Fall Colors

October 5, 2013 by trudilee

By Tim Hauserman

Summer gave a valiant effort. It held out as long as it could, but with the recent fresh dusting of snow on the high peaks (the day before Ironman Lake Tahoe, apparently designed to add to the already frayed nerves of all those super athletes) and the untimely death of my tomato plants…it’s official. Summer is dead. It’s fall. Which means it’s time to lace up the shoes and hit the trails, because the fall colors await.

Here are a few of my choices for hikes near Tahoe City for fall color hikes:

Page Meadows and Ward Canyon-The Tahoe Rim Trail crosses Ward Creek Blvd. in Ward Canyon about a mile above West Lake Blvd. Here you have two good options: To the right, a steep climb leads you to Page Meadows. To the left, you can follow Ward Creek towards Twin Peaks.

Page is a series of interconnected meadows, and each seems to have it’s own time schedule when it comes to aspen leaf color heaven. When one meadow is at it’s peak, another is just beginning to turn. So as long as you can make it in the next few weeks, you have a good shot at seeing your share of oranges and yellows somewhere. Take your time wandering the meadows and see if you can find the Basque Sheepherders oven and the intricate, and sometimes bawdy aspen tree carvings nearby. Page Meadows can also be accessed without the climb by driving to the top of Talmont Estates and parking at the end of Silver Tip Drive.

The TRT route to Twin Peaks begins gently, and then becomes more arduous as you climb through stands of aspen along Ward Creek to McCloud Falls, a few miles up the canyon, or eventually to the saddle below Twin Peaks. From here a steep, but thankfully short, jaunt takes you to the Stanford Rock viewpoint where a big chunk of the world unfolds before you, including Twin Peaks just across the chasm at the top of Ward Canyon.

Looking for something short and sweet? Just a mile south of Sunnyside, where the bike path crosses Ward Creek, the new trail system of Ward Creek State Park heads off to your right. Here gentle trails take you along the creek and across boardwalk through one of the west shore’s prettiest groves of aspens. Enjoy.

But don’t lolly gag, because when The Rolling Stones sang, “Time waits for no one, and it won’t wait for me,” they were really talking about fall colors.