Grass Lake–Return to Desolation

Day off for Veteran's Day for the kids and me.  Ashley woke up not feeling well.  I wanted to get out of the house and do something, but she was not feeling it.  In addition, she is going to Phoenix on Thursday for a wedding and also needed to get ready for a primary presidency meeting tonight.

I decided to take Soren on a hike.  We regularly have good family activities, but we do not get out as a father/son very often. Without the two little ones we could be a little more aggressive on our hike.  We decided to hike from Lilly Lake up to Grass Lake.  The hike wound up being 5.72 miles which was farther than I thought we were going to go.  Glen Alpine Trailhead is one of the parking areas to access Desolation Wilderness.  The Wilderness begins at elevation 7200 we began at 6570.   

You can see the “wilderness boundary” on the map below.  To the right would be Fallen Leaf Lake which is just south of Lake Tahoe.  We made it to Grass Lake which as a great haul for Soren and I.  To the left is Susie and Heather Lakes which are known to be loaded with large rainbow trout.  To the right of them is Lake Aloha where I camped last summer and caught a ton of fish.

Not bad as far as elevation gain.  To go farther to the west would have been some serious elevation gain.

 

Starting at Lilly Lake.  Tons of evidence of Beaver.  Dams, Loges and all marshy wet lands.  Glen Alpine Falls in the background.

We didn’t know it existed, but there used to be a resort in the area called Glen Alpine Resort operated 1878 to 1966.  Used to be a post office in the town.  A few buildings still left, but all centered around a spring that wasn’t giving any water. http://laketahoe.com/content/glen-alpine-springs-resort

Soren below getting a GPS Coordinate of Soda Springs.  Is is true, you never know what you are going to run into.  Always interesting.

Crossing into the wilderness – to cold this time of year to stay and camp, but still a great day trip. Yes, Soren is carrying the GPS.  He had has read the instruction manual a bunch of times and knows how to use it much better than I do.  He actually carried it the whole hike today.  I rarely touched it. We did have some candy on our hike and Soren did say that when we get home he needed to “de stick-ify it.”  Which was true, it did need destickifying.  Someone had left an old sleeping bag, blanket and pillow on the side of the trail.  Soren thought that was good, but I could not convince him to camp overnight with it.

Soren hauling up the trail with the GPS heading for the next waypoint.

 

I would like to go the direction to Susie Lake sometime next summer – Dad, Curt, Papa?  So many trout, so little time.

 

There is a stream coming out of Grass Lake.  It is by waypoint GRL7.  I did see some trout in the stream, so maybe in the future I will have to go back to fish it.  Grass Lake is probably full of trout as well.

Made it up to the Lake, to bad too late to fish, to cold to swim.  Just time to take a look.  Please notice Jack’s Peak in the background and how clear the sky it.  A scene you could sit and take in for a few hours.  We had lunch and then a candy bar we picked up at Maverik before we left. Soren picked a Score Bar – he is getting adult tastes.

 

Also at Maverik we picked up two large suckers.  Papa brings them when he visits and passes them to the kids when we make it to the destination.  I picked a Pina Colada and Soren picked wild cherry.  When I was opening Sorens I dropped it into the dirt.  While trying to catch it I whacked it with my hiking pole and broke it.  So I got to eat a dirty wild cherry sucker and Soren had Pina Colada.

 

Other things – very dense forests.  Notice the number and size of the large trees that have fallen.  Also a few cabins at the beginning of the hike someone got a little to aggressive with their canoe.

Of course for the first time since I can remember, all I had to pack was hats, coats, gloves, and food.  No Liv throwing her weight back and forth and trying to step out of the pack.  It was a light load to carry.  Weather held and we did not have to use any of our warmer gear.

It was a good father and son hike.  Soren and I got to talk about a bunch of topics from things at school, to hiking, to whats on our mind.  Soren really does like hiking, very appreciative of the opportunity to go.  He could have gone farther.  Not sure when we will throw a sleeping bag and pack on him (maybe 10? 12?), but he has it down.  We talked about how I didn’t like hiking as a kid and he listed the reasons why he likes it.  I think mostly for the adventure of seeing something new, but also realizes his body feels better when he is done.  He looks forward to downloading the hike data from the GPS into the computer and seeing the distances and did ask a whole bunch to take pictures so that we could load them onto the blog.  It is about making memories and we are doing well.