Tahoe Rim Trail - Kingsbury North to Spooner Summit

Poor planning. When I jumped in the car to go up to Tahoe I threw my filter bottle in the back and (effectively) said to myself "Of COURSE there will be flowing creeks at elevation on the Nevada side at this time of year!" There aren't. Plus, I didn't hydrate effectively beforehand. It was sunny and 80 with only smoke clouds visible in the distant northwest, but no air quality problems at the lake - much different than when I was there in April and had to turn around due to snow.

Of course there were the usual friendly people (about a dozen in 4 hours, one of them a through hiker.) But due to my own stupidity, what should have been an enjoyable 11-mile jaunt turned into a death march. 2 miles from the end I encountered a van parked in the woods, inhabited by a guy who had thought things through much better. Lucky for me he was generous and topped me off, and his dog didn't eat me. Thanks Jason and Hershey! But I'd already lost so much water that I was probably hyponatremic after drinking a full bottle, and got back to my car and slept on and off for an hour. I was in such bad shape (shaky, could tell my reaction time was off) I delayed driving home for another hour - it is not unheard of for people to survive long runs and then die in car accidents afterward due to fatigue. (Lesson: be like Jason. Not like MDK10.)


Of course the views were sublime. It was right around here I saw a hawk carry off a struggling chipmunk, chirping and fighting all the way, likely in futility. This made me sad, but what makes me saddest is that we live in a world where this is the only way hawks can survive, and they have babies to feed too.




I only saw one snow plant the whole time. Not surprising - a little late for them.






Now that's a good-lookin' trail marker. Thanks TRT creators and maintainers!




You can't really make it out, but from this angle I was looking straight across at the mouth of Emerald Bay and could even make out Fannette Island.

Tahoe Rim Trail: Desolation Wilderness Part 1

Yesterday, in my quest to circumnavigate the lake on the Tahoe Rim Trail, I did a piece of it from Echo Lake, past Lake Aloha to not-quite-Gilmore, turning off and heading down to Glen Alpine and Fallen Leaf Lake. This piece of the TRT is also the PCT. To do the full piece as the TRT defines it (from Echo Lake to Barker Pass) requires quite a commitment of almost 33 miles which I didn't feel like making yesterday. (By the way, TRT website maps section is recently re-tooled - looks great guys.) I chose to do this one now because this segment is the coldest, if not the highest, and will be one of the first to be made inaccessible due to snow. I might get one or two more in before the snows come but I definitely won't finish the project in 2017. As usual, the best wife in the world made my A-to-B hike possible with her unparalleled shuttle service as well as supplying tacos and Mountain Dew.

While the trail surface is quite rugged and at times irritating, this is hands-down my favorite piece of the TRT so far. Lake Aloha is always breath-taking, and there's still some snow on the mountains and even on the trail, even in late August. Along with the austere post-glacial beauty of the upper parts of Desolation Wilderness, the waterfalls and the wildflowers, this one's a keeper. Plus, next time: Dick's Lake and Dick's Peak! Tee hee

San Diego May 2017: Also, The Sonoran Desert is Better Than the Sahara

When I was in Morocco in April, I went for a run in the Sahara. While now I have points for being in the Sahara, I found myself - underwhelmed. "We've been in better deserts than this!" my jaded wife and I both said. Knowing that in a month I would be in San Diego, I decided to do something I'd long thought about: go running in Algodones Dunes, thus proving once and for all that California's desert is better than the Sahara. If you're reading this though: don't be so quick to go to San Diego - there are all sorts of miscreants, deviants and otherwise unsavory elements of society that populate this place, as I was reminded through various visits in their company - much against my will mind you - to homes, drinking establishments and even the top of Black Mountain. Shudder.


The Algodones Dunes from space, with south basically at bottom - the black lines near the bottom are the All-American water canal and I-8. Thus, witnesseth! that in the U.S. we have our own ergs, AND nearby Mexican food and beer. And San Diego beaches are a mere 2.5 hr drive away, which I also made use of. And even a good Moroccan restaurant if you so desire! See? Vastly better than the dumb Sahara.

If you drive from San Diego to Yuma on the 8, you pass through the Dunes 15-20 miles before you cross the Colorado and enter Arizona, and they extend north as far as Brawley. You can't miss them: high golden sandy dunes, more on the north than the south side of the freeway. At one point I had the brilliant, stupid idea of running the whole thing from north to south, documented on this very blog. People I mentioned this to had several important questions: first, was I on drugs; and second, how many drugs was I on. So I abandoned the idea of running the whole thing, but my experience in Morocco reignited the idea of at least going out there.

My plan was to get the car as close as possible to the ergs off the 8, run out in them to where I was isolated and couldn't see anything but sand, then run back. Original plan: leave SD at 6am to be there at 8:30, since the prediction was by 8am it would be 80 F, 10am it would be 90, with a high of 105. But leaving at 6 would have required an early bed time, and as you know one must hydrate before such exertions! Therefore I went out in North Park Saturday night, and got to Algodones about 11:15. NOICE! SWAYT!





This is from the Gordon Wells exit, #151. The other side is Grays Well #156. (This picture is facing ENE, and those mountains are somewhere in Arizona northeast of Yuma.) You can get to the dunes, which extend north, from 78 just east of Brawley too, about the same drive time from SD. When it's cooler there will be far more ATV's and dirt bikes, other than the preserve north of 78. I should add that when I called BLM in El Centro they were extremely helpful in planning this little excursion (and no I'm not being sarcastic for once.)



When most people (including me) think of the Sonoran desert they think of saguaros and areas that can actually get a little green from monsoon moisture - not this. But then I remembered that the northern end of Baja's Gulf Coast is very sandy like this, and loaded with saguaros, so even by that definition it still sticks. So whatever. (When I was there I thought this was part of the Mojave. Mojave, Colorado, Sonoran, I can't keep them straight.)







Running down a dune isn't so hard, but otherwise, the annoyingness of running on soft sand for any length of time cannot be overstated, which I had forgotten. I will grudgingly give the Sahara a point in its favor for having firmer footing, but then again I wasn't running on ergs there. On the beach you can either run on the packed hard sand near the water, or leave the beach. When you're in an erg zone, there is neither water, nor leaving the beach. (If you've ever run "the sand ladder" during a certain Alcatraz triathlon in San Francisco, that's not even close to as irritating as this.) Even the high dunes, some around 100', have a sharp edge at the top, which always fascinates me.





I only saw one person, a very kind dirt bike rider who was kind enough to ride basically from the horizon to see if this goofy black-wearing runner was okay. (Black? Safety first; always wear light clothing.)



In this area, the border with Mexico is only a few hundred yards south of the 8. Kind of looks like we already have a wall...





And after you're done being an idiot in the desert, you can go to the beach! Pics are between Torrey Pines Beach and Black's Beach. I hate food photos but I'll post one here, to emphasize the basic truth that I was eating rolled tacos at Cuatro Milpas, and you weren't.















CONCLUSION: the Sonoran Desert is better than the Sahara. Thank you.

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