Tag: echo lakes

Desolation Wilderness

Day 71

26.3 miles

Echo lake chalet to Richardson lake through the Desolation wilderness

This morning a kind trail angel named Layloni brought us to the trail head. There was a list of trail angel numbers at HWY 50 on a post and she is the coordinator. She said she checks in with people each year to see if they still want to be on the list and she puts the lists at the trailhead. Some of the trail angels allow tenting in their yard or give rides to airports etc. Layloni said she has been doing this for eight years. We were so grateful especially since she took us to the trailhead at 6:30 in the morning. We had 26 miles to do so we had to get a good staRt.

Desolation wilderness recently changed their regulations on bear storage so we had decided to just walk right through the whole thing without stopping. Layloni told us that there is such a high density of bears in this area because the fire last year pushed the bears out of their normal habitat. Poor bears.

There wasn’t more elevation in today’s schedule than we usually do and we still got to enjoy the lakes we passed. I soaked my feet in two lakes and we ate lunch on top of Dicks pass. Lake Aloha is one of my favorite backcountry lakes. It has a snack drop of tall mountains that seem so close across the lake. The lake reflects not only the blue sky but the whiteish peaks and seems almost like marble.

More of the second half of the day was tree covered which was really nice to hike through the heat. We camped at Richardson lake, there are a lot of pretty established sites here but watch out for the dead trees.

I remember stopping here when we were hiking in the TRT and someone had left a fire unattended. Not the best thing to do in a dry forest!

It was fun to walk through in one day a section that had taken us two days when we had done the Tahoe Rim Trail. Many parts of the trail felt familiar and homey.

Day 69

5 miles to Echo Lakes Chalet

View from the campsite the night before

Stayed the night in Carson City with Shuffles’ friends

We awoke bright and early, ready to walk into the Echo lakes area. The chalet/store was tempting us with snacks before Cheery-o, Shuffles, Pebbles, and I met up with Shuffles previous neighbors. We cruised down hill along familiar trail. There was one new burn area right before highway 50 and also around Echo Lake from a fire last fall. The Echo Lake area is national forest and serviced by the USFS but has small family cabins that have been passed down for generations. Most of the cabins survived the fires but not all of them.

After a few snacks, we all met Stu who drove us up to Carson City where we met his wife, Stephanie. They were so kind to open their home to stinky hikers. Seriously, we hadn’t showered in ten days. They gave us showers and laundry, a fresh lunch of fruit and hummus, then a ride to the grocery store! These next couple of days I will be trying out mashed potatoes again and some new “pretend” tuna packets which I am excited for. Pretend, as in they are vegan.

We took over the kitchen table to pack up all our food, we could split large boxes of granola bars so we could all have various flavors and varieties. Then we began the saga of board games! Back home our friend group loves to play games so it was really fun to share that past time with friends out here too.

Dinner was a delectable spread. They made us a delicious dish of lentils, rice, tomato, and carmelized onions as well as a French potato salad which I hadn’t had before! They even grilled some chicken too. Obviously the food was a highlight of our stay.

It was amazing to stay with a family, have some fun playing games, and eat good food for a whole day to prep for hiking more miles!