Month: October 2007

Hobart Reservoir Hike

Yesterday the Sierra Canyon hiking group was just four of us (Dave, Sherry, Merle and me). We did a very strenuous hike to Hobart Reservoir from the east. To get to the trail head from Carson City we went west on Ash Canyon Road turned left on Winnie then right on Wellington. The jeep road which head up the mountain is an unmarked left turn between the beautiful houses along Wellington.

We headed up the very narrow dirt road for two or three miles.  I was glad that Dave was a good driver. He went very slowly and his Jeep Cherokee did fine. When we found a wide part of the road we decided to stop and walk. We were at 6000 ft. We hiked up the road for a couple of miles and finally reached the crest at 7,904 feet. The climb was steep and hard. It turned out that we could have driven all the way up. We would have had to move this tree off the road

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but otherwise the road was passable. As you can see the road up goes through a lot of trees that were burned by a forest fire a few years ago. Here is the parking area at the top.

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From here we hikes down a mile or two and dropped 400 feet to Hobart Reservoir where we had lunch.

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We hiked further down the creek that goes out of the reservoir and then headed back to the car. All of my pictures are here on Flickr.

Free Brand new Book – Does anyone read my Blog?

In my blog posting on Sept 29 I offered to send a free copy of the new book Lincoln: The Presidential Archives to the first person who posted a comment on the blog and sent me their address. (The offer is still good.)Since no one has taken me up  on the offer I must assume that no one wants the book or no one reads my blog. I get a few comments on my blog so I know that it sometimes gets read. I think this illustrates what I have suspected for a while. Most people probably read blogs by searching. For example Richard Bernstein the author of The book Thomas Jefferson recently commented on the blog post I did for his book. Undoubtedly he found the post by searching on his name. I was very excited to get his feedback and in a sense make an acquaintance with him.

I regularly read blogs by using the Google blog reader but I suspect no one else regularly reads my blog. This bothered me for a while but I then I reminded myself that I blog because I like to. Comments welcome.

Sierra Canyon Monday Hike

It was REALLY hard to get up today for hiking after our Mount Rose hike yesterday. I was very glad that we decided to to do an easy local hike. We hiked around Anderson Park and Bartley Ranch Park both in South Reno. The sky was full of interesting clouds. It was threatening rain but it held off. The views from the bluff overlooking Reno were punctuated with rain in the distance. I enjoyed myself and we probably walked a mile or two with a few hills to get the heart pumping. We stopped at Starbucks for coffee on the way home and we still got home in time for lunch. Another great hike.

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Tour of the Truckee River Water System

Last Friday we took a tour of the Reno water system that was offered by the Truckee Meadows Water Authority (TMWA). TMWA has been offering this free tour annually for the last few years. We started at the TMWA headquarters. From there we went to the Lake Tahoe Dam in Tahoe City where the Truckee River Exits the lake. The picture below shows that two of the 17 gates at the dam were open when we were there. From Tahoe we went to Donner Lake, Stampede Reservoir and Boca Reservoir. We had a tour and a picnic lunch at the Verdi Hydro-power Plant and finally a tour of the Chalk Bluff Water Treatment Plant.

The top 6.1 feet of water between the natural rim and the highest elevation of Lake Tahoe is the primary water storage for Reno but the water authority also gets water from reservoirs and wells. It was fascinating to learn how the water is shared and how they plan for droughts and growth. The hydroelectric facilities that are owned by TMWA provide something like half the power the utility uses. The Verdi Hydroelectric Plant we toured was recently upgraded. The pictures below show the old control panel and the new control panel.

I was very impressed with the whole system. Our tour guide Andy was entertaining and very knowledgeable. TMWA has a great web site and a real time interactive graphic about Lake Tahoe and its elevations.

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