Horsetail Falls in the Desolation Wilderness

Just southwest of Lake Tahoe off Route 50 is the trailhead to get to Horsetail Falls, with over 500 feet of cascading waterfalls snaking down the side of a mountain in the Desolation Wilderness. The out and back trail is just a little over three miles.

From the trailhead, You follow the Pyramid trail, which is not well marked and can be difficult to follow.

Like much of the Desolation Wilderness, you are surrounded by beautiful granite peaks along your hike.

Most of the hike isn’t terribly hard, but because much of it is over football field sized slabs of granite, it is easy to lose the trail. But it makes it easy to find the creek as the water flows down the mountain across the stone.

Luckily you have Horsetail Falls in the distance giving you a visual indicator of your desired direction.

Following the water and the occasional sections of visible trail will take you up up the creek to a point where you are still well below the bottom of the falls. The trail enters the trees along the creek and you should be prepared to do some rock scrambling and boulder hopping along the creek to continue your way towards the falls.

When we got to this point, the creek got much deeper and faster and our confidence in navigating farther up boulders along the creek diminished.

Before we turned back I climbed up some rocks to where I got this final shot of the falls.