Horsetail Falls Hike, Desolation Wilderness, Lake Tahoe Hiking

This January has been one of the warmest and driest months California has ever seen. I saw a satellite image of the Sierra Nevada’s around the Lake Tahoe area comparing January 2013 to January 2014 and it’s literally almost black and white. White being 2013 when it was covered in snow and black because there is hardly ANY snow on the ground. Go ahead, look for yourself. The top photo is Lake Tahoe (and surround areas) in January 2013 and the bottom photo is January 2014. Pretty crazy right?

With hardly any snow fall, I asked Tommy if he would like to go on a day hike up what would normally be snowy – Horsetail Falls. Located near Lake Tahoe, the trailhead to Horsetail Falls sits at 6,000ft elevation and the top of the falls climb up to 7,200ft. He was on board and I told him – ‘This was going to be a goooooood workout!’ We also had Tommy’s sister and cousins join us for the hike too.

Climbing up to the top of the falls is no easy task and I made sure everyone knew what they were getting into. You may as well call it rock climbing because as certain points, you need both your hands and your feet to either climb up or climb down. After you reach the base of the falls, there is no trail to follow so you have to use your own sense of direction to get to your destination. Our destination was Avalanche Lake, just above the falls.

We got up early Saturday morning, dressed in our hiking gear, stopped in Placerville for a good breakfast (we were going to need it), and made our way to the trailhead. Having a soft spot in my heart for being in the outdoors, I had to bring along my camera to document parts of our hike…

These were roots of a fallen tree…and most likely lived through many snowy winters…

Tommy really enjoyed seeing the moss growing everywhere…

Before you reach the base of the falls you enter the desolation wilderness where a permit is required. It was an obligatory photo op…

Here we all are (minus myself) hiking up to the falls, having good conversation, and enjoying the spectacular views.

Because it has been such a dry winter, I knew the falls weren’t going to be rip roaring like they normally would be, but it still felt amazing to be outdoors.

This one is from Tommy’s phone from a distance showing the falls coming down the mountain …just a trickle!

An old tree who most likely has seen many many winters up there…

Making progress…you can see Brianna, Lex, and Derek hiking along the rocks to give you somewhat of a perspective of the landscape.

Shameless Selfie…

When the trail goes unclear, these markers help us by letting us know that we’re on the right path. Thank you to whoever stacked these!

I couldn’t help but turn around and soak in the view while making our way to the top. There’s a ski resort in the distance (Sierra at Tahoe) and if you look really hard you can see highway 50. Just follow the ridge of the mountain to the right of the frame all the way down until you see a road of “S” curves.

After about 3 hours, we finally made it to the top! Avalanche lake was frozen over but it was still a pretty neat view.

There seemed to be lots of footprints where the lake was supposed to be so I tried walking on it myself..

Evidence that we in fact, ALL made it. I was proud of everyone…

Here is a photo of Avalanche lake turning into Horsetail Falls. Yup, that’s a drop off.

Where the lake ends and the waterfall begins, the lake was de-icing itself.

After we ate our lunches at the top and re-fuled, we began our descent back down to the car. The way down was pretty dangerous in some parts but we made it. Brianna (Tommy’s sister) isn’t a big fan of heights so the first half of the descent she needed to stay focused on where her feet and hands were going and not focused on how steep or high on the mountain she was. She made it though and once she hit a flat surface, fell over and thanked the ground. ha.

The clouds that day were pretty freakin’ spectacular….

I snapped this one of Tommy just as we were finishing up the hike. A perfect end to a perfect day.

I can’t remember the last time I went to bed at 8pm but as soon as I got home, I crawled into bed for a good nights sleep.

Happy Monday!

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