Marc's Public Blog - Hiking / Backpacking

never seen the area outside of the snow season, pretty trees

I've only ever seen caples lake when it was frozen

Then, we went to check out kirkwood. This must have been the lowest snow coverage day I've seen at kirkwood :)

the wall

which button do I push? :)

it was fun to see the magic carpets. They can be raised as the snow level goes higher

the 'temporary' lodges

still stocked

After going around KW a bit, we went around Carson Spur:

avanlache prevention gates and avalanche triggering devices when the road needs to be cleaned

After parking the car, we hiked up from Carson Spur to Thunder Mountain, and back down to Silver Lake/Kit Carson. It was a pretty easy hike up to Thunder Mountain with great views of kirkwood, Caples Lake, top of Cornice lift, and Silver Lake.

nice to see the avalanche gates from so close

these trigger the slides for avalanche safety on Carson Spur

the smaller kirkwood lake

multiple big volcanic rocks

damn, I never hiked that far with my snowboard :)

getting closer to sentinel bowl/cornice lift

nice view of silver lake

We split off with Arturo, he went back to the car, and we continued the other way towards cornice and silver lake:

looks a bit rocky, probably not a big deal that I forgot to bring my snowboard

a sign frozen in time, left as is on the wretched day of March 14th when they closed

path to sentinel bowl

woohoo, I'm a lift operator now :)

never went down this way, but it was the way back to our path

kit carson

From there, Arturo met us on the road, and we drove home to end our 11 day trip.

We got a quick tour to use the safety equipment:

Then we went for the course, taking the hardest elements:

After the tree course, we went to the nearby Henry Cowell Redwoods state park. The plan was to have lunch and go swim in the garden of eden, but we ended up going for a "quick hike", that took a few hours due to terrain and maps that didn't match reality:

there is a redwoods steam train, we took its bridge across the river

we then walked down to the river for lunch

I guess scouts go and practise in the area

the trail maps was incomplete and at times, just a suggestion

We got to the river a few times, and did a dicey river crossing that was not indicated on the map:

the river had crayfish

We then had to hike up to the train tracks, which turned out to be th trail:

After way longer than planned, we finally got to garden of eden, although by then it was a bit late and cold to go in the water:

So, we hiked out and had a nice drive back through hwy9 and bear creek road, with sunset on the way: