After church on Sunday, Nekoda, Journey and I went up to Lake Tahoe for the afternoon.
The plan was to hike up to Grass Lake, swim, and see a couple new waterfalls. Well, we sort of did that.
We arrived at the Glen Alpine trailhead about 3PM. Journey was happy to be on the trail again. However, the first part is very rocky and I don’t think she liked walking on all the sharp rocks. She did all right, though, and it gets better after you pass Upper Glen Alpine Falls.
Speaking of, Upper Glen Alpine Falls was looking quite a bit sad. I have been here many times, at all times of year, including August, and I have never seen the creek this low. I was expecting all the waterfalls in the area to still be flowing well. It was quite disappointing and surprising and it would alter our hiking plan.
We made it to Grass Lake. The weather was overcast so we decided to go to Grass Lake Falls first. It is not exactly easy getting down to it and the last section involves scrambling over boulders. I was surprised about this as well, I thought it would be very easy. The boulders were very large, it was quite tricky scrambling, and it was not something Journey could do. Thankfully, Nekoda was with me so she could watch the dog while I went the rest of the way to the waterfall. With the low flow in the creek I could scramble directly up the creek bed to get right in front of the waterfall (I will not be doing that in the spring). Grass Lake Falls is 25 ft. high. It was not horrible but it would certainly be better at higher flows if you could get to it.
We went back up to the lake. I decided to skip the second new waterfall I had planned as I was 99% sure it would be completely dry given the current state of affairs. It started raining. The weather forecast? Zero percent chance of rain today. Zero percent, huh. I am pretty sure zero means zero. Nada. Not going to rain whatsoever. I had considered taking a quick dip in the lake but I was not going to do that in the rain. I am glad Nekoda decided to go in, however. Nothing was going to stop her.
The rain stopped, the sun came out a bit, Journey was refreshed with food and water, and we hiked back to the trailhead. We stopped at Upper Glen Alpine Falls for a quick photo and arrived back to the car just after sunset. It was a lovely afternoon in Desolation Wilderness.
