Leon Turnbull Photography

The weather has turned finally. The summer heat is gone. I think Fall is my favorite time of year as far as hiking is concerned. Unfortunately, the waterfalls do not agree, as it is the worst time of year to see waterfalls. Nonetheless, Tahoe was beckoning to me this weekend with the cooler weather.

I drove up to Lake Tahoe in the afternoon, arriving at the Eagle Falls parking area about 1:30pm. There was one parking space left in the parking area. I took this as a good sign. God must have wanted me to go on this hike. I had my doubts. My hiking plan was ambitious and I was sure the waterfalls would not be flowing very well. I took a quick look at Lower Eagle Falls, and my suspicions were confirmed. Eagle Falls was barely trickling.

There were a ton of people on the trail. I thought that once I got above Eagle Lake, the hiking crowd would dissipate to nothing, but it seemed there was a constant stream of people descending the mountain on this Saturday afternoon.

I hate hate hate this trail. It is so incredibly rocky, which makes it very tough on the feet hiking, and so very hard. Descending the trail later, I am constantly telling myself how much I hate this trail. With perhaps one or two bad words thrown in as I come close to breaking my ankles mis-stepping on the rocky terrain. Every time I hike this trail I say the same thing. Yet I still hike this trail at least once a year. Why do I continue to put myself through such agony?

I suppose because it is so awesomely beautiful up in the Desolation Wilderness.

In addition to the rocky-ness, it is a very tough climb up into the mountains. From 6600 ft., you climb up to 8200 ft., then continue hiking at this high elevation, which is very difficult when you wake up in the morning at only 200 ft. elevation. My hike on this day was 12 miles round trip, and I was completely spent by the end of it. Even a small up hill was just killing my legs. Fortunately, it was all downhill on the return trip.

My plan was to go to Lower Velma Lake, which is a lake that is off the beaten trail. There is indeed no official trail to this lake. Once you get up to Upper Velma Lake, you need to get off the trail and essentially follow the outlet stream from the upper to the lower lake. It is actually fairly easy going and there is a path which others have taken. Once at Lower Velma Lake, the going gets a bit rough and quite brushy as you work your way around to the outlet stream at the end of the lake. It involved scaling along a cliff, and crashing through forest and brush, but there was a bit of a path to follow, and I made it to the waterfall at the end of the lake easily enough.

Lower Velma Lake Falls is a much smaller waterfall than I hoped to find, only 14 ft. high. I found it initially by studying Google Earth, and I must say I was hoping it would be a bit bigger. With the  flow on the low side, it is certainly a pretty little thing, but it would be much nicer with higher flows in early summer. I will probably not ever come back here though, it is just too much effort. I did like the swirlies in the water foreground, though, and I purposely made a longer exposure in order to emphasize them.

I was not long here though, as I had run out of time. I started my hike a bit later than I wanted, and it took a lot longer to hike up than anticipated. 2.5 hours up to the falls, and it would take 2.5 hours back down. I left the waterfall at 5PM, and with sundown before 7pm, you do the math. It was dark by the time I got back to Eagle Lake, and from there down to the highway, it was complete darkness. Initially, I had hoped to get back down to shoot sunset at either Eagle Lake or Eagle Falls. When I started out, there were no clouds over Lake Tahoe. So no big deal I figured if I don’t make it back down in time. But as I left Lower Velma Lake at 5PM, I could see Lake Tahoe, and I could see potentially nice sunset clouds forming. Dang. Sure enough, as I descended the mountain, those clouds put out some pretty sweet color. But it was too late for me to get there. Oh well. Eagle Falls was just trickling anyway, I told myself. It would not be a very good shot. Yeah, right.