[Written Oct 6, 7PM. Picture here.]

This is it!  I’ve embarked on the final section of the Tahoe Rim Trail at last.  Interruptions from weather, shifting jobs, and various scheduling conflicts have made getting back on the final section of trail difficult.  Maybe I’m being selfish reserving a couple of days against a multitude of competing activities.  Maybe my ego is stroked by being able to say I’ve done the TRT.  But maybe I still have a little to learn about the trail, and about myself.  Maybe I won’t really know why I need to finish it, or whether it was unimportant, until the trail is complete.  In any case, I reserved a block of time, a minimal two days, and held it inviolable against all worthy demands.

Besides holding firm on a block of time, I also had to make sure that nothing, and no-one, could prevent me from moving forward.  I needed a support crew, especially for a car shuttle, one as motivated as I was to make this happen.  A few interested parties considered, but ultimately rejected, the prospect.

Fortunately, a support crew found me.  Art Clark, a fellow TRT aspirant with, like me, only this final longest section remaining, found my TRT photos on Flickr and contacted me about coordinating our attempts, allowing us the mutual support of car shuttling, company, and safety in numbers.  He was fortunately flexible enough on the dates to match mine, and as motivated to finish as I.

That persistence was good because the weather was unsettled enough to scare off the undermotivated.  Forecasts called for scattered show showers and thunderstorms, sub-freezing nights (~25°), and daytime highs not much above freezing.  A couple of inches of snow at higher elevations the day before made these forecasts credible.  Friday night, and possibly a good chunk of the day, looked decidedly unpleasant.

Art, however, was as undeterred (desperate?) as I was, and we agreed to attempt the section, meeting at 7AM at Echo Lake to drop off a car and make our way to the Barker Pass trailhead.

By the time we got to Barker Pass, and on the trail, it was about 8:30 and the sun was shining brightly from a spotless sky over the Tahoe Basin.  As we began our hike, steam rose into the chilly air from the frost-covered brown shreds of the mule ears, quite different from the profuse bloom when I was here last - now almost two months ago.

The sun warmed us quickly and we didn’t need more than a single layer to keep warm as we descended gradually through forest scattered with cold grey granite boulders and yellowing ferns, arriving at Richardson Lake at about 11.  Richardson Lake was surrounded by stands of aspen just forgoing their late summer green for yellow, and the shores are choked with meadows of willow and alder also well into their fall costumes.  By now dramatic clouds were appearing.  Sunbreaks tracked across the meadows and hills around the lake, and I became so engaged in trying to capture this uncapturable moment, that as we circumnavigated the lake we missed the turn-off to the trail.  We continued on a worn and tortured logging road, following the GPS back towards the trail.  Eventually we did a brief cross-country stint and got back on track.

Pleasant chatter carried us along, at times swiftly and at times (uphills) painstakingly slow and gulping the thin air.  By about 12:30 we had passed the boundary of Desolation Wilderness and the granite expanse of the Rubicon Valley stretched out below us to the west.  We ate lunch looking down the glacial-polished slope scattered with boulders and a few hardy trees growing in cracks towards Rockbound Lake.

The cloud cover increased, providing some dramatic views of the nearing peaks of Desolation, and the temperature began to drop.  At about 3PM we passed through a rather dense fir grove just as little plates of ice began to fall.  Thunder rolled down the granite valleys and soon a shower of pea-sized snowballs began.  We took shelter under some trees, thinking the shower would be over shortly, but after about 10 minutes a layer of white covered the unexposed ground with no sign of an early letup.

Strangely, I had a sense that this shower had gone on long enough for our amusement - any more would have led to concern rather than wonderment - and I stated "That’s enough of that."  It wasn’t a demand or even an observation, but within seconds the shower ceased.  I knew intuitively that it wasn’t a false break, and hoisted pack and moved on, under dry skies.

Even though the shower was brief it turned out to be widespread, and for the next five or more miles the ground was dusted with fallen snow.  We were both pretty cold and exhausted as we picked our way down the trail to Middle Velma Lake, and when we gladly found a number of test spots slightly damp but otherwise untouched by the snow, we gratefully lowered our packs to the ground.

Velma was stunning.  From the shore we watched sunbreaks trace along the still water and small islands of Middle Velma and dance in the surrounding hills for a while, but soon darkness began to fall and we turned to pitching camp and cooking dinner.

Art and I are now gratefully tucked into our tents and muffled in down, and expecting a long, quiet, and quite chilly, night.  I threw a novel in my pack as I left this morning, and it will keep me company after signing off here.  If all goes well, I’ll stay warm, sleep deeply, and be refreshed by dawn for the exciting culmination of my TRT quest.

[Mileage: 157.0 | 15.0]