Cascade Falls, Lake Tahoe Basin Mgt Unit

22 June, 2015

A short hike with my yoga pals this morning. Up from Bayview Campground to Cascade Creek and back.

We had planned to hike in the Carson Pass area, but there is a rapidly expanding, fierce wildfire in that area: The Washington Fire. We didn't want to mess with fire and smoke, so decided to head to beautiful Lake Tahoe instead.

That 'cloud' behind the mountains is probably the plume from the fire, visible on our hike out from the falls. We could see it rising up and up in just a few minutes of watching!

Here's a map, with labels to give you an idea of the distance between our hike and the fire. I dropped the scale in the middle of the lake.

The road leading to the trailhead is right across from Inspiration Point. I took a picture.

We stopped playing tourist, and set out on our hike.

The trail starts off flat but soon gets typically Sierra-ish, with rock staircases in abundance.

On our way out, we saw a LOT of people hiking in. One group looked straight off the beach: swimsuits, flipflops, and one case of bare feet. I wonder if she put her shoes on eventually?

We found an easy way to cross the creek, and had another little break. We love our rest stops!

Lots of downed trees.

Despite my best efforts at editing this photo, I still look like I have a giant, drooping mustache. Fiddle!

I had a bit of panting on the way out from the elevation, I guess. So we took more stops! No shade is safe from the Hiking (Resting?) Yoginis!

We were not done with Tahoe, once back to the car, and checked out the parking lot above Vikingsholm, but it was absolutely full. Jam packed to the gills.

So we drove on a ways, found a nice beach, Baldwin Beach, and ate lunch at a nicely located picnic table. I waded in Lake Tahoe for a few seconds. At least as cold as Lake Superior in August!

The End.

Pyramid Creek, Eldorado National Forest

 

The Hiking Yoginis (our new name for the women from yoga class who hike together) and I went up US50 to Twin Bridges to poke around Pyramid Creek.
(I googled Hiking Yoginis, and without the plural, it is an existing blog. Oh well. Too good to be original.)

Yoginis!

You know, I already wrote this blog post, but the Blogger App ate it and won't give it back. Really frustrated.

Anyway, there was one other car in the lot when we got there, and many more when we returned. We only went a little over a mile, but some of us (me!!!) were tired from Monday's 6 mile hike.

Pyramid Creek, as advertised, had many little cataracts to ogle. So we sat and ogled.
And flowers. More ogling.

This hike had the fewest trail ducts I've ever seen. But made up for by little brown signs way up on the trees.

We got up on the granite slabs far enough to get a view of Horsetail Falls, but decided to save that hike for another day.

After our hike, we hogged the only picnic table at the parking lot, ate tasty food, and planned the next hike: Lake Winnemucca from Carson Pass later this month. YAY.
Two of the Yoginis will goof around on the El Dorado trail in the meantime.

Twofer post

I took a nice 3 mile recovery hike on Thursday. Yes, the day after the big downhill from Loch Leven Lakes.
It was another hike around Ancil C. Hoffman park with the Turtle Trekkers. This visit, unlike my first hike with this Meetup group, was at a pleasingly brisk pace. The group had a lovely botanical discussion as we swung along the trail.

We also enjoyed watching the swallows along the river.

Then, today, I went on an equally brisk, but twice as long, hike with my yoga buddies along the south shore of Lake Natoma in Folsom.

My hip flexors are tired now, but I'm looking forward to ANOTHER hike in two days, in the Eldorado Nat'l Forest.
I'll either be fit for more hiking at the height of summer or crippled. Time will tell.