shower’s lake

This weekend I went backpacking with a group to Shower’s Lake. Originally I was thinking of backpacking somewhere on the Tahoe Rim trail on my own. Since I had a hike to Mount Whitney coming up, I figured the Tahoe Rim would be a better place to train since the hike would be longer and at a higher altitude. But with my hand not fully healed yet I figured it would be better to go with a group, so I ended up joining with Dan’s crew at Shower’s Lake.

We met up at the Meiss Trailhead off of highway 88. Our hike would be almost completely on the Pacific Crest Trail.

The trail starts with a short climb. From here you can see Caple’s Lake, not too far away. This part of the trail is quite pleasant, with nice shade trees and nice fall foliage.

In addition to the foliage you’re treated to nice views of the Mokelumne Wilderness, with Round Top and the Three Sisters making a nice backdrop.

The trail continues onward and upward on a pretty exposed mountainside. There’s not much cover here, the sun beating down on the trail would be brutal in the summertime, but it’s bearable in the fall.

Once you get to the top of the exposed area you hike downward towards Meiss Meadow. For some reason even though there’s a trail here we bushwacked down the side of the hill for a while.

At the bottom of the hill lies Meiss Meadow.

Meiss Meadow is named for the Meiss family who used the area to graze their cattle.

Their original cabin still stands to this day. It’s actually a quite nice spot, with the meadow in front and a creek running behind the cabin.

After we crossed Meiss Meadow there was a fairly decent sized climb to get to Shower’s Lake, which was at about 8500′ in elevation. Despite being so high up there were a good number of flat campsites. We camped a bit away from the lake.

In the morning we hiked back out. The total trip was about ten miles. On our way back home we had our usual Indian casino buffet meal. It’s pretty much a tradition for us, every time I’ve gone backpacking with Dan we’ve hit that casino buffet. In the end the hike ended up being a bit shorter than I wanted, but at least I got to spend a night at altitude, hopefully it’s enough to get me ready for Mount Whitney.