the snow. Any leveling can be done with a ski or a boot. Since my shovel is plastic and weighs 24 ounces it stays at home. At first it seemed wrong to leave it out, but like many new ideas that you try, they seem wrong till you see that they work just as well.
Jim