Hiking Pyramid Creek; Home from Tahoe
Sunday, Sep 20, 2015
In my previous blog I wrote about Horsetail Falls, a surprisingly large waterfall visible to motorists passing through along US-50 west of Lake Tahoe. There's more to do in the area, though, than simple stare at the falls from afar while trying not to drive off the road, plunging your car into the steep canyon below. There's the Pyramid Creek trail, a nice little loop trail of about 1.5 miles.
Though the trailhead is within spitting distance of the four lane highway, the trail quickly enters a thick woods that makes all the traffic zooming past seem fairly remote. Then the trail disappears into slickrock as Pyramid Creek cascades over bare granite. The traffic may as well be a mile away.
The trail loops around through a deep canyon, pocketed on one side by the Tahoe Rim and on the other by the forbidding Crystal Range. Both are parts of the Desolation Wilderness.
In fact over one of these 10,000' walls are Twin and Island Lakes, which we hiked earlier this summer.
The sense of solitude and wilderness in this area is strong. So strong that it's easy to forget you're not that far from US-50, one of the country's original transcontinental highways. Here you can see it winding around the ridge as it ascends toward Echo Summit and Lake Tahoe:
This nice little hike was the perfect antidote to feeling like we didn't do anything worthwhile with our day. It gave us plenty of smiles for the remainder of the 221 mile drive home from Lake Tahoe.
Speaking of home, we got home not much past 7pm. We had time to unload the car before eating dinner locally, and then take it easy for the rest of the evening. Like I noted yesterday, sometimes taking the easier alternative is the more enjoyable one.
In my previous blog I wrote about Horsetail Falls, a surprisingly large waterfall visible to motorists passing through along US-50 west of Lake Tahoe. There's more to do in the area, though, than simple stare at the falls from afar while trying not to drive off the road, plunging your car into the steep canyon below. There's the Pyramid Creek trail, a nice little loop trail of about 1.5 miles.
Though the trailhead is within spitting distance of the four lane highway, the trail quickly enters a thick woods that makes all the traffic zooming past seem fairly remote. Then the trail disappears into slickrock as Pyramid Creek cascades over bare granite. The traffic may as well be a mile away.
The trail loops around through a deep canyon, pocketed on one side by the Tahoe Rim and on the other by the forbidding Crystal Range. Both are parts of the Desolation Wilderness.
In fact over one of these 10,000' walls are Twin and Island Lakes, which we hiked earlier this summer.
The sense of solitude and wilderness in this area is strong. So strong that it's easy to forget you're not that far from US-50, one of the country's original transcontinental highways. Here you can see it winding around the ridge as it ascends toward Echo Summit and Lake Tahoe:
This nice little hike was the perfect antidote to feeling like we didn't do anything worthwhile with our day. It gave us plenty of smiles for the remainder of the 221 mile drive home from Lake Tahoe.
Speaking of home, we got home not much past 7pm. We had time to unload the car before eating dinner locally, and then take it easy for the rest of the evening. Like I noted yesterday, sometimes taking the easier alternative is the more enjoyable one.