Category: Sierra Canyon Hiking Group

As I've mentioned before some of us from the Sierra Canyon Hiking Group are hiking the Tahoe Rim Trail this summer. Duke and I have missed many of the hikes and we have made up a couple on our own. The trail is 165 miles long and we are hiking it in 8 segments. Duke and I have now done five of the segments and we have three to do. I've blogged about the first two segments that we hiked.

• Mount Rose Summit to Brockway
  
• Spooner Summit to Kingsbury Grade

I have not been keeping up with my blogging. There are three more segment hikes that we have now completed so I need to add to the blog.

• The hiking group didn't hike on the July 4th weekend so on July 3rd Dave, Duke and I hiked the segment from Brockway to Tahoe City. It was a nice day and a very long hike. Unfortunately about five miles form the end we missed a turn and got off the Tahoe Rim Trail. We ended the hike about 100 yards down the road form the end of the Tahoe Rim Trail  but I guess technically we need to go back and make up the part of the trail that we missed. When the group hiked the trail the following week while we were on vacation they said that last part that we missed was the hardest part. The pictures from the hike are on Flickr here.

• On August 7 after we got back from Iowa Duke and I were back hiking with the group again. We did the 22.8 mile segment from Kingsbury to Big Meadow. The combination of not having hiked in 4 weeks, the distance, lots elevation gain and the heat made this a killer hike. We left home at 5:30 am and got back home at 10 pm. Duke drove so with shuttling the cars he drove 4.5 hours and hiked 10 hours. The best part of this hike was soaking my feet in Star Lake at lunch. Here are my pictures on Flickr from the hike.

• Last Thursday August 14th we hiked the segment from Big Meadow to Echo Lake. It was 17.5 miles and a lot easier than the hike the week before. I didn't take many pictures but the ones I did take are on Flickr here.

A group of us who live in the Del Webb Sierra Canyon Development in Reno have decided to hike the Tahoe Rim Trail this summer.  As the name suggests the Tahoe Rim Trail is a trail on the mountain crests around Lake Tahoe. The trail is 165 miles long and we are planning to do it in 8 segments. Thursday we did our first segment from Spooner Summit on Highway 50 south to Kingsbury Grade.  It is the shortest segment (only 12.2 miles.) Fifteen of us completed it with no problem. It is an easy to walk on trail. It was a warm glorious day and there were stunning views.

Below are a few pictures from the hike. If you would like to see the rest of the pictures you can see them on Flickr here. There was a little snow beside the trail in a few places but most of the snow is gone.

One of the most surprising things on the hike were the beautiful red flower we found growing up out of dead wood in a few places. Since getting home I discovered on the Tahoe Country .com web site that the flower is the snowplant.

"A fairly common site in the Tahoe
landscape as the snow melts is the Snowplant (Sarcodes snaguinea), a member
of the Wintergreen family. This
strange asparagus-like plant does not photo-synthesize, but receives its nourishment
from parasitizing the roots of neighboring plants and other decaying organic
matter. It is protected by California law and there are heavy fines for tampering
with the Snowplant due to its extreme beauty and rarity (it is found only
in the Yellow Pine and Red Fir forests of California and southern Oregon)."