[Written 10/7 3PM; completed photoset here.]

Aloha from Aloha Lake!  I’m sitting in the sun at water’s edge squinting into the high altitude sun, which warms my front and compliments the cool east wind at my back.  My bubbling pot holds Ramen spiked with chinese sausage.  It’ll be ready in a moment, but my exhaustion mingles with the sun and with memories of these fourteen days, bringing the meaning of my trail experience into focus.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  First thing to tell you, in case it isn’t obvious by now, is that I survived the night!  In fact, I was nowhere near cold, and even through I kept my jacket and cap nearby, I slept comfortably through the night.  Well, comfortably if you don’t count waking up a dozen times with different kinds of muscle soreness and stiffness from the hard ground.  But comfortably if you count 8+ hours of actual sleep.

As the dawn brightened and the clock approached 7AM, I deemed it light enough to peek out, and a wonderland awaited me.  My tent was covered in a fur of frost, as were the surrounding bushes and rocks, but the sun was just coming up over Middle Velma, backlighting the mist rising from the calm, reflective surface.  Clouds clung to the surrounding peaks and hills, patterning the hills with light and shadow, and I scrambled around for half an hour or more taking pictures.

[Testing the Ramen, it's now cooked but still a little too hot to gobble down.]

Although we wanted an early start, to put some mileage and elevation behind us, by the time I stopped ooohing and ahhhing, scraped the frost off my tent and packed, it was nearly 8AM, later than I would have liked with over 17 rugged miles ahead of us.

Rather than take the trail through for a mile through forest, we skirted cross-country around the scenic edges of Middle and Upper Velma and climbed the long 45 degree granite sluice down which the overflow of Fontanillis cascades.  At the top is of course Fontanillis Lake, one of the most beautiful of the Sierra alpine lakes, wedged in between granite cliffs on both sides and backed by scree and snowfields sweeping up to Dick’s peak, still shrouded in cloud.

As we rejoined the trail and started around the lake, some fool started whooping and though we tried to ignore him and continue our way, it turned out not to be a fool at all, but none other than Coy, come in last night from Emerald Bay to cater our breakfast!  Actually it was originally the plan to meet him somewhere in the Velma Basin the first night and do part of the remaining trail together, but the forecast had frightened him off.  Or so I thought.  A sparkling morning in the valley had caused a rethink, hurried packing, and a few messages on cell phones, but we were (and still are) out of cell range to pick up his message and thus missed him last night.

In lieu of radio communication, he had reverted to Boy Scout, and neatly blocked off the trail with a pile rocks and the word "Coy" formed from twigs.  Unfortunately we had cleverly bypassed that part of the trail with our cross-country route.  We did pass by close enough for him to hear us chatting and he alertly came to investigate.

After introductions, we went back to his camp, carefully chosen in a grassy, willowy nook between granite massifs looking south over the length of Fontanillis, surely one of the most beautiful spots in the world at this precise moment, and he piled out over-ample breakfast provisions - bagels with cream cheese & lox, chips & fresh salsa, hot drinks.  Having postponed breakfast to await of a warmer spot, I did a credible job of helping lighten his return load!  We convinced Coy to come as far as Dick’s Pass with us, and began again to grunt and plod under our packs while he strolled along, packless, sipping from an oversize coffee mug.  Coy knows how to enjoy the wilderness!

Due to the further, albeit quite welcome, delay of breakfast, we didn’t reach Dick’s Pass until noon.  The view south from Dick’s pass is absolutely one of the most amazing spectacles one can experience in one’s lifetime.  Surrounded by jutting, ragged 10K+ peaks are nearly a dozen lakes, most directly Half Moon Lake (shaped as you would expect, so steeply below us that we can look right into the green depths), Susie Lake (surrounded by crumbling red cliffs), and in the distance silvery Aloha Lake backed by the equally silvery Pyramid peak.  The clouds were breaking up but continued to blow by, tracing shadows across the cliffs and spotlighting new amazements we were to overwhelmed to even notice on first look.  Even the rocky outcropping we stood on was fantastically painted in lichen, and nearby stood clumps of ancient junipers, stunted and weatherworn.  Such a sight is fitting as our final summit of the Tahoe Rim Trail.

But we still have a ways to go, and we wave goodbye to Coy far too soon and pick up our pace on the downward traverse.  We pass Gilmore Lake, Susie Lake, and Heather Lake in perpetual motion.  I think I once calculated the TRT was about half a million steps…

[The Ramen's now perfect - I must turn my attention to that for a moment.]

[3:30]

The Ramen is finished, the sun is starting to get alarmingly low on the horizon even though it’s not even 4PM.  This whole section has felt like impending twilight, with the October sun never settling in overhead were it sat so naturally just a few weeks ago.  Shadows remain long even in midday, and the slanting sunlight backlights the browning grasses and yellow and red leaves of fall.  But these colors are not all filled with sadness.  It seems to me that the high country is not just resigned to, but preparing and even primping for the pure thick blanket of snow that will visit soon.

If I don’t get going soon the last probably agonizing miles will be cloaked in darkness.  Yet still I tarry, though Art is now far ahead, to savor these last few hours of my sojourn in this amazing landscape.  Lake Aloha is a fitting place for the final installment of this journey.  The landscape is barren, a wilderness, yet the air is sparklingly clear; just as I have become emptied, yet more transparent to myself.  Aloha means hello, but also goodbye.  I feel this is where I bid the trail "aloha."

This trail is not easy.  The landscape it traverses is ever varied, with mountaintop views and sheer cliffs, dotted with lakes and streams, covered in a profusion of life simultaneously hearty and delicate.  It’s an unending, genius, detailed, majestic, peaceful, manic, Japanese garden.  The trail has it’s ups and downs, it’s steep gains of elevation and level stretches.  The trail winds ever through this landscape, and in time it winds through your being.

The trail places demands on you.  It demands you bring yourself as unadorned with baggage as you can manage.  It demands your persistence.  It demands your attention and energy, which investment is returned with compounded interest.  The trail demands your complacency, which it keeps and never returns (although you can regrow it if you’re not careful).  It demands your time, and the patience of those who have laid claim to it, and it gives you back timeless experiences.  It demands your spontaneity and your flexibility as much as it demands organization and preparation.  It demands your sweat, your skin (generally on your feet), and at times the very breath of your lungs.  The trail isn’t mean, neither is it unforgiving - it just is.

Maybe this is just my own journey.  I can’t know what the trail will take from you or give back to you until you’ve finished it.  Maybe for you the trail will only take away a little body fat and give you blisters in return.  Maybe you will quit after the trail has demanded a price but before it turns generous again.  But I do believe that if you approach the trail open, ready for the exchange, and stick it out till the end, that the trail will give much more than it takes.  Approach the trail with a heart filled with wonder, gratitude, humility.  Through this inner landscape, calling you to leave what’s ready to be left behind, to strive for what’s ahead, you will find the trail running.

The shadows lengthen even further across the boulders of Aloha.  It’s time to hit it, with renewed energy, for one last stretch of trail in the waning autumn sun.  This amazing, treacherous, inspiring trail.  This trail through through the wilderness.  This Tahoe Rim Trail.

[Mileage: 174.5 | 17.5]