wrights lake

Wrights Lake, in the Crystal Basin, just outside of Desolation Wilderness, is beautiful this time of year. This lake is just west of Lake Tahoe. Kate and I hadn’t been here in three years. The first time I came here in 2011 with the RV, all the waters were flowing. It was truly amazing seeing the water rushing over the granite. Kate missed that trip so she has only seen it in drought years. It’s still gorgeous.

It was a short trip, just the weekend with two nights here. When we arrived on Friday we took the dogs and walked the trail around the lake. Even though the lake was down, it wasn’t enough to take away from the view. And its always nice to check out the cool cabins on the lake. Lucky people, have 20 year leases from the USFS. What a sweet scene they have. We noticed many of the trees that had blown down a couple years ago during a huge windstorm. Amazing how so many had actually been uprooted. Much had been cleaned up but you could still see some of the devatation.

The second day, Saturday, we got up early and did our favorite hike up into the granite and Twin Lakes. Its about eight miles round trip and we decided Biggs could do it. We brought both dogs and they didn’t disappoint us. They were full of energy all the way till the end, but they did sleep quite well that night. Clouds started coming in when we had lunch at our destination, and there was a forecast of rain possibly in the afternoon, so we headed back down right afterwards. No rain, but better to be safe. Total time was six hours, four hours walking time according to my GPS. Altitude at Twin Lakes is 8,000 feet.

Weather was perfect, with a chilly 35 degrees Friday night but warming to the 50s and 60s during the days. Kate made some great hot toddies, Kathleen style, that were just perfect in the evening while we played Qwerkle. The last night it rained and wind really howled, leaving me with visions of a tree or two coming crashing down on our camper. We awoke to no problems and a clear morning, however.

This trip I tried a feature on a new little Cannon camera I got (SX700 HS). It captures a short 2-4 second video each time you shoot a still and then stitches them together. So I decided to make a video of our walk around the lake the first day, and then document our hike up to Twin Lakes the second day. Its really a pretty shitty video, so I added some music. But my hope is that the viewer can get a bit of a feel for the hikes. One problem I had was I didnt know when the camera did the the 4 second video; before, after or during the shot. Turns out its before. At any rate, any dialogue that you might pick up will, undoubtedly, be fractured and disjointed. I think the pictures are better (farther down below) and most taken with my better camera, my Lumix FZ200, … but its only a five minute video so do check it out.