hike to evergreen peak

On Saturday Mark & I headed up to Solitude Mountain Resort for a delicious brunch at the Creekside Restaurant before meeting Mark's Dad for a 3.5 mile hike. We set out from the car park (8,730ft) at Silver Lake (which freezes over in the winter and is used for Nordic skiing) and headed around the lake and up the trail to Twin Lakes Reservoir

The initial climb up from Silver Lake is quite steep gaining 700 ft over the first mile of the trail. Here are Mark & Dan on the trail now high above Silver Lake.

The original "twin lakes" are now joined into one lake by the concrete dam wall of Twin Lakes Reservoir. Across the lake to the South is Mt Millicent 10,452ft (3186m).

Here we are taking a break on the shores of Twin Lakes Reservoir. We then skirted around the northern shore of the lake, climbing again towards Mt Evergreen.

The 400ft climb up to Evergreen Peak is quite steep and required some scrambling up a narrow, rocky ridgeline. You can see Dan a little way down the ridgeline from me.

The trees up here have to weather some pretty harsh conditions. I thought the scarred trunk of this tree had an artistic beauty to it.

Mark at the top of Evergreen Peak (9,843ft or 3000m).

After descending from the Evergreen Peak trail we looped around to the north west, returning to the carpark via Lake Solitude, a tiny alpine lake in a steep-walled bowl.

We also met a couple of "natives" - two mule deer (named for their mule-like ears), grazing just off the trail.