Tahoe Rim Trail Hike - Day 6

Photo above - cabins a Meiss Meadow. Below - Carl making his way across a stream at Meiss Meadow.

After having a really long day the previous day we were relieved to have a shorter hiking day. This was also the day where we got two opportunities to go swimming in one day, once in Round Lake and once in Showers Lake. The trail started out at the Big Meadows trailhead above the campground. It turned out that this hike was quite popular at this time of the year, as there were many parties all around us. Perhaps it was the fact that a short hike brings you to a beautiful meadow or that a slightly longer, but still pretty short hike brings you to Round Lake. Whatever it was this was a very popular hike, and rightly so. At Round Lake we all junped in the lake and went for a swim. It felt great to clean off and cool off, and our swim ended right in time. Not long after swimming storm clouds were building and before we knew it there was thunder (although I don't remember seeing any lightning). Fortunately we dodged the worst of the weather, because I guess that rain was falling north of here. We continued our hike trudging farther into mosquito country, and before we knew it we were at the junction of the Pacific Crest Trail. This junction has one of the prettiest meadows along the entire TRT and is flanked by some really nice mountains. The meadow has two little cowboy cabins in it.

From these meadows we traveled north along the PCT/TRT and started to climb gradually. Eventually we came upon a lovely little alpine lake known as Showers Lake where we set up a camp high above the lake where we could look out across the lake. We didn't go for a swim because the air was chilly, but we did wade out into the lake a little after filtering water. From our filtering spot we were able to gaze across the lake toward the alder covered avalanche slopes which still had just a little bit of snow remaining. I took the opportunity to wander around the area and check things out and discovered that there were terrific views of the Upper Truckee watershed (flows into Lake Tahoe near the town of South Lake Tahoe). Strangely there is small dam stone dam at the outlet of the lake. Carl also spotted the largest fish that we saw on the entire trip in this lake.

Photo below - Chester loved to roll around in the snow whenever he got the chance.