Dates: August 22-23, 2009 Duration: 2 days, 1 night Mileage: ~16 miles Group Members: Nick McGuire, Amanda Eberle Pack Weights: Nick (~30+ lbs) Contacts: Pacific Ranger District - 7887 Highway 50, Pollock Pines, CA 95726 (530)-644-2349 Notes: Single night weekend trip up to the Desolation Wilderness. 30% chance of thunderstorms forecasted but we decided to go anyway and just prepared accordingly. I'd never been in to Desolation from an East-side entrance so we decided to try out the trailhead near Mt. Tallac. Route Map Available! Outbound Travel: Left Davis around 6:30AM and headed for the Pacific Ranger station just east of Pollock Pines. Got there about 30 minutes to 8AM, which is when they were supposed to open but apparently their hours had changed at the beginning of the month so they had actually opened at 7AM. Permits available for most of the eastern zones except for around Middle Velma Lake.
Day 1: Left the Mt. Tallac trailhead (~6430 ft in elevation) around 9AM...parking lot was already decently full and lots of day-hikers heading out. Headed out on the main trail and reached the first trail junction (2.1 miles from the trailhead) near Cathedral Lake that cuts over to Fallen Leaf Lake around 10AM. Continued on to the small but pretty Cathedral lake and stopped for a quick break. Continued on climbing up the steep slopes to the south-east of Mt. Tallac till we finally reached the turnoff for the summit just before noon. Its only a 0.2 mile diversion to the top but the extra 235 ft climb required to get up there didn't really interest either of us at this point. Started descending towards Gilmore lake which we finally reached around 12:45PM. Very pretty and rather large lake with lots of campsites but its close to the trail so not a lot of privacy on the south side. Stopped for lunch for a bit and then continued south to meet up with the PCT and then the turn off for Half Moon Lake. There are numerous trails leading away from Gilmore Lake because of people wandering around looking for campsites and exploring so make sure you take the main one that meets up with the PCT in a tenth of a mile. Lots of people in this area but once we headed down the trail towards Half Moon Lake we were by ourselves. Reached Half Moon lake around 2:30 PM and rather than following the trail around the north side of the lake we decided to skirt its south side to look for a campsite. Some people were camped on the south east edge so we continued towards the western edge and found a nice campsite a little past midway along the south shore. It was decently developed but probably violated the "camp 100ft from water rule". Spent the next few hours rigging up the hammock and building a tarp shelter over it in preperation for the forecasted rain, which now looked possible since the scorching heat of earlier in the day had now given way to darker clouds and a breezy overcast sky. Purified some water, made mashed potatoes for dinner and went to be a little after sunset. The wind started to pick up quite a bit not long after and sometime in the night, probably around 10 or 11PM it started to rain off and on through the rest of the night. Day 2: Woke up around 7:30AM. Still raining off and on but the wind had died down. The tarp had kept us completely dry during the night so we were both thrilled. The rain let up so we decided to get up, make breakfast and begin breaking camp. We were both bummed about leaving the lake never having swam in it even though the water was pretty warm but the wind and the rain definitely prevented any attempts. Left camp just after 9AM and started back to the trailhead. We both decided that taking the trail all the way back up to Mt. Tallac just to have to decend again was stupid so when we go tto Gilmore lake we plotted a due East compass bearing in hopes of meeting up with the trail again somewhere below Mt. Tallac. There appeared to already be a trail though that did this leaving Gilmore Lake so we followed that for around half a mile before deciding that it was heading a little too far south so we broke off from the trail and went cross-country for another half a mile or so till we met up with the main trail again. Our route probably cut down our distance by over a mile and saved us from a 1000+ ft ascent. Continued back along the main trail, stopping for lunch at Cathedral Lake before making it back to the parking lot just after 1PM.
Home-bound Travel: Left the trailhead parking lot probably around 1:30PM. Random traffic on Hwy 50 slowed our progress down pretty severely, although there wasn't any traffic at the two terrible lights in Placerville. Got back to Davis around 4ish.