Cynthia IM’d me on Friday afternoon suggesting we do a quick overnight in Desolation Wilderness this weekend, and since we didn’t have any other major plans, we drove 64 miles to Twin Bridges, strapped on our packs, and were off.

Here’s the GPX file and the altitude profile:

We ended up hiking up Horsetail Falls, an aggressive rock scramble I’d done before (but not with an overnight pack), and then camped further in the Desolation Valley at Ropi Lake. I did some fishing again, but it was windy so casting was tough. It didn’t matter because I didn’t see any signs of fish at Ropi, Toem, and Gefo Lakes, although other hikers said they’d had better luck with spin tackle. There weren’t any marked trails once above the falls, and Cynthia really enjoyed having the freedom to go wherever she wanted (within the limits of our permitted zone) to find our campsite – lots of thinking on your feet to find the easiest route instead of mindlessly following a known path. You can see how much faster it was on the way out when we knew where we were going. The Perseid meteor shower peaked on Sunday night, but we still were presented with a pretty good show looking up at the stars in our bug mesh tent. It was a great trip on short notice, and our packs were light at 45 pounds between us (mostly due to less water and food than last time)

Special thanks to Dave for loaning us his camera while ours is on the fritz so we could take pictures.

We’ll be back there in a couple weeks for a two night trip with some friends, and get to explore some different routes.

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