Tahoe Day 3

Throughout the three days we had amazing weather, if you're into clear skies and the sun. Temperatures varied quite a bit, getting pretty hot during mid-day when we were walking around exposed, chilly in the shade with some wind, and maybe freezing after the sun went down. Other than the fact that we didn't bring sunscreen the conditions were perfect for what we were doing.

Day three was kind of a long one. We got moving by 7:30 and retraced a couple of miles we had hiked the day before so that we could get to fresh trail going up Mt. Tallac. Kanner read somewhere that it has "the best 360 degree view in the US" or something like that. I was skeptical, but it was spectacular indeed.

On the way up we stopped at Lake Gilmore for breakfast and then again on the way down for lunch.


Some kind of ground squirrel with a huge mushroom to munch on


Kanner at the top


View from Mt. Tallac




This video is also just all wind, so turn the volume off:


We then hiked back to our bags and out the the cars, 18 or so miles for the day.

Tahoe Day 1 and 2

Kanner and I went for a two night backpacking trek around Desolation Wilderness, which is just to the Southwest of Lake Tahoe.

Starting out at around 5pm at Echo Lakes we made it past the two lakes and all the houses by sundown:


We hiked an hour or so in the dark, finding a dryish, snow free spot for the night. Though we encountered few mammals on this drip we still took some precautions with our food:


The next morning we got up fairly early and made our way to the North end of Lake Aloha where we left our big packs for the day:




We wanted to make our way up to Jack's Peak, but were unsure of where a trail was...so we just went straight up the side of a mountain and made it to this spectacular ridge. It was quite steep, and a little sketchy at times, but it was a good scramble.

Sorry about the wind, put the volume down on this video:


View from the ridge:




Thankfully we had a map of the area (thanks Emma D) and found a route down the other side of the ridge toward Half Moon Lake, where we could find some trail again. The first step of making it down was navigating through some wide snow fields, some of which we successfully slide down, some not so much. We came from the upper middle right ridge area, and if you look closely you can see our tracks and butt-slides:




Then it was down to Half Moon Lake, where we jumped in, ate lunch, napped, and headed back to our stuff at Aloha.


At Aloha we set up camp, struggled to make dinner, and had the windiest night of sleep of our lives. But the sunset was amazing and the food turned out.






The best part of it all was that we only saw a person or two the whole two days.