Desolation Wilderness is near Lake Tahoe in California. We did a 16-odd mile 2-day through-hike. I'll write more when I'm in a nostalgic mood. I went with Marcin, my favourite hiking partner (mostly because he nags me until I commit to go on a trip with him and then we have a wonderful time, especially when I find out that he's brought wine again! We also tried to take the Stanford Outing Club, but only one person came. I'm fairly sure his name was Mike.

I took heaps of photos, but I've only scanned a few, and the colours aren't quite right yet. Give me time!


Setting out. The lake on the left had all manner of boats on it. An outboard motorboat drifted by, the cover off the motor and someone looking a little worried... People sailing were disappointed, what with the several-thousand foot mountains making the wind a little gusty.
Over the first pass, starting to think about finding somewhere to stay for the night, but geez, we can go another mile if need be. Making camp without flashlights is nicer. As it turned out, we found a couple more such lakes, but the good campsites were taken, so we pressed on, lost the trail, found it again, and sprinted, after dark, up another mile of trail to yet another higher lake. It was very dark up there, so I don't have any pictures, but the Andromeda Galaxy was quite obvious without any help. The best place to camp was not. But at that point we didn't really care. Dinner was fabulous!
Day two, very close to the of the second, very high pass here, with misty mountains everywhere! We just came from the lake to the right of Marcin's head. Yes, I understand backlighting better now :)
Here we all are, eating lunch at the top. The ground was all like that, just pebbles and boulders, with the persistent trees struggling for life. They will fail. Mwahahaha.
Mike posing in front of the Tahoe-side watershed during lunch time. I think that's the lake in the next few pictures, but I really can't be sure. I wonder what he was doing down there...
I think that this is the first picture looking down on the last big lake of the hike. I took quite a few pictures of it, as you can see...
An hour later, and we're not there yet.
Right at the shore of that lake. The water is much colder than it looks, but that didn't stop us all from going for a quick swim. Marcin's quick swim took like a half hour.
As you can see, we're still really quite high up. Many dayhikers are coming the other way, to visit the lake. There were many of these gorgeous still ponds. I kept trying to capture them on film, and this is about the best I could do.