Lakes- Tahoe, Part II

As I have mentioned in Tahoe- Part I, Tahoe Basin is home for several recreational activities and hikers paradise. Numerous trails for all types- days hikes or multiday backpacking. Trails to the summits and trails to the alpine lakes. These lakes are beautiful up in the high elevation surrounded by high standing mountains. The clear blue waters mesmerize the hikers. I have hiked a few and have camped in beautiful state parks here. I will post info about some of the them.

Mt Tallac (9,739ft) is one of the great hikes with views of high standing mountain range and granite landscape dotted with blue alpine lakes. One can see few lakes from the top. In the first picture, in this post, you can see Emerald Bay and Cascade Lake and the vast Lake Tahoe. In the second picture, you can see Lake Tahoe and Fallen Leaf Lake. One can also see Gilmore and Half Moon lakes which aren't in the pictures. This was in the month of August and hence there is no snow on surrounding mountains. In early summer there will be snow in the higher elevation and the scene looks much prettier. The hike is tough with 3,260ft elevation gain in 5 miles. But, worth all the efforts ... you see it in the pics ...

Ellis Peak (8,640ft) is 6 miles moderate hike on the west shore of Tahoe with the views to die for. The trail has 1,800ft gain and 400ft drop in elevation. Until I reached the peak I was wondering what views could I probably get. Once I was on top and I was speechless!! The blue view mesmerized me! That was one of the finest hiking moments for me. That day I didn't have a camera to shoot panorama, so I stitched 3 pictures shot by a point-and-shoot. Poor workmanship :( but, you can still see what I saw!!

Cathedral Lakes are on the way to popular Mt Tallac. It was month of May and I was trying to go for summit of Mt Tallac. Since there was too much of snow I cut short my hike to Cathedral Lakes and returned on not so good Fallen Leaf lake trail.

Meeks Bay trail hike to Rubicon Lake (8,360ft) is 16.2 miles out-and-back hike- a long hike with some steep uphill grade of about 2,120ft climb. The trailhead is on Hwy-89 right across the Meeks Bay Resort. A day-use permit is required for this hike which can be availed at a self-service station at the trailhead. The well marked trail passes few alpine lakes before continuing to Rubicon Pass. At 4.6 miles is Lake Genevive, then the trail climbs up the rocky terrain to Crag Lake, some unknown lake, Shadow lake and at last Rubicon lake. I must admit, I was tired by the end of 16.2 miles in a day in high elevation. Another 1.5 miles on this trail leads to Phipps Pass (8,800ft).

Echo Lakes trail starts from Lower Echo Lake, extends to Lake Aloha. This is a popular backpacker's trail who camp overnight at Lake Aloha. Echo Lakes are twin lakes in the midst of huge granite boulders. From here I hiked up to Tamarack Lake which is about 8.1miles out-and-back with hardly any elevation gain. Fairly moderate grade about 500ft which can be hiked easily in half-a-day. Views of Echo Lakes from the destination are good. These are few hikes I consider good among all the hikes I went in Tahoe Basin. I swear there are many more beautiful ones! I happened to see many birds, grouse was a frequent sight. Bears and deers on few trails.

Well, hiking is one activity which I miss in India. Should figure out something soon ...

Lake Tahoe- Part I.
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This post is linked to Water World Wednesday.

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Scrapbook- A Travel Blog by Kusum Sanu is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.