The Desolation Wilderness is a 63,690-acre (257.7 km2) federally protected wilderness area located along the crest of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, just southwest of Lake Tahoe in El Dorado County, California, United States. It is a popular backpacking destination, with much barren rocky terrain at the edge of the tree line: it has extensive areas of bare granite. Lake Aloha is a feature of the wilderness area, with shallow, clear waters sitting in a wide granite basin carved by glaciers in the last ice age. The Crystal Range is within the wilderness with Pyramid Peak as the highest point in the range and in the wilderness at 9,985 feet (3,043 m) in elevation. Among the many waterfalls within the wilderness is Horsetail Falls.
Read more about Desolation Wilderness: History, Access, Biology, Peaks, Lakes
Famous quotes containing the words desolation and/or wilderness:
“When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain’s exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green country without—oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command!”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“He sustained him in a desert land, in a howling wilderness waste; he shielded him, cared for him, guarded him as the apple of his eye.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Deuteronomy 32:10.