Today’s hike is from Glen Alpine trailhead to Lake Aloha . Today should be a beautiful hike. The scenery from the parking lot alone is phenomenal. Today’s group consists of 10 hikers.
Trail starts along a road leading up to a small private resort. It’s closed to traffic, but some tire tracks are visible. Just a short distance into the hike we come across a beautiful waterfall called Majesta Falls.
As we continue uphill we enter the western side of the Desolation Wilderness. As we go up the views become more and more spectacular on some Vista points. There is a 360 that takes the breath away. Nannette is one of our hikers who I met on our Camino trip. Glad she could join us today.
We are calling this Rock Mustafa Rock from the movie lion King
We’ve come to another gorgeous Vista looking over the valley below
As we continue to climb, we leave the exposed granite and get into a much greener section of forest.
This peaceful mountain stream divides water for the greenery
Multiple wild flowers are along the section of trail that we are currently on. They met together beautifully amongst the other green plants.
As we continue up, the first pass that we will cross comes into view in front of us. It is silhouetted with the pine trees growing at its top.
We head up the trail with a lot of erosion control bars, nailed into place
We are walking alongside a beautiful stream. I took a short side trail to a beautiful water cascade and clear pool before continuing up.
We’ve crested the pass which is very flat and spacious. The group paused here for a break, and I am pushing ahead .5 miles to the trail junction with the Pacific cross Trail.
Outdoors on trail is definitely my happy place. The PCT magnifies that with the memories from my through hike. Anytime I reach a section of this trail. It holds a special place in my heart. I have reached the junction where we now join the PCT from here to Lake Aloha. I hope to find some through hikers on this 2 mile section. I have trail magic with me again today. I’m carrying an ice chest with cold orange crush soda, Maui brewing Company lager, strawberries, and cutie oranges.
We come into a meadow that is full of colorful wildflowers, truly beautiful
My first through hiker I encountered today does not yet have a trail name, but was thrilled to get an orange crush and a cutie orange
Susie Lake is the first Lake that we come to today. It is absolutely beautiful set amongst the steep mountain sides around it. We continued along the side of the lake, wrapping around it before heading towards our next lake.
Heather Lake is another beautiful Alpine Lake.
We stopped in a little green meadow area for lunch along side Heather lake before continuing onto Lake Aloha
After lunch, we continued up the trail towards Lake. Aloha passing a beautiful water Cascade though just a trickle it is still serene.
I’ve Come to a small stream with a waterfall slightly above us filled with more colorful wildflowers
We once again are rewarded with more amazing views as we head up towards Lake Aloha.
The shear mountain cliff on our right has interesting color patterns with streaks of dark black on top of the gray granite
We have arrived at Lake Aloha. I met two more through hikers , Princes and Box Face (Box Face got her name because she holds her phone up to her face often) Both were thrilled to get a beer before continuing on. We had a nice chat about the trail.
Lake aloha is another beautiful high Alpine lake. It has a Minh a little granite Islands throughout. Its views are wide open and spacious.
As we head back down, we have more beautiful views above Heather Lake
Some of the large granite slabs we pass have striation marks in them from glacial movement many years ago you can see the parallel lines where the rock was ground down as the glacial field moved across many years ago.
I’ve arrived back to the parking lot. 12.3 miles with 2014 feet of elevation gain. The weather was fantastic today and the views were outstanding.
