Nelson Lake & Nelson Mountain

Hiking to Nelson Lake & Nelson Mountain

Highest Elevation: 10,220 ft

Length: 16.1 miles

It was supposed to be a three day trip with two nights at Nelson lake but we shortened it due to my hiking partner not feeling well and us hiking out Saturday late afternoon. We still had a good time and I still got to climb and summit Nelson Mountain.

We headed out of the Cliff Lake Trailhead. The trail takes you down in elevation for the first mile and next to the Courtright if it is full. About three miles from the trailhead is the trail junction that we take to head towards Nelson Lake.

From the trail junction it is about two miles to the lake. In this area is where we start to travel through the Bullfrog Fire (2020) burn area. We see a lot of burned trees but nothing across the trail.

Once we get to Nelson Lake we head towards our preferred camping area. There were a few cars at the trailhead and we thought we might run into some people, but to our surprise there was no one at the lake or our camping area.

Once we got our tents set up and some fire wood collected I headed out to get some pictures of the lake. Being that it was later in the season there were not as many mosquitos as there would have been earlier in the season.