Hiking with Heidi

Hike Details: Elevation - 5,075' - 5,575' Location - From Sacramento take Hwy. 50 East. About 20 miles past Placerville take a left turn on Ice House Road. Follow this road (very windy, but beautiful) for about 18 miles. (At about 12 miles is the Crystal Basin Ranger Station on the right--nice bathrooms, worth stopping!) Continue on until you cross a bridge over a creek. Big Silver Group Campground is on the left, and the turnoff to Bassi Falls is immediately across from it on the right. Take the turn, then when you reach a fork in the road, you can go left and drive up to within about a half mile from the falls. But we drove to the right and parked in a big open area where a trail headed down to the right towards the creek. It's about 2 miles to the falls from here, see the picture below with the sign. Mileage - 4.5 miles roundtrip Hiking time - 3 hours I didn't make this map but it's pretty close to what we hiked. The green arrow is the turnoff from I...

Hike Details: Elevation - 6600' - 6800' Location - from I-80, take the exit for Hwy. 20 East, drive about 4 miles then turn right onto Bowman Lake Road, follow it for about 8 miles, watching for the turnoff on the right to Carr Lake. This is where the gravel road begins--sometimes fine, sometimes super bumpy. Then it's about 2 1/2 miles to the trailhead/campground parking area. Mileage - 3+ miles Hiking time - 2 hours I was so happy my friend Melinda could hike with me! And not just because she always brings homemade chocolate chip cookies as trail food. ;) So our plan was to hike past Carr, Feeley and Island Lakes and on to Penner Lake. But piles of snow changed that plan. We chatted with a Scout leader who was hiking in to meet up with his group. He told us the trail was about 95% covered with snow all the way to Island Lake. We had to cross a little creek/waterfall to get over to Feeley Lake. One side of the lake looked like summer. ...

Hike Details: Elevation - 600-900 ft. Location - Hidden Falls Regional Park, Auburn, CA Mileage - 4-5 miles Hiking time - 2+ hours Route - map and information here Just a quick Saturday morning outing with a group of kids from church as a pre-hike for a much longer "Pioneer Trek" (which will be 19 miles over 3 days in the Sierras). This was just a warmup to get them out on the trail doing some walking. Fortunately, it was a mercifully cool morning because otherwise Hidden Falls is a little too warm for summer hiking unless you plan to get wet in the creek (which one of the boys did accidentally, oops!).