The drive to the Tahoe area was uneventful. We had no trouble with traffic and the scenery look much different without the piles of snow we had faced last December. Most of the traffic was headed in the other direction, back home after the long 4th of July weekend. We drove in the south route to Lake Tahoe to drop off the resupply package and visit the Desolation wilderness Visitor Center to get our permit. We winded up into the mountains on US50 and drove into Echo Chalet, a resort with little cabins on Echo Lake about 5 miles outside of South Lake Tahoe. We had already packed up our resupply box, full of food for the second half of our trip, the camera battery charger, and a card reader/hard drive to download all of the pictures. The echo chalet has its own post office which the manager made us use to mail ourselves a package that really wouldn't leave its spot in 5 days. It cost over $10 dollars. I wonder if we could have found a spot to hide it in the woods, but then there are those wild animals to worry about. Next stop was the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit trailer. The ranger said there would be much snow through Desolation Wilderness (on the west side of the lake) and that we would need crampons and ice axes to avoid falling off the mountain ridges. We still had a week and we were hopeful that the snow would melt to a passable state by then. We decided to not get the recommended supplies (who wants to carry these things anyways?) and that if we did get back in a week and find that we still needed an ice axe that we would re-evaluate our hiking itinerary which means hitch a ride back to South Lake Tahoe and take a bus back to our car.
After the visit with the ranger, we drove north to Tahoe City, parked the van, hopped onto a bus and went east to Incline City, Nevada where we called for a taxi to take us up to Mt. Rose campground. The taxi dropped us off at the end of a long park road where a sign had been posted "closed for season." The driver said that there was probably just some snow on the ground still and that it was fine to go in. Walking through this abandoned campground was the eeriest feeling. No running water. All the bathroom buildings were locked. No bear boxes. We had been planning on bear boxes because we had too much food to fit in our bear canister. Our site had snow on it but wasn't covered. Camping in a campground has become so easy for us. What a luxury is having a picnic table on our site and a fresh snow melt stream trickling away during the evening to get our water from.
I wasn't prepared to see all of this snow. I guess I always knew that there would be a chance of snow. I am worried about slipping on the snow on the trail. We have our new hiking poles with us, that will help.
No comments:
Post a Comment