Winter Adventure in Markleville Ca at Grover’s Hot Spring State Park is a locals favorite for waterfalls and big trees.
Tamarack Fire Update – As of Feb 2022 this trail is closed due to the devastating fire that occurred in Summer 2021.
Markleville ca – February 2021 – A fresh coats of powder surprised the Central Sierra near Lake Tahoe this weekend as residents of the Carson Valley, Alpine County and South Lake Tahoe region awoke to snow of the valley floor.
My buddy Tom and I had made plans the night before to head out for a little snowshoes adventure Saturday and were pleasantly surprised to have the gift of powder for our day. I had chosen the Markleville region for our days adventure, as it is one of my favorite spring local hikes and I had never done the hike in the snow.
The Grover’s Hot Spring State Park is a beautiful area with larger meadows and lively stream, mountain side walls that tower above and great old growth ponderosa pine and manazanita bush everywhere you turn.
Although there are trails in the park and Camping area with parking in the park, I typically choose to park outside of the park and walk in on the old East Charity Valley Trail head. Not only does it save me parking fees , but the extra 1.2 miles is beautiful section of large ponderosa, and little valley inlets that in the spring often have water cascading between the granite boulders.
This trail and area is considered easy in most hiking standards, unless of course you choose to head up to Burnside lake and Charity Valley which can quickly change the hike from Easy to Moderate to Strenuous by the end of 6.5 miles of hiking. Today we were only hiking to the Waterfall and back which is a very easy hike with limited elevation gains (although with all the little up and downs over the course of 4.2 out and back you do experience roughly 1500 ft. of elevation changes.
This is a great kid friendly and family hike that dogs are allowed on but inside the park, no bikes or horses are allowed. In the snow we really could not see the trail, but because we had been several times before quickly found our selves on the exact trail path that leads us behind the parks camping area and along the hill on the backside of the park to the waterfall.
This time of year the Rocks at the fall are slippery and the water coming down the fall is nothing special but in a few months the water fall is a great place to visit and the forest floor seems to oooze water from every direction above the falls.
On this day even with the light snow fall the winter night temp had frozen the snow to a point where snowshoes really were not needed and we walked the entire route on top of the snow field.
After getting back to the car on our three hour journey it was time to make a pit stop at the new Cutthroat Brew Pub in Markleville for a Sidewinder Burger and a beer. Just what the doctor ordered after a great day hiking in the Sierra.
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