Contours, elevations and trails from OpenTopoMap. Scroll down for the zoomable map.
Hope Valley sits high on the east side of Carson Pass, a broad meadow-and-forest basin ringed by granite and aspen where the West Fork of the Carson River winds through. Our base is the cabin at the Desolation Hotel; from there the walks run out to the waterfall, up to the state/national-park boundary and the old measurement tree on the peak, and along the river through the pines.
Carson Pass is named for Kit Carson, who guided John C. Frémont's 1844 expedition — the first party of U.S. citizens to cross the central Sierra Nevada in winter.
