Lee spent the last few days of July/first few days of August in Ithaca, NY for work.  When he returned, we loaded up the car and headed out to Desolation Wilderness for a few days of backpacking.  It had been ages since we had done anything like that and this was my first trip to Desolation.  During his student years at Stanford, Lee spent a couple of summers working up at Sierra Camp and therefore spent most of his free time hiking through Desolation.  It's one of his favorite places and somewhere I have been wanting to go since we were married.  The first weekend in August, we finally got there and I LOVED it!

We started on the trail on Friday afternoon and hiked up to Gilmore Lake and then further up the trail to Tallac where we found a little spot to camp along the ridge for the night.  Sunset from our camp was gorgeous and we were but 25 minutes from the top of Tallac where we watched sunrise the following morning.  With the fires, the sun was a deep reddish pink and watching it rise over Lake Tahoe was spectacular.

Saturday we hiked down past Gilmore Lake again and on to Susie and Heather Lakes.  Heather Lake was one of my favorite and I would definitely go back there again to camp.  We admired the lakes and continued past Lake Aloha and then up to Jabu.  Jabu is a little lake without a trail that was a little piece of heaven.  We had the lake to ourselves.  We arrived before 2pm and had lunch, took a swim, soaked up some sun and got comfortable for the night.  We had hoped to sleep under the stars, but around 5pm an enormous thunderstorm and rainstorm arrived and didn't let up until 2am.  Fortunately the thunder and lightning weren't close enough to be dangerous, but the rain pelted down and prevented us from going to sleep until after it stopped.  When we woke up on Sunday morning there was at least a gallon of water on the top of our rain fly.  We miraculously stayed dry and the morning couldn't have been more clear and beautiful.

Sunday we hiked out.  We had amazing views of several lakes on the way back, my favorite being Fallen Leaf Lake and Tahoe side by side.  The trail down was brutal.  They call it a trail, but it wasn't maintained and very difficult to even see and stay on the path.  Good thing Lee had hiked it a million times before.  I was happy to get to the bottom.

The trip was wonderful.  I'm so glad I was able to see a place Lee loves so much and to understand why.  We definitely need to get out and backpack more.  Plus, I got a brief tour of Sierra Camp and can now envision it when he tells me stories about it.  If we ever win the lottery, we'll have to spend a week up at the camp in the summer.  :)

We posted some of our photos to the gallery.  Enjoy