Hiking to East Boulder Lake

This past weekend we headed up to far northern California. Friday night we drove to Redding and stayed there. Saturday morning we saw a lot of smoke to the east from the Park Fire, but then we drove almost two hours northwest toward the Trinity Alps. By the time we reached the trailhead for East Boulder Lake an hour west of Mt. Shasta there was no longer any sign of smoke in the air.



We got to the trailhead at 5,700' elevation with no problem. A combination of AllTrails user comments and Google Maps were our guides. Even the 6 miles of dirt road, which we took our 4x4 to make sure we could conquer, were mild enough that we probably could have driven them in our convertible. Still, it's better to have the certainty of a real 4x4 in case there's an obstacle on the vehicle trail.



The foot trail climbed steadily through the forest at first before leveling out and opening up a bit as it crossed the boundary into the Trinity Alps wilderness. Somehow it just seemed that everything was greener once we crossed the invisible line into the wilderness.



Soon enough the trail started climbing more steeply again. First it was a steep climb through forest, then we broke out onto grassy hillside with a view of a waterfall ahead of us.

From here on up the trail was frequently wet. The outflows from East Boulder Lake and other lakes up above all pour down through this area, and the trail is often the path of least resistance for the water.

The trail climbing up above this falls was steep and often slow-going. I didn't mind the huffing and puffing and knee twisting because there was so much to look at. In beauty I walk.



Soon enough we were at the last bit before the lake. How could we tell? Just reading the terrain. There's obvious a huge flat spot up above us. That's where the lake is going to be.



And, yup, that's where East Boulder Lake is. 6,680' elevation. In beauty I walk.

To be continued....

Update: Keep reading in part 2 of this hike!

Checking in on the Park Fire

The Park Fire continues to burn in northern California, north of Chico and east of Red Bluff. As of Sunday evening it has burned 386,000 acres. That's over 600 square miles. It is now the 5th largest fire in modern California history.

Here's a map of the fire as of this evening from CalFire (click on image for link to source page):



The CalFire incident page for the Park Fire notes that there are over 5,700 personnel fighting this one fire. Firefighters are being pulled in from all over the state. When we were in Redding on Sunday afternoon, stopping for lunch while driving through, we chatted with a fire crew who'd just driven up from near where we live.

The size of the fire, at 386,000 acres as of this evening, hasn't grown much in the past 48 hours. Authorities say that's because the hot weather in the area that last through Friday broke on Saturday. With cooler temperatures and more humidity in the air, the fire has spread more slowly. This has also enabled crews to start containing it— though as of this evening it's still only 18% contained.

Miraculously there are no deaths reported from this fire. Thousands of people have had to evacuate homes, though. To their credit, and to the credit of authorities managing the situation, people were moved to safety quickly. I'm sure plenty of people in the areas impacted remember the tragedy of the 2018 fire that burned the town of Paradise. There, even a half day of "The fire can't possibly spread over here that fast!" meant that when evacuations orders did come, there was pandemonium and dozens of people died.