Hope Valley Campground

 

We got lucky the weekend before Labor Day weekend by snagging a first-come-first-serve site at Hope Valley campground.  Five years ago, we tired to camp here but found the campground full.

This time we left earlier to arrive in time to claim a wonderful site away from the main campers.

Nobody was at the double site on one side of us, and the other side was forest. Each campsite was very well maintained!

We wondered if the picnic table was sitting low due to heavy snows sinking the table down into the ground. 

Across the street from the campground is Hope Valley. It's a gorgeous valley!! After lunch and a short nap, we headed across Blue Lakes Road to explore the area.

The west fork of the Carson River runs through the valley.

The short trail just takes one to the river, which was very low. After exploring this area, we headed to Faith Valley to do a short hike. 

Five years ago, we didn't know the name of this valley that we had dispersed camped. I thought is was all part of Hope Valley, but this year we learned that there are two separate valleys. 

I did remember a short hike that starts at the Faith Valley parking lot. This trail runs parallel to Blue Lakes Road with a slight incline and ends at the road. We did this hike to get acclimated to the 7,000 + ft before our more strenuous hike the next day, Sunday. 

Returning back to the car, we noticed some other hikers coming from the valley on another trail, which is difficult to see and has no trail marker.

Folks with horses use this trail, a known horse trail. After talking to the hikers, they told us it is about a 7 mile round trip hike that follows the river. We hiked a small portion of the trail through this huge meadow before heading back to camp for the evening. 

 Five years ago, we had hiked on the PCT heading south due to the heat and wanting to be under the canopy of pines. This year, we headed north on the PCT in the direction of the Nipple. 

Yes, that is the name of the mountain next to Blue Lakes. The PCT doesn't go to the top at 9342 ft, thank God! 

This hike started at the parking lot. We hiked about .45 miles before crossing Blue Lakes Rd and then heading up through the pines. 

After a mile or so climb on the PCT, the trees disperse...

and spectacular views to the south are our first reward.

Overall this section of the PCT isn't very steep. 

We came across numerous patches of a California native, Wooly Mule's Ears. 

And to our delight, we saw hummingbird moths feasting on the coyote mint. 

We found some rocks to sit at while eating lunch and taking in the view of Lower Blue Lakes. 

There were patches of snow with some pink snow. This is caused from algae that turns the snow pink and speeds up the melting of the snow.

I found this patch of pink penstemon to be prettier than the pink snow. 

Before packing up and leaving on Monday, we took the trail from the campground and followed it about 1.5 miles before turning back. It was getting hot. We did chat with someone on his bike exploring the trails. He had ridden from Faith Valley disperse campground over to Hope Valley campground without a map or knowing where the trails would go. I found this Topozone's map after returning home. Wish we had had it before heading out on the trail from the campground. 

Hope Valley and Faith Valley will be calling us back to explore the trails that we discovered on this trip and to enjoy the peaceful and beautiful campground again.

Jackson Meadows Lake

Our first outing of the year was to Jackson Meadows Lake, northwest of Tahoe. We stayed at East Meadows Campground, which wasn't crowded the day after the 4th. We were able to make reservations for two nights, July 5, 6. Since we didn't know how many folks would be out camping due to COVID-19, we decided to make reservations. We had heard some campgrounds are always full because folks aren't able to travel by plane to far destinations this year due to COVID. Normally, we are able to find a first-come-first-serve campsite without worrying about reservations.

There were only two other campers close to us. One left 8:30 AM Monday and the other had a medical emergency that they had to head home Monday night. So our area of the campground was very quiet.

We settled into site 39 which was nice, but too close to the campsites on either side of us. So, it was nice when those folks left. The ideal sites in this campground are sites 4, 30, 34, 42.

We only walked around the campground and looked at the lake on the first day since we were tired from our early start and the five hour drive. Sadly, the majority of the campsites do not have a view of the lake.

After a good night's sleep and a yummy breakfast of veggie hash browns with salsa, we headed up to the PCT.

We headed southbound on the PCT making a gradually climb.

The start of this portion of the trail is under a canopy of mossy evergreen trees, possibly Ponderosa pines. 

After about a mile climb the trail narrows and we passed this pile of rocks. Yes, it is very steep. Thank God those rocks didn't decide to slide down while we were passing this section.

Just when we were starting to doubt being able to have a view of the lake, we emerged from the dense forest. This was short-lived as the trail soon took us further up and into another portion of the forest.

This portion of the trail is part of a forest restoration.

Back in 1992, harvesting was done to encourage new growth and a healthy forest. 

We continued the ascent until we came to a barren area with a glorious view of English Meadows, the valley below. We were now about 3 miles into our hike. We debated on continuing another half mile or heading back.

We pushed on and glad we did for the views just got better, which made it well worth the climb. We passed lava formations from millions of years ago. See the little arch!

I needed to take a rest since I was feeling the effects of the altitude. We started around 6300 feet and most likely climb to about 7000. Plus, we needed to stop often for our dog. She's 15 years old.

Somehow we missed this spectacular view of the lake and Sierra Buttes on the way up. I guess we were too focused on the climb. So, it was a nice reward on the descent back to the campground.

We all took an afternoon snooze after our beautiful 6.9 mile hike.

Husband thought these rocks looked like penguins. I thought of turtles. We enjoyed our stay and hike, but next time we venture in this region we will explore the Lake Basin area.

HOPE

There's hope in that valley, I tell my husband as we headed out on a Saturday morning in hope of finding a site at Hope Valley Campground off of Hwy. 88.

We were trying to camp at a higher elevation in hope of escaping the heat that has been relentless this summer in the Bay Area-- lower 80s would be wonderful.

We knew the likelihood of snagging a unreserved site on a summer weekend was like zero, but we headed out anyways since there is lots of places to boondock off of Blue Lakes Rd.

We got lucky that we didn't have to travel too far, and we were lucky that we had nobody on either side of us or in front and back of us.

We nestled in-between trees that provide shade.

Even though the sky was filled with smoke from the numerous CA-fires burning throughout California, we had peaceful views from our campsite.

 After settling in and eating lunch, we headed off to the Tamarack parking area to hike along the PCT.

We passed numerous hikers heading north along the PCT with packs as we headed south towards Lily Pad Lake.

The trail was not difficult, no more strenuous than our Ridge trails close to home, just a bit tiring since we hadn't adjusted to the elevation of about 8400 ft.

The heat of the day was getting hotter, but we had chosen the direction south that provided us with shade from the pines. At the top of one climb, we were rewarded with the view looking south to the craggy range southeast of our destination.

Just when we were about to give up hope of hiking to Lily Pad Lake, we came across a PCT section hiker telling us that it isn't that much further--just after the dried up pond. There was only one couple resting and enjoying the peacefulness of this lake. There are numerous campsites for those wishing a place for the night. It sure was a wonderful place to rest and soak hot feet.

After resting, we headed back north to our car. Along the way back, we were rewarded with this view of the Nipple. I'm so glad we didn't head north that day since the hike to the Nipple is mostly open trail. That hike will have to be when the weather is much cooler.

Back at camp, we relaxed and went to sleep early--like all the other folks boondocking close by. It was so quiet...then early morning someone's dogs started barking at 6 AM...and barked and barked and barked.

We got up, ate, and explored the Valley. We discovered a trail at the end of the dirt road where we were camped and hiked a small portion of that.

 And then we headed down to the river to see its condition. We walked the dirt road checking out boondocking sites and met some friendly campers.

Yes, we would come back here to explore more of Hope Valley!