This trip starts at the sadly burned town of Paradise, that would be our first waypoint. We then drive through Magalia past the reservoir and up the mountains. We will then get to the historic town of Stirling City and if the Museum is open and, if you'd like, we can take a break and visit. Back on the road and up the mountain slowing down to 25 mph through Inskip; a couple more miles and we get to the famous "Y" where we air-down and start our bumpy ride through the woods.
Depending on time and interest, we can stop at Philbrook reservoir, this is a man-made lake that belongs to PG&E. From there we keep going south-east and up the mountain to the "T" where we may have to engage the 4x4 capabilities of our vehicles, at this point it gets a lot more prettier and a lot more fun from here.
There is a private property before Spring Valley Lake so we would take a loop around that and be respectful to the owners; we then end up at Spring Valley lake for Lunch and a well deserved rest.
From SVL we take the trail south-west to Bear Lake and down the canyon along the creek to our campsite, plenty of fire wood, no pun intended.
At that point we get ready to rest and set up tents, chairs, fire-wood, hammocks, etc. and relax. Enjoy dinner and sunset.
Sunday morning we clean up, make a “trash line” and leave camp-site cleaner from trash than we found it. Check vehicles and back on the trail and up the canyon to the main upper trail. We will be exploring to the start of the feared Morris Lake trail to check it out and see a level 7 trail, we will not attempt to do that.
We will turn around and down to Campbell Lake for Lunch break for an hour or so and if there is enough interest we will have a recovery clinic at this point before we go out through the loop back to Spring Valley Lake.
Once we get to SVL we can talk about any other possibilities before we take the main road down the mountain and to the Y for an air-up of the tires and vehicle inspection before we hit the highway.