[Written Aug 6, 1PM.  Pictures here.]

A couple of miles out of Star Lake, we came across a trail leading to Freel Peak.  We’d debated whether to attempt to summit it all morning and having a marked trail made our minds up - we’d climb it!  At 10,880 feet, Freel is the highest peak around the Tahoe Basin, and promised views of the whole of Lake Tahoe, the Carson Valley, and valleys and ranges southward.  We cached our packs and set off.

The trail was varied and fascinating.  We switchbacked through a lodgepole forest with maximum height of about five feet.  We tiptoed along the top of chutes with snowfields and scree sweeping down into a rocky bowl.  We inched across a gravelly saddle with tiny alpine flowers and mosses clinging to the lee side of lichen-blotched rocks.  At last we scrambled up the rock pile that constitutes the official summit to be pestered by a well-trained chipmunk.  The view was not disappointing!  Perhaps the next challenge is to identify each 10,000 foot plus peak surrounding Tahoe and climb them - both Freel and Relay peaks were spectacular.

Around 11AM, the breeze suddenly freshened, and Freel began once again to spin off clouds.  We began the long descent to Armstrong Pass.  The descent was characteristic of this section - a trail cut high into the side of a steep bowl.  Numerous creeks gurgle down the steep slope, surrounded by oases of delphinium, columbine, lupine, fireweed, horse parsley, and small alder trees.  Between streams, as we descended below 9000 feet, the profusion of wildflowers common to other sections resumes.

We’ve stopped for lunch at the base of Fountain Face, a cracked and rounded protrusion of granite that rises a couple of hundred feed above the trail, reminding me of the contours of Uluru.  Coy makes some abortive attempts to climb some of it, while I try to photographically enhance his progress.

[5PM]

Ahhh.  I’m stretched out on my sleeping pad, back against a half-submerged boulder, at the edge of Freel Meadows.  The weather alternates every five minutes between warm sun, cool shade, and a few chill sprinkles.  The meadow is broad and boggy, and filled of course with copious wildflowers and with short stands of willow at the edges.

From the Face to here involved completing the descent to Armstrong Pass, several miles of steady uphill to gain back 600 feet we’d already shed, and then a couple more miles winding along a ridgetop, with classic views south into a valley surrounded by it’s own clutch of rock peaks still sporting snowfields, and views northward from the rim of a rocky bowl called Hell Hole (not the Hell Hole Reservoir 20 miles away on the west side of Desolation Valley).  Beyond Hell Hole is another view of the Upper Truckee basin and the Lake.

The moisture of the meadow is bringing out mosquitoes for the first time in this stretch, but a few squirts of spray has abated their annoyance.  I’m grateful mosquitoes have been a non-issue for most of the trail so far!

We’re resting in the sun for a half-hour to decide whether to push past our comfort level (which we had actually already passed somewhere in the previous 11 miles, or 2500 ft elevation gain) and to do the remaining five miles or camp here despite the mozzies, scrounge the dregs of our food supplies, and hike out in the morning.

[8:45PM]

Pulled my headlamp out for the last half mile, as we reached the car just as darkness was falling in earnest.  Changed shoes.  Ate pizza.  Home…

[Mileage: 16.4 | 122.2]