Desolation Wilderness and the South Lake Tahoe Basin: A Guide to Lake Tahoe's Finest Hiking Area

by Jeffrey P. Schaffer

Overview

Your Guide to Northern California’s Spectacular Hiking Area

Craggy mountain crests, dozens of hiking trails, and 130 lakes packed into 100 square miles of scenic beauty, Desolation Wilderness is one of the country’s most popular wilderness areas. It is minutes from Lake Tahoe and just a few hours from Sacramento and San Francisco.

Explore the mountain landscape with hiking expert Jeffrey P. Schaffer. This comprehensive guide provides information on hiking, camping, wildlife, and natural history. It covers all of Desolation Wilderness, as well as Emerald Bay, the South Fork American River, and the Upper Truckee River. Written in cooperation with the federal Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit, the guidebook has everything you need to plan your trip and to find your way in this unparalleled region.

Inside You’ll Find

• Descriptions of 32 hikes, divided into four areas
• Table of mileages to 80 trout-stocked lakes
• Details on the terrain, lakes, animals, and vegetation
• Tips on when and where to get permits, and how to enjoy your hike with minimal environmental impact
• A list of the area’s campgrounds, arranged by trailhead locations
• Full map of the region divided into seven sections

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781643590653
Publisher:	Wilderness Press
Publication date:	04/20/2021
Edition description:	5th Revised ed.
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Jeffrey P. Schaffer made his first backpacking trip in a 1962 traverse of the Grand Canyon, at age 19. The following year the climbing frenzy seized him, which lasted until about 1972, some 200 roped ascents later. In that year he began working on his first book for Wilderness Press, The Pacific Crest Trail. Between then and the late 1980s, he was the sole or principal author of 12 guidebooks, and he had mapped about 4,000 miles of trail for his books and topographic maps. Innumerable observations while hiking made him question conventional geological wisdom on the origin of mountain ranges, which led him to write a lengthy book on the origin of the Sierra Nevada landscapes, particularly Yosemite Valley. At the start of the millennium he was teaching geology and geography at Napa Valley College, introducing students to the Sierra Nevada and other lands. Wilderness Press books authored or coauthored by Jeff include Hiker’s Guide to the High Sierra: Yosemite and Tuolumne Meadows, Pacific Crest Trail: Southern California, Pacific Crest Trail: Northern California, The Pacific Crest Trail, Vol. 2: Oregon and Washington, Lassen Volcanic National Park and Vicinity, Yosemite National Park, Desolation Wilderness and the South Lake Tahoe Basin, The Tahoe Sierra, Hiking the Big Sur Country: The Ventana Wilderness, and The Geomorphic Evolution of the Yosemite Valley and Sierra Nevada Landscapes.

Read an Excerpt

Hike 10: Pacific Crest Trail to Lake Aloha

Directions to Trailhead

From the Highway 49 junction in Placerville, drive 5 miles east up Highway 50 to the Eldorado National Forest Information Center, located on Camino Heights Drive. Get your wilderness permit there, then continue 41 miles up to Johnson Pass Road. (Westbound drivers: this road is 1 1/4 miles west from Echo Summit.) This road climbs 0.6 mile east to a junction, where you turn sharply left and take the Echo Lakes Road 0.9 mile north to a large parking area, most of it on the south side of the road. Park here, not down at Echo Lake Resort. The southbound Pacific Crest Trail starts from the smaller north part of the parking area. The northbound trail starts from Lower Echo Lake’s dam, where day users usually can get wilderness permits. To reach this north trailhead, take a short steep trail northwest down to it, starting from the west end of the north part of the parking area.

Introduction

The trail from Lower Echo Lake to Lake Aloha may be the most heavily used one in the wilderness. Its popularity is due in part to its accessibility—just off Highway 50—to nearby summer homes and summer camps, and to the trail’s relative ease. At 7420 feet the trailhead is about 800 feet higher than other wilderness trailheads, hence the hiker has that much less elevation to gain. Also, hikers who take the Echo Lakes water taxi can subtract 2 1/2 miles from the above mileages. Hence only Clyde Lake, beyond Mosquito Pass, is more than 5 1/4 miles (or a couple of hours) away. And there are a dozen lakes that can be reached by easy cross-country hiking. No wonder the Echo Lake trailhead is so busy.

Route Description

To save 5.0 miles of round-trip hiking, take the Echo Lakes water taxi, operated by Echo Lake Resort. Since Pacific Gas and Electric Company owns the top 12 feet of the lake (because they’ve dammed it that high), they can lower the water by that amount, and by mid-September they usually do so. Then the lake reverts to its natural, upper-lower pair of lakes, and the taxi goes only to the peninsula separating the two lakes. You’ll still save 3.4 miles, round trip. The first part of Hike 10 is on a minuscule segment of the 2650-mile Pacific Crest Trail, which extends from the Canadian border to the Mexican border. This PCT segment also coincides with the Tahoe-Yosemite Trail, or TYT, the two diverging just north of Middle Velma Lake (Hike 11). This PCT segment also coincides with the Tahoe Rim Trail, or TRT, which clockwise around the Lake Tahoe Basin first follows the Big Meadow Trail south (Hike 30), the PCT north to Echo Pass (Hike 30 and, in reverse, Hike 27), then our Hike 10, and finally Hike 11 (and beyond).

We begin by crossing Lower Echo Lake’s dam, make an initial climb east, and then head west on a sparsely treed, rollercoaster trail. The trail, traversing across glacier smoothed and polished lower slopes, soon takes us below some granodiorite cliffs. These and others above the Echo Lakes offer climbers about 100 routes, almost all imaginably difficult for the non-climber. In about 1 mile, at a spot below Flagpole Peak and its prominent cliffs, the trail makes a short switchback east and then climbs west high above lakeshore summer homes. Scattered Jeffrey pines and junipers give way to thick groves of lodgepoles as we descend toward the lower lake’s northwest shore. We then traverse to a rusty, granitic knoll, round it to forested slopes above Upper Echo Lake, and continue westward. The tree cover is thick enough to blot out any possible view of the public pier at which the water taxis land, and use trails down to the lake may add to the confusion. If you’ve taken the taxi, you’ll know which trail to take back. The proper trail should be signed, and it descends 120 yards to a pier. There is a nearby pay phone about 20 yards west of the pier, and from it you can phone the resort (659-7207) if you want a boat ride back.

Beyond the pier’s trail you climb, in 0.6 mile, a rocky tread up open slopes of quartz monzonite to reach the signed Desolation Wilderness boundary and, just 15 yards past it, a junction with a trail signed for Triangle Lake. This is the fast way to the lake, climbing steeply 3/4 mile north to a saddle, then descending 1/3 mile to the lake. If unsigned, this trail can be easily missed. It begins just 20 yards past a small bend that has conspicuous junipers growing on it and 70 yards before you enter an obvious, small grove of lodgepole pines. This route also provides the shortest way to Echo Peak, described below. The dark inclusions you’ve been seeing in the rocks over the last stretch are blocks of rock that were broken off and incorporated into rising magma that later solidified to form a pluton....

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: The Country

Chapter 2: Hiking in the Tahoe Area

Chapter 3: Natural History of the Tahoe Area

Chapter 4: Thirty-Two Hikes

• Desolation Wilderness, West Side
• Hike 1: Loon Lake Trail
• Hike 2: Lyons Creek Trail
• Hike 3: Bloodsucker Lake Trail
• Hike 4: Barrett Lake and Red Peak Trails
• Hike 5: Twin Lakes and Grouse Lake Trails
• Hike 6: Tyler Lake Trail
• Hike 7: Rockbound Pass Trail
• Hike 8: Horsetail Falls Trail
• Hike 9: Ralston Peak Trail
• Desolation Wilderness, Center
• Hike 10: Pacific Crest Trail to Lake Aloha
• Hike 11: Pacific Crest Trail to McKinney Creek OHV Staging Area
• Desolation Wilderness, Southeast Side
• Hike 12: Angora Fire Lookout and Angora Lakes
• Hike 13: Tamarack Trail to Echo Peak
• Hike 14: Grass Lake
• Hike 15: Glen Alpine to Lake Aloha
• Hike 16: Half Moon and Alta Morris Lakes
• Hike 17: Mt. Tallac via Gilmore Lake
• Hike 18: Mt. Tallac via Floating Island Lake
• Hike 19: Granite Lake and Cascade Creek Fall
• Hike 20: Velma Lakes Area
• Emerald Bay
• Hike 21: Emerald Bay State Park
• Hike 22: D. L. Bliss State Park
• Desolation Wilderness, Northeast Side and Sugar Pine Point State Park
• Hike 23: Tahoe-Yosemite Trail to Middle Velma Lake
• Hike 24: General Creek Trail
• South Fork American River
• Hike 25: Lovers Leap
• Hike 26: Sayles Canyon and Bryan Meadow
• Hike 27: Echo Summit to Showers Lake
• Upper Truckee River
• Hike 28: Hawley Grade Trail
• Hike 29: Meiss Meadow Trail to Dardanelles Lake
• Hike 30: Big Meadow Trail to Round Lake
• Hike 31: Carson Pass to Showers Lake
• Hike 32: Schneider’s Cow Camp to Showers and Meiss Lakes

Chapter 5: Maps for Desolation Wilderness and Adjoining Areas

Recommended Reading and Source Materials

Index

Map Index

Editorial Reviews

...everything needed to plan trips and find your way in the Desolation Wilderness.”
—Tahoe Daily Tribune

From the Publisher