I didn't originally plan to hike this peak on this particular trip. My plan had been to go for Middle Sister peak in the Sweetwater Range about two hours south, but the large Walker-Cannon fire was burning very close to where I was going to be, so I had no choice but to cancel those plans. So that left me with a day free, and Freel Peak made a perfect back-up plan for me. In retrospect, I'm glad I hiked Freel as it was a great hike. I was still sore from the previous day's 15-mile journey up White Mountain Peak in Mono county. After a night in Minden, Nevada, I drove up and over the Kingston Grade, past the Heavenly Ski Resort, past the traffic in South Lake Tahoe, and proceeded to get a little turned around. The guide said to take Pioneer Trail, which I did, but the next turn off I was supposed to take never came up, until I realized Pioneer Trail is a big loop and I was on the wrong end of it. After a little bit I found the right turnoff, and followed a local paved road (Oneidas Street) into the forest to the pavement's end, where I parked and started in.

My map was the one printed in Gary Suttle's California County Summits, so I pretty much followed his directions. There are two ways to make it to the main saddle below the summit: a 4-mile hike via the Tahoe Rim Trail, or a 2-mile grind up a sandy, steep use trail. The main path actually led me to the steep use trail first, which I tried to follow up until I lost the trail amid a thicket of brush and downed aspen. After backtracking down to the main path, which cost me about 40 minutes overall, I decided to take the longer route. I went generally south through a marshy meadow, then a good trail up to the Tahoe Rim Trail junction, which I took northeasterly to the main 9,800-foot saddle. This took about 2 hours.

Once at the saddle I started up a steep boulder-sand pile, which gained me about 400 feet pretty fast. There was no trail here, so I just went up whenever possible. The slope then moderated slightly and I found some faint use-trails. The route climbs toward a 10,600-foot subpeak of Freel, then contours and gains the actual summit of Freel. Although I was going good, the clouds were building fast and I was concerned about possible lightning (I had been through two such storm cells in the previous 48 hours). As I approached the summit, I met a couple and their dog on the way down. We talked a bit, then I pushed on to the top, where I made it almost exactly 4 hours after starting (counting my time going up the dead-end at the bottom). The views were great. Lake Tahoe was visible, as Freel is its highest point of all the surrounding peaks, while to my south I could see some nasty clouds building up... so I didn't stay too long before heading down. I was back to the main saddle in less than an hour.

For the remaining trip down I took the steep use trail, which was very steep and sandy and loose, but it did save me 2 miles and made up for lost time. I came to where I lost the trail coming up, and yes, there was no way I would have known that the trail was where it was; i.e. it wasn't obvious at all from below, even after I'd come through it. The bad portion is short, fortunately, exacerbated by downed aspen and heavy undergrowth. Then it was just a simple mile or so to my truck, and on my way to Reno.