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| Hiking | 12.40 Miles |
1,918 AEG |
| | Hiking | 12.40 Miles | 5 Hrs 51 Mns | | 2.72 mph |
| 1,918 ft AEG | 1 Hour 17 Mns Break | | | |
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| no partners | | This would be a great hike on the Pacific Crest Trail if there weren't hordes of people on the trail and homes along the shore of Upper and Lower Echo Lakes. There is some nice scenery, but the boat-in homes lining the south shore of the lakes are only a few dozen yards down and below the trail. This trail has very easy to access from the Bay Area (3 hours there from Walnut Creek including a stop for gas and 2 hours 20 minutes for the return), is close to bustling South Lake Tahoe and has a lot of people staying in the vicinity on summer weekends so don't expect to be alone. There's also a large summer camp for kids a few hundred yards up the road.
There was no parking at the lake so we started from a large, largely empty parking lot a mile down the PCT from the spillway for Lower Echo. That mile stretch from the car to the "chalet" at the spillway was the only stretch where we didn't see anyone else. That stretch basically travels through a tall forest until it crosses the spillway and then the PCT remains on dirt again until it hits Interstate 80 to the north.
We met a few groups that were backpacking to Lake Aloha a few miles farther than where I turned around, but I didn't spot a single obvious through-hiker. The Desolation Wilderness sees a lot of people so consider another place if you're looking for relative solitude.
The sky threatened all day, but I only put on my rain coat for a few minutes.
I did this with a co-worker who I thought was going to have trouble with this hike, and he did. He's ready to do something similar so it's time to kick it up a notch. |
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