Our son Riley recently turned 4. It's finally time to introduce him to the wonderful hobby of backpacking! We set out to Trinity Alps on May 25th to hike the Canyon Creek Lakes Trail in Trinity Alps.
A few websites useful for tracking early season conditions in Trinity Alps:
- AllTrails
- Facebook Trinity Alps Group
- Copernicus Browser with latest satellite images
We drove from Eureka and spent the night at Weaverville on May 24th. From Weaverville, it's a 40 minutes drive to the Canyon Creek Trailhead, mostly along the narrow but paved Canyon Creek Road. We arrived at the trailhead at noon, and the parking lot was nearly full due to the Memorial Day long weekend.
The trail climbed gradually in the first 3 miles. The woods provided some nice shades to cool us down. Afterwards it opened up into the valley. Our original plan was to camp at either Boulder Creek Lakes or Canyon Creek Lakes - it's about 7 miles one-way with 2,500 feet of ascent. It became apparent later in the afternoon that we would not make it to the lakes. We started searching for campsites as we walked along the Canyon Creek. While there were few bugs during most of our hike, they had become a nuisance by 6. We decided to walk a little further, and found a nice open area on the Boulder Creek Lakes trail just after the trail junction.
The next morning, we left our stuffs at camp and took a "quick" trip to the lakes. The approach to Boulder Creek Lakes involves wading through a wide creek just after the split. While crossable, it wasn't too appealing to start the day's hike with wet feet. We turned around and set out to the Canyon Creek Lakes. It was a 2-mile hike with a moderate elevation gain, but the many creek crossings and muddy sections slowed us down considerably.
The "quick" trip ended up taking 4 hours. We returned to the trail junction at noon. By then, we were all tired. On his first backpacking trip, Riley was a total trooper and hiked most of the way. When asked what he wanted after the hike, he gave a careful thought and chose gummy bears. Fueled by the promise of gummy bears, Riley kept marching on, and we finally returned to our car at 5.
