Woods Lake to Winnemucca lake and round top lake

 July 6, 2024

Today we have a group of five people Hiking it’s a good day to escape the heat down I. The valley. The area I live is about 110 forecast today should be much nicer up here at the higher elevation. Will be hiking from the Woods lake trailhead past Winnemucca lake up to Round Top lake

As we start our trail, we cross over this nicely, built bridge at a well flowing stream.

We soon pass by a nice little wildflower garden with multiple different species.

We passed by an old mining artifact explained by this sign. You can see the center stone with a hole in the middle that their post was put in, and the flatter crushing stone next to it.

Our trail has been through a wooded area with fairly nice shade, but it is ending, and we will soon be in exposed rock

We passed by a couple of the shallow pits where ore was dug out of during the mining operations.

In front of me is round top mountain down below it to the left is lake Winnemucca to the right is round top lake

We have come out in the open. We passed by a large field a beautiful wildflowers. Looking up the slope along the Ridgeline is the path that we hiked earlier in the year on the snowshoe hike from Carson Pass to Winnemucca Lake

This wide-open portion of trail offers beautiful mountain top views, Meadow views, and a river view.

My daughter Alyssa laughs at me with my hood tucked behind my ears. I explained to her that there’s actually a reason for it.  The shirt is Merino wool and evaporates sweat very easily. When I keep it tucked behind my ears and pulled tight against my forehead it acts as a sweat band, keeping the sweat from dripping into my face. It also puts the fabric right up against my skin and keeps me cool Inversely when I wear it not behind my ears hanging loose over my head and traps heat in the air pocket and actually keeps me warmer in cool weather

Although I see them regularly on my hikes, the beauty of these flowers, especially clumped together with the mountains in the background are irresistible for stopping to take a picture

We’ve reached Winnemucca Lake. The last time I was here it was fully covered with snow and looked like just a big open Prairie. The water is lapping at the shore with a beautiful sound. There is a large patch of Purple Mountain Heath near the shore and a large field of Mule’s Ears with yellow flowers just a short distance away

Midway up to the saddle I took a moment to stop and do a 360 series of photos. Creation in this area is so incredibly beautiful. The pictures don’t come anywhere near doing it justice.

We cross another beautiful snowmelt stream running over the trail

As we cross the saddle, the lake comes into view along with more astonishing valley and mountain views that go on forever

From the lake level we’re going to go up to its left and head up towards the top of Round Top mountain. We will probably stop about at the saddle, but time will tell.

We are just shy of the saddle on the side of the mountain. Looking down below. You can see Round Top Lake with the larger Caples lake behind. The end of Caples has the dam where you can see the highway crossing over

Just adjacent to us are the two mountain peaks known as the Sisters. Round Top saddle sits between the Sisters and Round Top Mountain

We pushed on and reached the rock scramble portion of the “Trail“ straight up the side of round top

We have reached the top of round top. Technically, Round top is two bumps over but it is a lot of up-and-down rock scramble to get to that and we have decided we are close enough. It is amazing, we are at 10,366 feet of elevation and on this mountain peak we are surrounded by ladybugs butterflies and a lichen.  As I say on every hike multiple times: The views are amazing.

Coming back down, the hillside is beautifully covered in these white and purple flowers ,with a snowfield in the background, on one of the Sisters

We’re back on the shore of Round Top lake and we can look directly up to where we were on top of Round Top 

Returning to the trail, we will come back down the opposite side of the trail system from where we came

Coming down the section of Trail we are on now offers some beautiful wide open views

The trail opens up into a beautiful Meadow a stream runs along side of it. The water is coming out of a snow tunnel briefly before going back in.

On the beginning of the hike, we saw a fairly primitive way to extract gold from the rock. We’ve come upon an old mind shaft that has been sealed shut. There is also the chassis of an old vehicle sitting here amazingly, they cut a trail to drive the truck up and then used its motor as a power plant to pull the ore cars up and down the shaft

After leaving the old mine site, we will continue a downhill into the valley back to Woods lake. As the trail winds down and around, we can get a quick glimpse of it through the trees

We passed by a beautiful waterfall off to the left side of the trail, and soon loop around and cross the same stream over this log

We are walking down a fairly wide trail. My assumption is that this was created for bringing the vehicle and mine supplies up to the previous area we were at. It’s amazing for me to think about them constructing this by hand without all of the modern power equipment we have today

We’ve arrived back at the split for the Winnemucca / Round Top Lake trail. Our parking area and cars are just around the corner.

To finish off our day, we stopped by the Caples Lake and Marina store got a Klondike and a Gatorade.