Category: 2020 Tahoe Rim Trail

Not too long after dark, the winds picked up. By picked up, I mean screaming. It sounded every bit as bad as when we got hit with the winds at Cub Creek camping with Struggles and Charcoal. But it wasn’t. When we got out and started hiking, we realized it was much worse. Worse even than when we went over Sugar Loaf on the AT with Bear, Sassy, and Good Chip Norris. We were really afraid of getting blown down the back side of the mountain. 

I was so glad we stopped and camped where we did. Once we got going, it was nothing but full exposed ridge for almost 4 miles. As it was, I was getting beaten in my head by my rain jacket hood. This is probably only the 3rd or 4th time I’ve worn it on this trip, but I wouldn’t have made it today without it. When the hood almost knocked my glasses off, I took the time to tighten it down. I know I was getting wind burned. 

I was dragging a bit, today. Bunny…I practically had to drag today. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because we were off trail for 17 days. Maybe it’s because we continued to eat like we were still hiking during those 17 off days and put weight back on. Maybe it’s because we’re not used to the altitude (we’ve been over 8000’ most of yesterday and today). Or the most likely reason, maybe we’re just too damn old to be doing this. I might be too old, but I still see amazingly beautiful things in nature every day. I sure as hell don’t want to be back and watch news during this election cycle. 

We’ve got nearly 4 weeks to do the TRT. If we’d have switched over right away when we had to get off the PCT because of the fire, we probably could have done the TRT in 10 days. After today, I’m wondering if we have enough time. It’s taken us two days to get to where I had planned for us to be on the first day out of Truckee. 

We did sleep in past 8 this morning. I was trying to take away the “not enough recovery time” excuse Bunny tries to use on slow hiking days. I’m afraid what’s really happening is that Bunny’s sweet spot is 8-10 miles a day and she’s going to drag me down into it. Left to myself, I’m a 20+ guy, but I surround myself with older hikers. Let’s be honest (something new for this blog), I wish I could consistently do 20 mile days, but I’d be entirely happy with 8 mile days if we could stay out on trails year round. 

There were lots of people out on the trail today, but it’s very apparent we are no longer in the State of Jefferson. Everybody (100%) we passed would put on a face mask or would step 10’ off the trail. The ones that did both made me question how well our showers have held us since Truckee. Lake Tahoe tried to not let any outsiders in this year, including people that own a second home here. When we drove around it a few days ago, we saw police orders posted stating anyone in public without a face mask will be fined $100. They are serious about stopping the spread here. I wonder how the vote will turn out in this region. 

I don’t normally make hiking plans because, like today shows, they usually go to hell as soon as the first day. This time, I did come up with a 19 day plan which leaves us 7 extra days that we need to kill before our plane back to misery (MO). We had to come up with a plan, of sorts, so we’d be able to get re-supplied. We’re going first class on the TRT. Digit Alice has sent us the food we’re eating right now and then we have two more shipments waiting for us around Lake Tahoe. 

Take tonight’s supper. We had chicken tikka masala with 1/2# of chicken all over gluten free vegetable rice. It was a delicious end to the day (and my pack is going to be 2# lighter tomorrow). We were supposed to eat it last night, but we didn’t have enough water to cook anything that extravagant. It wasn’t spicy like when I Mike R and I went into an Indian Restaurant in Augusta and told the owner to let us have it. I sweat so much it looked like I’d just gotten out of a pool. Tonight was spiced just light enough that Bunny insisted on eating her half. We definitely need to turn the heat up a bit next time. 

We decided to cut short our revised plan for today. Because the wind is so strong, we didn’t want to risk crossing the next ridge and potentially ending up in an exposed campsite. We found a great spot in the trees behind a huge boulder that blocks all of the wind. It was less than 2 miles from where we wanted to go, but it’s not worth the risk to push on. We’re fine on food. We stopped by South Lake Tahoe and grabbed our winter gear that Digit sent us and we had a surprise package from our handlers at Backpacker Magazine. We’re stocked up enough for the 10 day/60 mile hike to South Lake Tahoe. 

EFG

Nothing went right today. Not one damn thing. It started with the alarm and went downhill from there. The alarm did go off as it was supposed to, but Bunny didn’t want me to snooze it…she wanted me to just shut it off. We compromised and I hit it 5 times. That translates to, “we started 45 minutes late.”

There’s a diner just a half block away. We still made it there just a bit after 9. I had planned on a short day today, but we still need to make almost 9 trail miles before we get to our first water source. Even so, we should still have plenty of time. There was a slight wait to get in, but after 5 minutes we had a table, water, and coffee. Then 2 large parties came in and got seated in the same section that we were in. We rarely saw our waitress again. When I finally got my food, it was burnt. Rather than wait another half hour, I decided to risk the stomach cancer. I ate it. The biscuits were terrible, but the bacon was quite nice. 

We made it back to our room at 10:10. I know this because the bus we were supposed to catch was leaving at 10:23. Neither of us had packed. Instead of rushing, we could take our time.  Then next bus isn’t for another hour. We still had to check out before 11. That would give us time to work out bus details like where to catch it, how much does it cost, etc. I guess I exaggerated earlier. There was one thing that went right today. Because of Covid, all bus rides are free. It’s like I found $8. 

While we were waiting for the bus, a police officer came up and started talking to us. He saw our packs and wondered if we were hiking the PCT. We ran down the whole schpiel with him hoping that we might be able to yogi a ride up to the pass. No luck. When we saw him drive by a few minutes later we understood. He only had a golf cart as a patrol car. 

I tried talking to all the bus drivers that came by. They all seemed interested in us and were trying to help us out. With any luck, if we can strike up a conversation with our driver, AND if the bus is empty, we might convince him to just run us all the way up to Donner Pass. We were the only ones on board all the way to Donner Lake, but then the driver stopped to pick up a hitch hiker. I thought this was a good sign that she’s flexible in her approach to passengers. Since all rides are free, why not pick up hitches. But at the next stop was a regular passenger that wanted to go downtown. Our options had gotten limited. 

She let us out at the West end of Donner Lake. From here, we’d have to try our luck at hitching. Bunny wanted to try walking and hitching, but I knew this was a bad idea. I have never gotten picked up if I’m walking. I wanted to sit down and trim my toenails to let every passing car know we were not in a hurry and we’re properly groomed (it’s worked every time I’ve done it). Bunny wanted to walk. We walked. And walked. And walked. 

Not a single car even pretended they were going to stop. We are in the land of Subaru’s, Audi’s, Tesla’s and Mercedes…these are not likely rides. If there had been some junky old vehicles, I would have felt confident about getting a ride. In my experience, rich people are the least likely to help out a stranger. There are a few exceptions, but over 90% of the rides we’ve gotten while hitching have been in beaters. 

This now throws me off on a slight tangent. The mileage I listed on today’s total is actually ‘net miles’ as Sassy was always trying to get me to give credit for. Why the change of heart on my part? We are heading towards the Tahoe Rim Trail to hike it in its entirety. None of the miles we will be hiking for the next 3 days will actually be on the TRT as we are hiking the PCT down to get to it. None of the miles we hiked today actually count. In reality, we only walked 3.9 trail miles on the PCT today, but I’ll get to that tangential story after I complete my next tangential story now that I’m done with my first tangential interruption.

Second tangent. As we were walking the road up to Donner Pass from Donner Lake, it occurred to me that it would have been much quicker (and just as valid) if we had just taken the bus down to Tahoe City. The miles are walking until we get to Tahoe City are just “filler” miles until we get to the start of the TRT. I had gotten myself so fixated on hiking the PCT with Charcoal and Struggles that it never occurred to me to take the bus instead since they aren’t hiking with us any more. I either count all filler miles and list them, or I just write “0 trail miles” every day until we actually start the trail. Potātoes Potätoes.

Third and final mileage tangent. 3 miles of road walking plus 3.9 actual PCT trail miles does not equal 8.4 miles. We had been talking to a local taking some friends out for an overnight. When we caught up with them again, they were standing in, what appeared to be a switchback, talking to some other people. We made the turn and kept going. As we were nearing the top, I couldn’t see any other mountains around. We were supposed to climb to 8700’ but if there aren’t any mountains, how do we climb? I checked my “Gut.” We had finally been making great time. Wouldn’t you know, we went. 3/4 of mile on a side trail up Mount Judah which leads down to Donner Peak. We had circled back towards the pass. If Bear were with us, this would have never happened. 

We put in nearly 5 additional miles that really don’t count on top of the 9 we were planning on, that just didn’t count. If we kept going to our original target campsite, we’d have almost 14 miles in. We didn’t even start hiking the really don’t count miles until noon. By the time we had started the “just not counting” miles, it was almost 2. Bunny was faltering bad. We had already climbed a few thousand extra feet we hadn’t planned on in the 5 “really not counting miles.” Even though we were short on water, we decided to find the closest thing resembling a flat spot and camp for the night. 

Having already passed up a couple of good spots, I was reluctant to pass the only level spot I had seen since we had actually gotten on trail. Bunny didn’t like it because it wasn’t far enough off trail. Against my better judgement, we pushed on. I didn’t like that we were above 8000’ and were heading into an exposed, windy ridge. After another 1/2 mile, we found a somewhat sheltered spot in some young trees. I refused to go any further. 

We set up camp and cooked supper. We chose the supper that required the least amount of water. We only have a little over a liter of water for supper, breakfast, and a 5 mile hike to the next water source. On the bright side, I probably won’t have to get up to pee in the night since I’m already dehydrated. I guess one thing ended up going my way, after all. 

EFG

Since all California National Forest have been shut down an additional week (until September 21), we decided to rent a car and tour the upper Rocky region of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho to look for someplace to live when we get done hiking. We’ve already eliminated most states from our reckoning. We started out with a list of 8 possible states (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont). 

When we hiked the AT, we eliminated Vermont (because of average age of population and terrible trail conditions…we may have been hasty on this one—we’ll color it a maybe leaning towards out) and New Hampshire (the state motto of “Live Free or Die Stupidly” was the tipping point after our introduction to the AMC—Appalachian Money Club). Maine is still a front runner in my book. Bunny is worried about the harsh winters but wants to live high in the mountains. Luckily for me, she’s generally smart and really good looking. 

This gave us the perfect opportunity to check out the Bitterroot Valley in Montana which was very high on our list. Bunny came up with a route plan that would give us a good sampling of all 3 states. We don’t really need to look a lot at Wyoming…Yellowstone and Jackson Hole are reason enough to keep it in consideration. I’ve been to Idaho before and like the nature, but it’s history of white supremacy made me want to not include it. It’s not like the Northwest is known for its racial diversity (other than the coastal cities). Colorado is always an optional #9 except for cost (but I digress).

We started out from Reno, NV getting our car around 4p. As we were driving across Nevada, it occurred to us we had never even given Nevada a second of consideration. I recommend to everyone to drive through Nevada in any direction for any amount of time and you will be amazed at the utter desolation that exists in this country. Even the people that live there walk around with a “how much longer do I have to live” look. The only saving grace to Nevada is something that I cannot, nor want to partake of—brothels. Except they don’t call them “brothels,” they call them “girl ranches.” Nothing like elevating women to the height of cattle. 

There is one other benefit to NV. The speed limit is 80 mph. Even the state realizes people want/need to get through this area ASAP. The Donner Party (aka Truckee Meat Eaters) had the choice of staying in Nevada Territory for the winter or facing almost certain death if they continued on. They chose death. (For those of you unfamiliar with the Donner Party, look it up. This is really a tragic story which should not be made light of. That’s why I do it.)

We reluctantly spent a night in Elko, NV. Some people claim the Marble Mountains are worth a visit and Elko is the gateway. I, personally, like trees on my mountains. Sage brush just doesn’t cut it for me. The only pioneers that settled in the state had already given up on life. I’m sure some people can, and have, make a great living here. Land is cheap. There are minerals to be mined. Lobotomies are complimentary.

From Elko, we drove north to Idaho. We crossed into Idaho on a two lane highway with the same attractive surroundings we found in NV. We were at nearly 6,000’ elevation. We were quite surprised to see an “all water craft must stop for mandatory inspection” station.  Idaho, and Nevada, have managed to capture every drop of water that runs into their areas and create vast, treeless, reservoirs that have zero appeal as a water destination. But, they stocked them and put up liquor stores on the shores. Instant fishing paradise. 

As we continued north, things did start to get a bit more interesting. Maybe not interesting, but different. As we approached Twin Falls, I began to realize 2 things about our country: 1) It is huge! Not just big, spectacularly big. We hiked in France in the wilderness of the Pyrenees and realized we had just driven through a void larger than the whole of that mountain range. And, 2) every city in the US with a population of 25,000 to a million is pretty much identical. Nay small towns less than 10,000 or major cities have unique character. You can’t land in New York and mistake it for San Francisco. But you can land in Twin Falls and mistake it for Decatur, IL. That is, until you come to the Snake River Gorge. 

This huge gorge is right on the edge of town and it is spectacular. What has Twin Falls do to capitalize on it? They built a strip mall on the South Rim so you can’t notice the gorge in town and they put a golf course in the bottom. You don’t even know you are near the gorge until you are on the bridge traversing it. Imagine coming across the wilderness in a covered wagon and not knowing this thing is here. You literally cannot see it until you get right to the rim. I wonder how many “oh shits” we’re let out by the first settlers. 

Southern Idaho was just a continuation of Nevada which was a “no go” for us. There is definitely more population here and some fertile looking farm land, but I have no desire to relocate from the Midwest to the Midwest. It wasn’t until we got north of Idaho Falls near the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone that we became interested. We drove to the western entrance to Yellowstone (appropriately called West Yellowstone) to check out one sleeper we had heard about—Island Park. 

Island Park has the distinction of the longest Main Street of any “city” it’s size. With a population of less than 300, its Main Street is over 33 miles long. We dug a little deeper to find out it only became a city when the local vacation lodges banded together to form a “city” in response to an Idaho state law prohibiting sales of alcohol outside of cities. The average width of Island Park is less than 500’. There’s only one gas station (that we saw), an empty laundromat, and a very depressed, vacant looking main drag. The first location we had hopes for turned out to be a bust. 

We drove on past West Yellowstone and decided to camp in Yellowstone for the night. We purposely avoided Yellowstone NP’s main features as we have future plans of hiking the Continental Divide Trail and I want to be surprised then (Bunny has already seen it all). We car camped in our Jeep Compass and it was neither pleasant or unpleasant. 

The next day, we continued North into Montana. From the time we got to West Yellowstone onward, we were just completely in awe of the beauty of the mountains and valleys. I kept reminding myself “this area was NOT included in the NP and it was some of the most spectacular country I have ever seen. We stopped in the resort village of Big Sky, MT. Every view was post card quality. We drove into some developments looking at land. We found out Big Sky does not want riff raff like us with undeveloped lots starting at $400K. The better the view, the higher the cost. We loved the area, though, and refused to strike it off our list. Towns need poor people to work, so there must be some place affordable near by. We later found out we hadn’t actually made it to Big Sky proper, so we will be back.

We drove down to Bozeman and experienced the “every medium sized city is alike” phenomenon. One man had everything, but nothing spectacular or unique. We couldn’t see any mountains at all because of the smoke from the CA fires that ad filled the valley. Perhaps under clear skies, we might feel different about Bozeman. We did like the proximity to Yellowstone and the city seems to be prospering. Instead of continuing East in the valley to Livingston, we decided to make a loop north through Butte and Helena to Glacier NP.

Along the way, we drove through the headwaters of the Missouri River and ended up driving parallel to the river from Helena to Great Falls. (Medium sized cities of similar blandness). The Missouri is already an impressive river way up here near its head. Lewis and Clark came upriver all the way to this area before the river got so rough that they had to trade their boats for horses and continue overland.   Eastern Montana is just as mind numbing as Nevada ad Southern Idaho. It is the Great Plains…fertile, open, boring, and depressing if you don’t like wide open spaces where you can see forever. 

We ended up dropping into Shelby for the night. Shelby is a major railroad port between the East and West. It sits down in a river valley that offers little to no protection of the cold winter winds blowing down from the Canadian Plains. We couldn’t wait to head back west into the mountains and Glacier NP. But first, we had to pass through one of the most depressing places I have ever been—Browning, MT.

Browning is the headquarters for the Blackfeet Indian Reservation and the eastern gateway to Glacier NP. Browning is a great reminder to African Americans that they are not the bottom of the heap in America. We tend to forget that our early country was involved it’s it’s own genocide. Things have not gotten much better for these survivors in the last 170 years other than we let them build casinos on their lands. There was a big casino, the only sign of something new built in the last century, with a completely empty parking lot. Covid leaves no corner of the world untouched. Browning makes Baltimore’s downtown look like absolute paradise. I’d choose East St Louis as a place to live over here. 

To get to the eastern entrance of Glacier, you have to drive across the Blackfeet Reservation. Since they got zero assistance from the US government during the pandemic, they chose to shut down their lands to outsiders to stop the spread of the virus. The only assistance they received came from outside the US. I did not feel comfortable or welcomed here. We headed west around the Southern border of Glacier. 

The valley was amazing and steep sided. At only 5200’ in elevation, Marias Pass is one of the lowest passes across the continental divide. The railroad was built here in the 1890s (which accounts for all the railroad traffic we experienced in Shelby). This would be a very harsh area to overwinter because the sun cannot reach the valley floor. T was too remote for us. The western end of the valley opens up Columbia Falls, Kalispell, and Whitefish.

We have come to the conclusion that we are attracted to small ski towns. They tend to be compact, have all the conveniences we desire, have good restaurant selections, and have quaint downtowns. Whitefish was everything we desired and more. It has a river, a nice lake, lots of parks, less than 10,000 people, it’s next to an outstanding National Park, and is well kept. The population is a liberal pocket in a conservative state. Kalispell has all the major shopping and is less than 20 miles away. We fell in love. This is our current front runner in the West. 

We still had high hopes for the Bitterroot Valley south of Missoula (and Missoula itself, for that matter). We headed south along the western shore of Flathead Lake which is a huge natural lake with a larger surface area than Lake Tahoe. There were some beautiful little bedroom communities along the lake shore, but they were missing most of the amenities we are looking for. We spent the night in the Missoula and explored it a bit to get a feel for it. 

Although Missoula has mountains, rivers, and a wide variety of services (its the second largest metropolitan area in Montana, 120,000), it just felt too big for us. The downtown is anything but quaint. The rivers are pretty ignored by the city as focal points. It is liberal minded which is a plus to us. If we find someplace in the Bitterroot Valley, this will be our shopping Mecca. 

The Bitterroot Valley, our last hope and what drew us to Montana to begin with. It’s called the “banana belt” because of its mild winters. The set for the TV series, Yellowstone, is here. It’s approximately 100 miles long and 25 miles wide with the Bitterroot River running through it. It’s the home of Montana’s first and oldest settlement, Stevensville, which was home of St Mary’s Mission. Lewis and Clark either came through Lost Trail Pass or Lemhi Pass which are south of the valley. There’s a lot of history and beautiful nature. We were totally disappointed. We had such high hopes, but Whitefish is our front runner. 

We drove through all of the towns and found them all lacking in one way or another. It was probably much more affordable, but just didn’t excite us. We chose to drive up to Lost Trail Pass and circle through Lemhi Pass down to Salmon, ID for the night. Lemhi Pass is one of my father-in-laws favorite places out west. At least part of the Lewis and Clark expedition went through this Pass. He has visited it a couple of times and shown us pictures. It was excited to discover the Continental Divide Trail went through it. He loves the history and Beaty of it. He’s told us everything about it, except that you can only get up to it on gravel roads. I’m afraid of heights. This was a critical, missing detail.

There used to be a daily stage coach running over the pass and back every day. All I can say is that the men and women who routinely went over this Pass, to the last person, had bigger balls than I do. The drive up from the East wasn’t really that bad. It was the first 3 miles going down the West side that caused me to throw out my underwear. To make matters worse, we didn’t have the maps pre-loaded on getting down. We only had the map getting up and there was only one route up. When we got to the top, there were a couple of roads. I tried to find the route and they all ended in dead ends. 

We did finally get enough signal to find the route down, but I’ve made up another set of rules for when I follow Bill’s suggestions: ask more questions about the route, have paper maps as back up, question road type (paved, gravel, horse track, etc), and question his state of mind when he was there. My father-in-law has driven over some of the most deadly passes in CO. He has the nerves I don’t. When I see some of the places he has driven, I get physically weak from looking at the pictures. Even his family has gotten out and walked rather than ride with him. He has no fear. I have way more than my share. 

From Lemhi Pass, we spent a few more days exploring Idaho’s Salmon River Valley and Sawtooth Mountain Range. We went to Ketchum where Ernest Hemingway killed himself. Everything we saw was too expensive or too remote for us. It was all beautiful, though. We are looking for a retirement location with conveniences. I no longer wish to build from scratch what I want. Even though I’m younger than Bunny, I’m too old for that. 

Our week of rental car was almost up, so we headed back to Reno via Boise, ID. I have worked in Boise in a previous life years ago. I knew it was on the north edge of the plain and decided we’d just do a quick drive by then head into Eastern Oregon. There is a route that parallels the PCT that runs from Mexico to Canada and never leaves the desert. Why in gods name would anyone want to do that route unless they have just quick liking life. 

We had one more stop to make once we got back to Reno. Our winter gear had gotten shipped to South Lake Tahoe by our Angel, Digit Alice. Bunny had gotten to cold a couple of nights we camped and said she wouldn’t hike without her warmer clothes and bag. South Lake Tahoe really surprised us and it’s not completely out of line on somewhat affordable housing. There are extravagant house to be had as well, but they seem to top out around $27 million in South Lake Tahoe. The expensive houses are on the north shore. There’s a wide plateau south of the lake which is slowly expanding. Lake Tahoe is beautiful, clean, has incredible outdoor activities (hiking and biking in summer, snow shoeing, cross country skiing, and downhill skiing in winter). Even though we dislike the idea of living in CA, South Lake Tahoe is on our list. 

After returning the car, we decided to take a recovery day before starting to hike again. We had just driven almost 3000 miles in less than a week. We made our train reservations to get to Truckee, but the train was late—over an hour and a half late, making it not worth trying to hike out starting at 2 in the afternoon. Amtrak gave us an additional zero which we spent at the Redlight Brothel and Ice Cream store in Truckee. 

For every thousand miles we drove, we picked up another option of where to live. No place out west is as reasonably priced as Southern Illinois or Southeast Missouri. Most of the places we saw would even be out of range for my in-laws. My father-in-law was a physician for almost 50 years. For the life of me, I don’t know what people do to be able to afford multiple million dollar homes. As my grandmother always said when we pondered such questions—“drugs.”

EFG