Lake Tahoe
This is my favorite out-of-town riding destination.
Most of the trail descriptions here are in the Tahoe City/Truckee
areas. Starting with the Truckee area here is a picture of Castle
Peak. The Castle Peak picture was taken from nearly the highest
point on the Hole in the Ground Trail.
The next several shots are from The Flume Trail.
The first being of some low
income housing that caught my eye. The bugs must be terrible not to mention
the noise from the lake. The next shot along the Flume is of Sand
Point. Here are views to the north, west and south that
were taken on the "lost" trip.
We had an adventure on the first Flume trip and got off on our own. I think
the problems started when I took this picture of Al at the Red
House and he
was smiling. Some may say we were "lost" but
we knew we were in California, or was it Nevada...anyway we were thinking of
backtracking
when
we came upon
this
view
looking east
at the Carson
City. It was getting a little late and we were in shorts and t-shirts,
which isn't the best way to dress in the high country at night. Our fears were
gone when we crested a saddle just below Snow Valley Peak when we
saw the lake.
From there it was all we had to do was ride down this
beautiful valley to the car.
All turned out well and now we have a new ride. Turns out this part of the
trail is closed to bikes, so don't take this route. We found a better route
that is described on the
Flume Trail page.
We have just returned from our second (my
third) trip to Tahoe for biking. This time I brought my GPS to record
the trails so there
are updated
descriptions
of the trails below. We have discovered a new trail that is excellent
to get acclimated to the altitude. The Sawtooth
Trail will replace the Emigrant as
our warm up, especially in the later summer months. We started this
trip on the Emigrant but I forgot to turn on tracking on the GPS so
we
had to do it twice. Al was very excited about this development as
the Emigrant is NOT his favorite trail. So after riding the Sawtooth
we
went back
and
rode the Emigrant again. He was speechless about this mostly because
there were women and children about. We had a pitcher of margaritas
that night and he was fine after that, or at least better. We did ride
it
as a
one-way and did it backwards to
boot (Stampede to Prosser).
For
more
about
that
visit
the Emigrant
page.
Unfortunately we were snowed out of the Hole in the
Ground trail this trip so it won't be updated at this time though
I hope to get up there towards the end of summer. This trip began
on June 27th and ended on July 1st 2004. We stayed at Donner State
Park which is very
convenient for trail access. They've had hot showers there for
as long as I've been staying there but now the bathrooms and showers
are new. Showers are quarter operated and three quarters get you
a 7.5 minute hot shower or if you need a longer one you can put as
many as 10 quarters in at one time. The only down side to this trip
were the mosquitos. I hadn't noticed them before in the latter months
of summer but they were out in force on this late spring trip.
There are several Tahoe/Truckee area trail descriptions
listed here with pictures that I've taken along the way.
There are many more trails to ride
in the Tahoe and surrounding area so you might want to check some of them
out. The two happy faces on the map below that are above Highway 80 are links
to the Hole in the Ground and Emigrant Trails (left to right). Next
are three trails down Highway 89, starting at the top is Sawtooth
then Western States then Alpine Meadows. On the East shore of the
lake is The Flume Trail. There are many more but I haven't had a
chance to do them - yet.
