WHEW, WHAT A HIKE

John, Nathan and I went out on an overnight trail revenge journey the Friday before Father’s Day. You see about a year ago we attempted to check out Spanish Lake via Crown Valley Trailhead; however, due to the abundance of snow the Sierras received in 2017 we were left pitching our tent on a dry piece of dirt on top of knoll surrounded by snow. (If you missed that blog, you can catch up here Crown Valley Trailhead June 3-5, 2017 ) This time the weather was perfect, creek crossings were manageable and we were determined to make it past Spanish Lake and up to Upper Geraldine Lake.

According to our map, it is supposed to be roughly 10.3 miles to our destination. However, it was like a maze getting around all of the dead fall, which added an additional eight tenths of a mile for a total of 11.1 miles.  In addition, to the 22.2 miles we gained just under 2,700′ in elevation from the start of the trail to Upper Geraldine Lake.

We hit the trail at 9:30 Friday morning and immediately started making a gradual climb on a dusty trail. After just under mile we came to our first junction in which we headed southeast to continue on towards Spanish Lake/Crown Valley. Shortly after the junction we cross Rancheria Creek for the first time. After crossing the creek the trail gradually gains elevation with the roar of the creek to our left. Looking down through the pines, we noticed this nice waterfall on the creek.

After the waterfall, the trail continued to climb until the creek leveled off and we had to cross it for a second time. Trail started to open up a little bit after the water crossing and we started to see wildflowers consisting of blue, purple, red, white and yellow colors.

Due to the abundance of mosquitoes, we didn’t take a break until mile six where we were able to sit on a sunny rock overlooking cabins at Statham Meadow. According to a gentleman that we saw riding his Buckskin, Statham Meadow used to be an old cow camp. However, nowadays it is a dude ranch.

Once our snack was done we cinched up our packs and proceeded onward. At that point, we made the decision that we were not going to go out of our way to Spanish Lake and that we would fill up our water at the next spring or drainage that had water in it. Fortunately, for us it was only mile before we came across a little creek flowing through a nice little meadow.

With full water bottles we got back on the trail. Unfortunately, this is where our hike slowed down due the trail being difficult to follow due to all the down trees but we managed with my GPS to stay the course. Literally this part of the trail looked like a giant brush pile.

Around 4:30 we came to an area where you can look down in to the Geraldine Lakes area. At that point, we knew we were going to down and then back up again to reach Upper Geraldine Lake.

It took us right around an hour and a half to climb the granite switchbacks up to the lake. When Nathan and I met up at the top we both mentioned the rough climb and that we should have planned for two nights for this trip. First words out of my mouth was what a magnificent place we were at.

After admiring the lake for a few minutes and realizing it was 6 o’clock, we break out our lunch consisting of summer sausage, cheese and crackers. Yup, I said lunch. After lunch, we got our fishing rods rigged up to catch some dinner. 30 minutes of fishing yielded us stringer full of brook trout.

Since dinner was caught fairly quickly we still had sunlight to set up camp. John and Nathan set the tent up while I gathered wood, got a fire going and filled up our water bag.

The rest of the evening was spent cleaning fish, eating dinner, sipping whiskey and relaxing around our little fire.

I crawled out of the tent around 6:30 to soak up the amazing morning views. I took a little walk out to a granite ledge where I could take a picture of the area we hiked up the previous day. WOW! Pictures with my phone do not do this amazing place justice.

The fish were jumping all over the lake as the sun hit it for the first time so I decided to walk around the lake and try my luck. After an hour of catching and releasing fish, I decided to go back to camp for some coffee and a granola bar.

While drinking coffee we slowly packed up camp and began talking about journey back to the trailhead. What we thought was going to take us two hours to get across to the other side of the canyon only took us an hour.

When we got to the other side, we went out on a ledge that overlooked Lower Geraldine Lake, Crown Valley in the distance and fin rock to the left us. We sat on the rock for a good 45 minutes before we continued down.

The rest of the way out was uneventful since we were just retracing our steps we took the day before.