Echo Lake to Lake Aloha

 

Today I am meeting up with some fellow hikers from my regular Hiking Group, but it is not part of the official group. We have five of us total and will be hiking from Echo Lake to Lake. Aloha.

The trail rises up to the side of echo lake. There is an Outlook overlooking lake Tahoe in the distance.

Echo Lake is extremely calm today. We are in the transition season when most cabins have been closed up and very few recreational boats are on the lake. This morning there are none the surrounding mountains reflect off the surface of the water clearly visible. 

As we get towards the top of both lower and upper echo lakes, we can look down over both of them. 

This section of trail is super rocky. The views of the lakes are beautiful, but I’m not a huge fan of this type of a trail is hard on the feet, ankles, and knees.

Tamarack Lake sits about a 10th of a mile off the side of the trail. I have never been there, but today we decided to take a short detour towards it. 

Tamarack Lake is beautiful also crystal clear with incredible reflections of the mountains around it appearing on the surface. The reflection cover covers almost half of the lake. 

After getting back on the trail, which is a portion of the PCT, my happy place, I ran into a southbound through hiker with the Trail name of “Mud Foot”. We had a great chat about the Trail and both of our experiences.

Lake Louise sits just off to the side of the trail and I passed it as I quickly tried to catch back up to the group after spending time talking with Mud Foot.

We reach Lake Aloha. The level is lower than I have ever seen it before. That did not stop us from taking a swim; however, the water was breathtakingly cold!  It did feel very refreshing.

After lunch, we headed back towards Echo Lake going towards Lake Tamarack from above, offered a good view of it.

On our last mile, we again ran in to mud foot who had stopped for a swim echo lake. He walked out with us the rest of the way with more good conversation. We soon reach the parking lot ending our hike. We covered 13.8 miles today with great weather, good friends, and incredible views of creation.

Thunder Mountain Summit

Today I am with Steve and Susan, both core members of our BAS hiking group. We are hiking to the summit of Thunder Mountain.

we begin our hike in the burn scar of the Caldor fire.  I’ve posted previously about the resilience of nature in these burn areas one of the first flowers that we’ve come to is also ironically, one of the first that grows in a fire area and it is ironically called Fireweed. In the same area I came across two other pretty blooms.

The trail passes along the Ridgeline that has a large number of “snow fences“ the theory is that these will direct the wind currents and snow up keeping it from piling up on the highway below.

The rock formations are awesome to look at. They make me feel so small.

Along one of the upper ridge lines, we find white pines growing in this harsh and somewhat desolate area. It reminds me of the strength God puts in us to persevere as well.

We continue up with more open valley views, and large rock formations rising out the ground

Standing on an open Ridgeline, I have a beautiful view in all directions

The trail continues through more fields of your irregularly shaped lava rock 

And another example of hardiness, this buckwheat plant rises up amongst the rock on a windswept hillside

As we continue on our approach to Thunder Mountain, the views remain incredible. Silver Lake can be seen between some of the rocks in the distance.  We look behind us and see a keyhole through one of the rock spires.

From the summit of Thunder Mountain we have beautiful 360° views with clear skies.

The rocks on and round the summit are covered with an array of colorful lichen.

We begin our return trip back down the trail, and are rewarded with views from the opposite direction. This large cone shaped mountain almost looks like an extension of my head when positioned right, and more neat looking rock formations look completely different from the opposite direction.

Kirkwood ski resort sits in the valley below us. I don’t quite know how skiers would get to this bridge line, but they have a lot of signage warning them of the danger. This one looks a little over the top in my opinion. 

We continue walking past many more awesome looking rock formations I can’t resist getting pictures of them 

Another plant sits by itself on the side of the trail. We did not see this on the way up. We think the sun may have been on it keeping its pedals closed now in the shade they open wide. 

We dropped back down into the trees. And a mile later are back in the car. 

Steven and Susan took some pictures of me on the trail a little ways in front of them. I’ve got them posted here at the end, along with a close-up of a rock archway we saw on the other side of the valley.

Today’s hike was 7.7 miles with a vertical gain of 1848 feet. The skies were crystal clear and the weather was comfortable with a nice cooling breeze most of the day.