It has been a bit since a full scale trail report (January 2019- Bartram Trail). I have had many minor outings which I still need to publish, but the TRT has been in the planning phase for many months.
The plan was to hike the TRT roughly 12 days before the ALDHA-West Gathering, this year held in Nevada City, CA, which would be my last official duty of my two year board member at large position. Originally it was to be four or us, Cory, Joe, Bobbi and myself. Cory needed to bow out early as he had his first daughter going off to College and was tied up. Joe ended up hurting his bad knee again in the build up to the trip and then hurting his good knee while favoring his bad! This left Bobbi and me and this would be Bobbi's first real long hike. For those of you who don't know The Bobbi Walters, just tune into The Trail Show podcast for complete details of her fame.
The Tahoe Rim Trail is the little sister to the John Muir Trail (235 miles long) in the High Sierra of California. The TRT (170 miles long) is still in the Sierra Mountains, but not quite as high in elevation and does not get the traffic the JMT does and does not require the permits the JMT does, so it makes an idle trail for a simple thru hike and because it is a loop around the mountains that ring Lake Tahoe you can start and finish anywhere along the loop.
We chose to start at the South Lake Tahoe area, as transportation and lodging seemed to be easiest. (much more on the transportation issues later in these posts)
Bobbi needed to fly from Cleveland to St.Louis and then we met to fly first to Las Vegas for a layover then Reno, the closest airport to Lake Tahoe
A few hours and a couple of planes and we are in Reno, NV.
Landing in Reno we grabbed an Uber, something that would become all too familiar in the coming days and got into South Lake Tahoe with no issues. Since it had originally been three coming we booked into the least expensive accommodations (South Lake Tahoe is a very expensive place, even in the off season)
The Mellow Mountain is a hostel with bunk beds, four to a room.
Why do I always get the top bunk?
We did manage a good burger and a beer, at California Burger Company, with some live music before a very early bedtime, but that didn't stop the Hostel from blasting EDM music till midnight
I was encouraged in my research that we could take a $4 bus right up to the trailhead at Kingsbury South, this is a ski area that also has a Tahoe Rim Trail access point. We planned to take the first bus up the next morning at 7 am.
Waiting for the bus in the early morning the silliness begins
Getting off the bus the trail and the surrounding mountains were immediately gorgeous.
The weather was cool and crisp and the sky was a deep blue at this elevation.
The walk was fantastic, no wonder I hear reports of making 20-30 miles per days out West. The trails are so well graded with little to no rocks or roots and so soft under foot. We got an early view of the Lake but then the trail moves over to the Carson Valley side.
You get a huge expansive view of the Carson Valley side looking down from the Tahoe Rim
The got our first view of some steep uphill coming in just a few miles. Bobbi started to feel bad with a headache and shortness of breath. This sounded like classic altitude effects. She was taking a shorter and shorter time between breaks to catch her breath.
We had intended to go about 14-16 miles today, up and over Freel Peak pass, I now figured Star Lake at 9 miles was going to be our best bet for the day.
We arrived at Star Lake around 1:30 pm. We had planned just to have a late lunch and move on.
It is a beautiful lake set against the mountains in the background.
While she insisted she was ok, when we stopped, it was the end of the day for Bobbi. The moment she could sit down longer than a few minutes she was out. A first day when the altitude has you, is no joke and she did well to get this far.
She napped and I scouted a camping spot. This Lake was incredible busy today. The Tahoe 200 and Tahoe 100K were being run at the same time around the lake and we had seen about two dozen people on mountain bikes. The runners would continue to come through the lake side all night.
I managed to find a spot just above the lake and out of sight of the trail. After a brief nap Bobbi was feeling much better and had an appetite so we made some dinner.
Even I had an issue on the first day, I had lost my spoon somewhere, no worries, I had my potty trowel and that can double as my spoon, and it did!
It was a lovely evening just resting as the sun set
and a beautiful sunset
We had started the hike on the Full Moon, so later I got up and took a shot of it over Star Lake
Day 1 Stats
The mileage given on sign posts put Star Lake 9 miles on the actual TRT. However we walked the approach trail from Heavenly Stagecoach and a bit more.
By the way it is Bus 22 that takes you from the Stateline Transit Center in SLT to an intersection just above the actual trail head at South Kingsbury
That sunset shot is nice!
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