Horsetail Falls Hike 6/6/20

In early June, we ventured to Horsetail Falls. It had been a while since we've hiked there. The last time we were there was 4 years ago. You can check out that post here. It was a fun trip to see the falls again.

Horsetail falls is a waterfall in the Sierra Nevada mountain range and in Desolation Wilderness. It's about an hour and a half drive from Davis. We got up early and was at the Twin Bridges trailhead by 8:30am. It's not a huge parking lot and getting there early worked great as there were plenty of spots when we arrived. There is a $5 fee to park.

I'm not going to go into too much detail of the trail but it wasn't too difficult for us to follow since we had been there before. There are two routes to get to the base of the falls (you will see from the map at the end of the post). The trail is marked as there are signs you can follow and we also found that someone had painted blue colored paint marks and arrows on the ground to guide the path.

Below is a video from one of the early falls you see not too far from the trailhead.

           

Not too far from that, you will see this which is neat.

           

Here we are entering Desolation Wilderness. Normally you need a permit (which is free for day trip) but w/ Covid we didn't need one.

The kids enjoy log crossings. :)

Be prepared to hike on lots of granite rock. I enjoyed hiking on the rock. 

When you first see the falls from the trail, it is a neat moment.

It's nice when you get closer to the falls.

An even closer shot.

Once you get to the base, you can continue on but there is not really a set trail. However, we did see blue markings and you just had to be keen on following them. There is more climbing and scrambling involved if you decide to continue on. We went for a little bit and decided to stop at this point. If you look closely, you can see Hubby with the boys (bottom right). We actually turned around earlier than the first time we went 4 years ago.

And a video of our stopping point.

From there, we headed back down to the base of the falls and hung out there for a bit. Here's one last video.

And a family shot. :)

There are lots of spots where you can go and just hang out by the water. It's a fun place to explore.

The hike came out to 3.63 miles roundtrip with 932 ft. of elevation gain. Here is a map of our route that I took from Strava.

Heading back to the trailhead.

Overall a nice hike! It's a popular one, so going early helps. Lots of people hang out at the base of the falls, so continuing on will have less people but it is more difficult to climb up higher especially if you have kids. Definitely a beautiful place to visit!

Happy hiking!