Tahoe Rim Trail thru-hike: a trail journal
This journal was transcribed from handwritten notebook pages. I lightly edited it for coherence after the trip, but left many places with suboptimal writing quality to more accurately represent my mental state while on the trip. It was inspired by Andrew Kelley’s JMT journal.
Foreword
I’m writing this on the Zephyr to the Bay, coming back from my trip.
I decided to take a week off to go on a backpacking trip, since that is something I had been wanting to do for a while. After talking to Claude a bit, I decided on the Tahoe Rim Trail since it (1) was accessible via public transport from the Bay, (2) has beautiful views, and (3) has amazing weather compared to e.g. the Rockies. I was originally planning to do the whole ~170 mile trail in 8 days, but after talking to a wilderness expert, I decided to do a 90 mile section covering the south and west rim of Tahoe. In hindsight, I think the full ~170 miles would have been doable in 8 days but fairly challenging and would have significantly increased the danger. I started in Nevada, quickly crossed into California, joined the PCT for 50 of the 90 miles, and then ended by walking into Tahoe City. The trail follows alpine ridges, passes, and lakes in the mountains overlooking Lake Tahoe.
Overall I found the trip an extremely rewarding experience and am very glad that I did it.
Wow, while writing the header for this entry I realized I forgot the date. I think it’s either the 26th or 27th, probably the 26th. I guess this is a good sign that I’m unplugged.
Today was a good day — although it is not over. I’m writing this sometime in the mid afternoon while overlooking Star Lake. It is very beautiful. It’s flanked by mountains and there is even some snow on one of them. Very nice. I did the 9.5 miles from a Heavenly Ski Resort lodge to here in around 4 hours and arrived at the lake at 12:30. After sending a quick “I arrived” text and taking some pictures, I turned my phone off. It feels a bit terrifying to do that — I’m definitely addicted. Hopefully I can use this as an opportunity to become less addicted.
I’m mostly feeling good. The main issues I have are a slight headache, ankle hurting a bit, and some chafing. My guess is that the headache is from a combo of dehydration and altitude, since the lake is over 9000 ft. I did already drink 5L of water today, so it might be mostly altitude. My guess is that the headache will be fine. As for my ankle, I sprained it playing capture the flag 4 weeks ago and it hasn’t fully recovered. But Stan, my physical therapist, cleared me and on all the practice hikes it was fine, so I’m guessing I’ll be fine. I have a lot of margin as well since I’m going so fast. And I did bring chafe tape, so I hope that solves the chafing.
On the trailhead, there was a picture of Star Lake with alpenglow, so I’m really excited to see that. The mountains that flank the lake face west, so they are perfectly lined up to reflect the sunset.
Since I have so much free time, I’m planning to write letters to people in my life that I’m grateful for. I’m pretty grateful for Mr. Brownstein right now, my high school geology teacher, since I did a project about the geology of the Sierras in his class and generally learned a ton about rocks. I’m now able to appreciate the trail and landscape more as a result.
A very interesting thing I noticed is that after I started, for the first 1/3 of a mile, my pack felt extremely heavy and my lower back muscles started feeling extremely sore. After I warmed up and adjusted some straps I felt a lot better. I was in awe of the valley in Nevada to the east of where I was. After a bit, I went over a pass and could no longer see that valley and could instead see the Tahoe basin, but not Tahoe itself.
The next few miles were rougher. For some reason, I was going slower and took more breaks. I was also unsure if I had missed a turn to go to the lake and was trying to listen for running water. At one point, I thought I could hear water around a bend and was quite disappointed to not find the lake. I eventually pulled out my phone to use its map when I was ~1 mile away and arrived at the lake soon thereafter. After I got to the lake, I made lunch, which was 2 tortillas, cheese, and peanut butter. With the rest of the day, I’m planning to write some more, relax, and call it an early night.
Sunday journal update
I’m writing this from my tent at probably around 9pm. The last few hours have been pretty hectic. So, I found a nice campspot, moved my stuff there and then went back to the lake to chill. Then, I heard a few bikepackers yell “bear,” and sure enough, I saw a bear a few yards away from their camp. When I first saw them, I could tell they were noobs since they were eating in their tent spot; this confused me but I just shrugged it off. The guys just threw rocks in the bear’s general direction and it went away.
At ~6pm I was making dinner and then eating it when I saw the bear again, like 12 ft away from me. It was eating from some bags that the guys had left hanging in a tree while they went off to fish. I yelled a lot (my throat hurts right now from all the yelling I did) and started throwing rocks at it, but it wasn’t really fazed and just kept ripping their bags and eating what was inside. Since my jetboil and bear canister were only like 10 ft away from where they had their bags, the bear advanced and started going through my stuff. Luckily, I closed my bear canister when I first saw the bear, so most of my food was safe, but it did get to my toiletries and mauled my toothpaste and bug spray (pictured below). I kept throwing rocks and it eventually seemed to climb a nearby tree but still didn’t budge. Then one of the guys came back, and luckily he had bear spray. He was kind of scared to use his bear spray (maybe justifiably) and just kept throwing rocks, but one of the rocks finally hit the bear and it scampered away.
There was a group on the other side of the lake who saw all this and they suggested that I move my stuff to that side to get away from the bear. I quickly went back to my camp, packed everything up, and went to the other side of the lake. It turns out the group was a guided group with 4 guides and 8 people from the Tahoe Rim Trail Association. They asked if I was okay and I said yes. I quickly took all food-y things out of my pockets and put them in my bear canister, put the canister with theirs, and found a tent spot. After setting up my tent, I went back to the lake to get water, and on the way back, saw the bear again, this time on the side of the lake I was on. I just waited for it to pass, and then went into my tent. I’m hopeful that it won’t bother me tonight since there is no food in my tent (and I put my hiking clothes outside the tent just to be safe). Anyways, that was a good adventure to start off the trip!
Today was a pretty brutal day. I will start from where I left off last night. As I was trying to fall asleep, I heard some loud noises, which was the bear moving rocks around — these rocks were placed on top of people’s bear canisters and stoves to keep them in place. So it was fairly scary to hear the bear knocking those down. I’m not totally sure, but I’d guess I got around six hours of sleep since I had a bit of trouble falling asleep.
I got up around 6:30, and the big group had already left. After packing up my tent, I went to get my bear canister and stove. Not to my surprise, both were knocked over and the stove had the various components strewn around. Both had scratch marks on them. I quickly made my breakfast and got on the trail.
It started off with a steep uphill to Freel Pass, but the views were incredible. After that, it was a ways to Armstrong Pass, and the views on that segment were also fantastic. After Armstrong Pass, it was a long, brutal 10 miles to camp. Although it was mostly downhill, there were some very steep uphills. I thought I might be able to make it to camp before lunch again, but I was pretty wrong. I got to Big Meadow Trailhead around 3:30, which is where I thought I would camp. But it turns out Big Meadow Trailhead isn’t the same as Big Meadow. I arrived at Big Meadow maybe 30 mins later. I was running low on water so I first took the opportunity to get 5L of water from Big Meadow Creek. Then, I went looking for campsites. But initially, I couldn’t find any since Big Meadow is pretty meadow-y/swamp-y, so I was thinking of hiking 1.5 miles to an established tentsite off the TRT, which is where I think the big group had gone. By then it was roughly 5:20. I still had time to hike back but it would be a bit rushed and I was extremely tired already. After some more looking, I found a decent flat spot to make a campsite right off the trail, which is where I am writing this from. I set up my tent, put my bear canister and stove around 90 steps away, and then went to the creek to relax, soak my feet, and clean my shirt (it got granola/milk spilt on it at breakfast and I was really paranoid about bears… my pants also got stuff spilt on them, but I didn’t have a change of pants that would be reasonably readily available).
After that, I went back and started cooking. After opening my jetboil, I smelled the inside and it smelled like a dog’s mouth but worse. I’m pretty sure the bear licked it. I think the first major skill issue of my trip was not having a separate bowl or putting the jetboil in the bear canister (I didn’t have space). Worse, I packed up the jetboil in a hurry last night since I was scared of the bear, so I didn’t have time to properly clean it. That probably explains why the bear was so “interested”…
Anyways, besides grossness, I decided that the main risk of this situation was that I could pick up some illness the bear had by eating out of the container. Luckily, I had a solution, just boil water in it. Boiling water kills all germs. I first boiled a cup of water and threw it away, and then boiled 2 more cups to make mashed potatoes. I’m not really sure why, but I’m having a pretty small appetite so far on this trip. I keep having to take really long breaks in between bites and almost force myself to eat. I’m still probably at a caloric deficit…
Another bad thing that the bear did yesterday during the stand-off was that it sliced through my picaridin bug spray, so now my whole bear canister smells like bug spray. My toothbrush also does, which isn’t great. I tried to wash it off but there is still some aftertaste. I was a bit worried since picaridin is toxic, but I don’t think it’s too bad and I didn’t swallow it. I will decide what to do about this tomorrow.
I have a pretty light day tomorrow so I’m going to let myself sleep in.
Today was a chiller day than yesterday and I let myself sleep in since I knew I only had 7 miles to go. I got up around 7:30, and I had been quite cold during the night, but I slept extremely well because I was so tired yesterday. I don’t think any bear messed with my stuff last night, but I heard that there was a bear roaming around the campsite that the big group stayed at, so I made a good call to stay in Big Meadow proper. While making breakfast by the creek, I noticed that the grass was frosty — it must have gotten below freezing last night. I hit the trail around 8:50, and got to Showers Lake around 11:50, so I made good time (& the hike was pretty uphill).
After getting to the lake, I sat around for at least an hour. In hindsight, this was a pretty bad idea. I got in a pretty bad mood before and while eating lunch and felt pretty bad. It was also really sunny, so I’m sure that didn’t help. A bit after eating I went to use the bathroom and stumbled upon a very nice campsite that had an amazing view of Lake Tahoe. This put me in a much better mood (probably combined with the food). After that I just lounged around the lake and wrote a bit. I did that until dinnertime, at which point I had dinner.
My appetite was a bit better today, but it still wasn’t great. The inside of the jetboil still smelled a bit like the bear. Also, Claude has me getting ~50% of my calories from just drinking olive oil. I didn’t know olive oil was so calorie dense (but it makes sense since it’s a fat). I think this is maybe slightly unhinged, but it’s much easier to eat than pasta from the jetboil.
After dinner I went back to my tent and watched the sun set over Tahoe. It was magnificent!
I have my biggest day of the trip tomorrow at 16±2 miles, so I’m setting my alarm to 5:20am so that I can get an early start. I’m also hoping that Echo Chalet, which I pass tomorrow, sells toothbrushes since mine still tastes like bug spray.
Whew; today was a big day. I woke up at 5:20am just as the sun was starting to rise and had breakfast and then hit the trail around 7am. I really wanted to have lunch at Echo Chalet since I was kind of sick of my peanut butter and cheese tortillas. The trail there was initially good but then hit a patch of burnt trees, presumably from a wildfire, which was not so pleasant to walk through. On the way to Echo Chalet, I stumbled into Echo Lake Camp by accident; I think some of the kids were pretty confused to see me.
Finally I got to Echo Chalet, and it was really weird being back in civilization again. I got fairly annoyed when I saw lots of people and cars for some reason. Anyways, while there I threw out my trash, got a warm burrito, fresh apples and peaches, and a snow-cone for lunch. I also threw out my bug spray-covered toothbrush and toothpaste and got new ones.
After stopping there, I made my way into the Echo Lake area on the way to Desolation Wilderness. It was a magnificent area filled with tons of alpine lakes, blanketed with shining granite. Lake Aloha in particular was absolutely stunning. The granite wall behind it was so shiny, especially since it had water flowing down some parts of it due to melting snow.
Unfortunately, after Echo, the trail got extremely rocky and my feet started to hurt from all the rocks. Additionally, I stepped on a rock while the tendon at the bottom of my left foot was flexed, and I think this pulled the ligament on the inside of the foot. That ligament is hurting a bit now, which is sad. Depending on how bad it is, I will either (1) continue to Dick’s Pass tomorrow (2) do Dick’s Pass but wear my ankle brace (3) take a zero day at Susie Lake (where I am now) and then bail the next day (4) bail tomorrow (not sure why I’d do this to be honest if I can just take a zero). I’m not too worried since I think the main issue is that it was really tight and activity usually helps it. I don’t think it’s torn since it’s not swollen.
Anyways, I’m going to bed now. This was the biggest day of backpacking I’ve ever done and it was pretty fun although it’s a bit sad that I injured my foot but such is life.
PS: I can hear all sorts of interesting sounds outside my tent. I heard rockfall that sounded a lot like thunder (I’m sure it wasn’t actual thunder since the sky is clear). I also hear a high-pitched call that sounds like a marmot as well as a lower-pitched call that I’m not sure what animal it comes from.
I woke up naturally at ~6:40am today and the first thing to my mind was: “how is my foot doing?!” Luckily, it was not swollen and felt much better than the previous night, although the ligament was still quite sore. I still wasn’t sure if I’d have to bail or not, but I decided to just start hiking to see if the foot got better or worse. I put on the ankle brace I had brought as a precaution to stabilize the ankle to prevent further injury.
Luckily, it got much better with movement, and I was barely feeling pain at all and moving at close to my normal pace. I made it to Dick’s Pass ~11am and Middle Velma Lake ~1pm.
I think the main ankle issue was that it was just really tight; after doing lots of stretching at camp, it doesn’t hurt at all now!
Once I got to Velma, I stretched, chilled, and then made lunch. For some reason, I felt very low energy and it took me a while to make and eat lunch. After that, I went to get water from the lake and almost got lost on the way back, but luckily I used my phone’s GPS to find the trail and then used that to find my stuff.
For some reason, I spent a very long time today playing with the magnet on my Osprey Hydraulics water pouch. The magnet is strong enough that it picks up magnetic grains from the dirt and you can make all sorts of cool magnetic field patterns with them. I also spent a bunch of time watching very cute chipmunks and squirrels run around.
After that, I set up my tent and then went to make dinner. The worst part of the trip continues to be the food. I just find what Claude ordered really gross. (Tonight, it was some kind of macaroni and cheese, but I had to boil it for 10 minutes; maybe the reason I found it gross is that my jetboil still smells somewhat like bear (gross). And worse, the olive oil that Claude was having me drink had been sitting out in the sun for many hours, so it was quite warm when I drank it.) On the food dimension of the Backpacking Bench, I give Claude a C-. (For context, I had Claude plan the trip and buy all the supplies; I did some sanity checking for safety-critical things but mostly just trusted it.)
After dinner, when I got back to my tent I was a bit spooked. One of the stakes was pulled up and lots of things were strewn out of my backpack, and an unused (thank god) wag bag had tons of holes in it, like something tried to chew through it. I’m not really sure what animal did it, to be honest. The only animals big enough that I can think of that could lift a stake and take stuff out of my bag are bears, deer, big cats, and maybe strong marmots. But none of those seem super likely to take stuff out of a pack just to chew through a wag bag. The closest match seems like a bear, but (1) I didn’t see any bear prints in the sand (2) based on my previous experiences, I think a bear would slash everything, whereas this only went for the wag bag (3) the holes in the wag bag didn’t look like slices, which you’d see from bear claws. Instead they looked like bites. I’m also confused why an animal would go for my pack since there was no food in it (I double checked). Anyways, I love a good mystery and I left the offending wag bag under a rock away from my tent in case the animal comes back.
I took pictures of what I think may have been its prints, but I can’t really make heads or tails of them. They for sure don’t look like bear or cat prints (marmot is the closest I think, I’ll have to look up what those prints look like when I get home).
I didn’t sleep that well last night because I was cold since I forgot to put on two pairs of socks and only put on one. I woke up naturally at ~7:30am but didn’t hit the trail until ~9:30am since I moved pretty slowly, presumably because I was tired (I also had to go like 30 minutes off trail to get water).
The hiking was pretty mellow today, and I arrived at Richardson Lake at ~1pm. The views early in the day were good, but they got worse as I left Desolation.
The group that was with me earlier in the trip caught up to me today, and they stayed at Dick’s Lake (one lake behind mine) last night. Apparently, they got terrorized by a bear throughout the night. It just went from tent to tent going through people’s packs and being a nuisance. Apparently, one of the guides had toothpaste in their pack, which caused the bear to go to their tent first; it slashed their pack a bunch. Then it gained confidence and went to all the tents. I am really not thrilled to be staying at the same place as them tonight. I also saw other people at this campsite who were eating right next to their tent, which is not great. I tried to get away from the rest of the people and am on a hill around a quarter-mile away.
As I’m writing this, I literally just heard a bear. The prior odds that there is a bear here are high since I heard two guys saying this campground is rated to have high bear activity. And then, just now, as I was lying in my tent writing this, I heard twigs being crushed in a pattern that sounded like steps. I was about to call out to ask if it was a person, but then I heard a loud breath out that did not sound human at all. When I heard that, my heart started to beat extremely fast. Luckily, it went away. The only other animal I can think of that it could have been was a deer (I saw a few on this trip already), but it didn’t really sound like one from my perspective.
Since I anticipated there might be a bear, I put two sticks in a cross on top of my bear canister. If they are not in that pattern in the morning, I’ll know a bear investigated it.
All of this bear talk reminds me of two of Joe Carlsmith’s wonderful essays: “Fake Thinking and Real Thinking” and “Gentleness and the Artificial Other.” The first since it feels like the “fake thinking” thing is to go through the bear safety motions and put most food in the bear canister, but not stress too much if you leave one thing in your pack. The “real thinking” thing to do is to be afraid of bears and try really hard to put all food in the bear canister and away from your tent. All of the bear stories this trip have snapped me out of fake bear thinking and into “there are really bears very close” thinking.
The encounters remind me of “Gentleness and the Artificial Other” for a more mundane reason. In that essay, Carlsmith uses the example of how “grizzly bear whisperers” thought that they could be nice to the bears and the bears would be nice back, but instead nature didn’t care and the bears ate them alive…
I think it’s pretty unlikely I get hurt by a bear tonight (0.1%) since these bears are black bears who are normally nonaggressive to humans (if they start to associate humans with food on the other hand…).
Some more forecasts:
- I hear screaming tonight from me or others: 30%
- Any of my gear gets damaged tonight by a bear: 4%
- The sticks are off of my bear canister in the morning: 80%
- I hear from the group that they heard/saw the bear: 50%
I have a big 15-mile day tomorrow so I set an alarm for 6:30am.
I woke up today at 6:30am and after packing up my tent I immediately went to check whether the sticks were still on top of my bear canister. They were! This meant that I was likely wrong last night when I said I thought the animal outside my tent was a bear, since if it were a bear, it would have almost surely checked out my bear canister since it’s so smelly. I also caught up to the group and asked them, and they said they didn’t see any bears either. I still endorse my decision to try to camp away from them given how reckless they were in the past with food.
Anyways, after leaving camp at around 8:40, I got to the Barker Pass campground around 11am. It turns out that the group, who were with the Tahoe Rim Trail Association, were doing a resupply there and they had extra food, so they did some trail magic and gave away a bunch of it to other hikers, including me! I was so thankful! I got some M&Ms, apples, and vegetables, along with some clean water. After that, I started the climb up to Twin Peaks. The scenery in this section of the hike was absolutely stunning, maybe only rivaled by Lake Aloha on day 4. I had a macroscopic view of everywhere I had hiked over the past 7 days, including breathtaking views of the shining granite in Desolation.
The rocks today were also incredibly interesting: I think the base was granite, but then there seems to have been a much more recent, mafic, igneous intrusion above. I think I saw a bunch of examples of columnar jointing, probably indicating diabase,1 as well as some reddish lava flows that made it to the surface and eventually hardened. The above is my guess at least; when I get internet access I will check tomorrow.
I think I am getting better at hiking from doing this trip; I’m getting less winded and my muscles are less and less sore at the end of each day.
Once I reached Ward Creek, I had a late lunch at ~4pm (I delayed because the trail magic earlier tided me over) and then chilled until ~6pm when I set up my tent and then had dinner. Dinner today was pretty miserable due to there being SO many mosquitoes. While making dinner I had a bugnet over my head so the only exposed parts of my body were my hands; they got bit and I also got bit through my shirt. While eating dinner, I stood up and walked in circles with one hand swatting mosquitoes and the other one holding my food. If I stayed in one place for too long, they would concentrate around me and start biting me.
Tonight was the only night out of the seven I had a mosquito problem. Why is this night different from all other nights? I think there may be 2 reasons: (1) I am at a much lower elevation than the other nights (2) I am slightly closer to a water source than I was the other nights. I’m not sure if (1) explains it, but (2) probably does; I was fairly close to water on night 2, but it was also pretty cold (it got below freezing overnight), so that probably kept those mosquitoes away.
I am writing this entry from the Inn At Boatworks in Tahoe City. I finished the backpacking trip today and I take the Zephyr home tomorrow.
I got up at around 7:30am and since today was the last day, I decided to skip my usual breakfast, opting for peanut M&Ms instead. I thus hit the trail around 8:30am.
The scenery today was mostly lacking, and the trail followed Ward Creek until turning to go to Tahoe City.
On the descent into Tahoe City, I saw more and more signs of civilization: an increase in day-hikers, a ropes course, a deluge of people floating down the Truckee River, the Skate the Lake Race, and finally I entered the city limits of Tahoe City, rendering the backpacking portion of my trip complete. Upon entering Tahoe City, I immediately went to look for restaurants that could save me from eating processed hiker food. Unfortunately, there was a power outage and the whole city had lost power. It was so ironic that after being without power for seven days, the power was out the exact moment I entered into civilization!
Most shops were closed, but I found one shop selling muffins that I could buy with cash, so I got one. I then walked all the way across town and found a bagel shop that would sell me bagels for cash, so I got one as well.
After that, I checked the news to see what I had missed after being offline for a week. Nothing super crazy happened, although I was a bit surprised to see that Anthropic models had also hacked external companies in cyber evals :/. I was honestly almost dreading checking the news after a week with no internet. I knew the addiction to information, which by then had subsided, would come back. I spent some more time checking my email, messages, etc.
I then went out and got an açaí bowl and a smoothie, which replenished some of my calorie deficit but the sugar also messed with my mood a bit.
I then chilled some more and then got 3 big slices of pizza for dinner, and went to an outdoor bluegrass concert by the lakeshore. It was very nice but I did notice that all of the sounds felt very overstimulating after seven days in the quiet of the wilderness.
I’m writing this now from the hotel bed. I have an alarm set for 6:30am tomorrow and I will take TART to Truckee to catch the Zephyr heading west to the bay!
Appendix — How did I plan this trip?
I planned the trip mostly using Claude. It identified where I should go, re-made the itinerary once I decided that I should shorten the trip, told me the best way to get a Desolation Wilderness permit, added all the food and other items to my Amazon cart, told me what to buy at REI, told me what train tickets to buy, and made a map that I printed out to use in case my phone died (the printed map PDF).
I think it saved me a bunch of time, and more importantly, lowered the activation energy for planning. I mostly just used Claude Code running on my laptop to do the planning. When needed, it did Chrome computer-use to e.g. add things to my Amazon cart. The night before the trip I made a GitHub repo that contained all the info. I did this since it would allow me to have all the info on my phone via Claude Code remote. I did use this to check a few things when I was staying in Truckee the night before. (As a side note, I use this strategy for other things as well; I have my health records in a GitHub repo so that if a doctor asks a question I can just ask Claude Code Remote and it will answer it.)
Claude did make a few mistakes, however. The biggest one is that it told me to eat food which was not very appetizing (e.g. getting half of my dinner calories by drinking straight olive oil.) This wasn’t a huge deal, but was annoying. The second mistake Claude made is that it messed up the mileage on the map it made me. This meant that some days were harder than expected while others were easier. I expect that a simple prompt of “check the mileages for each day” would have fixed this.
Overall, having Claude plan the trip saved me a lot of mentally draining operational work. (I did manually check the water refill spots and campsites it identified since it would have been dangerous if either (water especially) did not exist. Both were fine though. I also didn’t rely on Claude to buy a first aid kit.)
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Post-trip note: I was mostly right, but the columnar-jointed rocks were probably latite, not diabase. ↩