First leg - Tahoe City to Brockway Summit

Well - that was just an awesome day. Chris came by just before 7, and we both drove up to Brockway Summit, where we left his car. Shuttled in my car to the Tahoe City trailhead, took a couple of pictures, and were on our way.


The trail from Tahoe City starts with a few miles of pretty good climbing, so we began by hiking instead of running. On top of that, it was pretty rocky, too, as you can see some of here:

But we were rewarded with a few lake views like this:

So we hiked for awhile, until most of the climbing was done, and then did some trail running. Here's a couple more pics of the trail:


It was somewhere in this section that Chris realized that he'd left the keys to his car (which was parked at the other end) in the trunk of my car, back at the trailhead.

Too far in to turn back at that point, so we had to come up with another option. Fortunately, I had brought my phone, and miraculously, it got coverage! Chris called his wife Abby to see if she'd be willing to bring us an extra set of keys...

So we continued running - ran for just over an hour. A few more gratuitous scenery/posing shots:


And finally came to Watson Lake.

Took a little break, had a bite to eat and a stretch, and continued on. I should say: we had been curious if we were going to run into any snow up there. We did, but just a few little patches. Maybe 10 places where the snow crossed the trail, and those ranged from 5-25 feet long. Nothing impassable. Here's one of the bigger ones:

So we basically slogged the rest of the way in. Ran for awhile when it was downhill or flat, but the uphills totally sucked it out of me - don't have my altitude lungs yet. But we made it just fine - a few minutes before Abby showed up, in fact. Here's us waiting:

And my super dirty feet:

Then our heroes showed up with the keys, Abby and Chris's 5-month old Hannah:

From there, we headed down to Kings Beach and took a dunk in a VERY chilly Lake Tahoe (to reduce swelling, Chris says...)

Had a bite to eat in Tahoe City at Rosies, picked up cars and headed home. Great day.

Here are the numbers:
Trail mileage: 19.2 miles
Time on trail: 4:25
Time moving: 4:00
Time running: 2:10

First leg planning

Well, it looks like this is going to start sooner than I had thought. Tomorrow I'm going to take a crack at the first leg of the trail, from Tahoe City to Brockway Summit. My co-worker Chris is going to come along; he wanted to do a long run tomorrow anyway, and this sounded like fun. (Not sure if he's going to do the rest of them; he had expressed interest in doing the Mt. Rose to Spooner leg, which is pretty scenic.) Anyway, tomorrow we'll leave pretty early, shuttle cars, and hopefully start on the trail about 7. It's about 19 miles, starts uphill and then is mostly rolling. Should finish before noon. Kind of excited...

Joiner

I've been meaning to join the Tahoe Rim Trail Association for a few years now - finally got around to doing it. I've always kind of felt bad that I'm such an enthusiastic user of trails, but can't find the time to get involved in maintenance, trail building, etc. (Coincidentally, one of our friends, Kirsten, recently blogged about her trail-building experience.) So, maybe displaying my official TRT car decal will make me feel better about my lack of participation...

And there it is...

More thoughts

Hmmm - haven't been keeping up on this too well, have I? Just having some more thought about the whole undertaking. Looks like I'm not going to be able to do this on consecutive weekends like I'd hoped - just too much other stuff happening here and there. I'm thinking now that I'll get started as soon as I can, when trails start opening up for the spring, and try to get as much in as I can before schedule conflicts start cropping up. In June and July I'll have Mondays off, so it's possible that I can drop the kids off, then head up and do a segment. Shuttling will be an issue - may have to resort to hitchhiking back to the trailhead. Maybe I'll make a TRT hitchhiking sign. The end of June I'll be in Alaska, so I can do a little more in July after that. In August I start to work Mon-Fri, and the first week in August Mich and I will be going up to Oregon for our birthday/anniversary week. After that, I can start doing Saturday or Sunday hikes as planned to finish it up. Hopefully that will get me in good shape to maybe do the Lake Tahoe Marathon or XTerra race in September...