This rewarding, easy, short hike leads you through one of the northernmost lake basins in the Sierra Nevada. The Silver Lake cirque is a broad, mile-wide, ice-sculpted bowl spread out below Spanish Peak and the Sierra crest. The cirque contains numerous small lakes and tarns and is dominated by an expanse of glacier-polished bedrock.
The trail from Silver Lake to Gold Lake is well worn and easy to follow, with only a few moderately steep grades. Vistas are panoramic for much of the way to deep Gold Lake, which offers fair fishing and cool, late summer swimming. Nearby Rock Lake, a small rockbound tarn, offers better diving from its rocky shores, but the trail to it is much more rigorous than the easy trail to Gold Lake.
