Mt Tallac Trail

Mt. Tallac has a domineering presence in the Lake Tahoe area. The elevation of Lake Tahoe is around 6500 feet and Mt. Tallac stands at 9,735 feet, with snow remaining on the mountain until sometime in July. I love this mountain and someday I plan on hiking to the top, but for now, I was happy with taking the Mt. Tallac trail to the small alpine lake at it's base, Cathedral Lake.

There are hundreds of wildfires raging in Northern California forests right now and the Lake Tahoe area is full of smoke ...... reminiscent of last year. In this video you will see some of the damage from last years fire on the ridge between Mt. Tallac and Fallen Leaf Lake. I actually find some beauty in the charred landscape. There was too much smoke to see Lake Tahoe which would normally be quite visible from the ridge, just beyond Fallen Leaf Lake.

This trip's hikers were just myself, Lea and Sharon. The total milage we hiked was 4.2, it would have been an additional 4.8 to complete the trip with a climb to the top of the mountain, making for a 9 mile round trip. We had a great time and I for one would do it again tomorrow if I could get anyone to go with me :) maybe next year ...... all the way to the top.

For some reason I can't upload this video through my blogger account so I uploaded it to my Vimeo account.  It's a higher definition than the other video's I've posted so it will take longer .
Mt. Tallac Trail Hike from Marlene DeGrood on Vimeo,div>.

Quaking Aspen is a great wood to carve or whittle when it's green.  We're not going to be hacking up any live trees so we search for the trees that recently broke and fell from heavy snow loads.  A few years ago we found a dirt road that leads to Burnside Lake and is at a high enough elevation where the snow is really heavy and you can find green Aspen that has fallen. 

If you've ever seen some of Barb Post's great carvings then you know why Sharon, Kathryn, Lea and I took a trip out to Burnside Lake Road yesterday to get her, and us, some Quaking Aspen.

Sharon did most of the work while Lea shot some great high definition footage of the beauty, I shot footage of Sharon working and Kathryn ..... well .... let me just say that she's very entertaining to hang out with.  

Here's a short video depicting the day.

Cascade Falls Hike

Some people love to buy new clothes, jewelry, even cars but I love to buy ipods, video cameras and computers.  My latest "toy" is a Canon FS100 tapeless video camera.  It's just 5" long, 2.5" high,  2.3"wide and weighs just a little over 1/2 pound. It can fit easily in my pocket and can go anywhere with me.  So it went with me on Thursday for a hike to Cascade Falls.  It was the first time I really got to test it out and I'm pretty happy with it.  I'll be taking it everywhere this summer and good or bad, I'll be posting some of the clips here in my summer blog.  

So here's my first post, first video and first hike of the summer.  This was to Cascade Falls above Cascade Lake. An awesome hike with great views .... you will see Cascade Lake and a little bit of Lake Tahoe in the background.   Shown in the video is fellow hikers Sharon, Kathryn and Lea.