I love living in a beautiful mountain town and all the outdoor adventures this area has access to. As awesome as life is up here, it’s not always perfect. In fact, my friends and I initially coined the phrase “Tahoe Fabulous” to highlight the not-so-perfect aspects that accompany the gorgeous scenery and fun living.
Like this mega-line at Heavenly on a Saturday.
And this dirty snow pile in a parking lot in mid-April. Part of living in a place like Tahoe is embracing the bad along side the good, and being able to laugh at ridiculous things, like your neighbor’s redneck roof rack. In the past couple of weeks, I’ve gone on an absolutely miserable mountain bike ride and a hot, crowded hike with not much payoff at the end.
Mountain biking: not always full of smiles.
One of my favorite rides in Truckee is to shuttle the Donner Lake Rim Trail & Wendin Way from a trailhead in the Tahoe Donner neighborhood to the east of Wendin Canyon. There’s another way to approach Wendin Way trail from the west, hopping on to the Donner Rim Trail near where the Pacific Crest Trail crosses I80.
We cruised up a fairly easy fire road climb, climbing under 300 feet in about 1.25 miles. We intersected the PCT and saw a few hikers out enjoying the gorgeous fall weather, but no other bikers. “This is so much fun!” I thought. “The climb to the top here is waaaaaay easier than the climb out of Tahoe Donner!” I definitely spoke too soon, because next we encountered a section of the Donner Lake Rim Trail that was harder than any of the sections I have ridden so far.
This 1.7 mile stretch took me 34 minutes, or an average of 3 miles an hour. That’s a fairly slow walking speed, because that’s what I ended up doing for most of this stretch. The terrain was sharp and degrading granite, with steep up and downs, sharp corners, rocky drops, and feature after technical feature. While I can normally handle one or two of these characteristics, I couldn’t handle three or more, especially in this kind of onslaught. I got frustrated and miserable, but we finally eventually got out of this section, with my confidence shot. We got into sections that I was able to ride, but I was unhappy with the trail as a whole. We arrived at Summit Lake to take a breather, and the beautiful view and rideable trail improved my mood immensely.
The trail got a lot easier from this point on, mixing smooth-ish single track with fire road. Normally I hate fire road riding, but anything was an improvement over the granite section I’d had to walk earlier in the day. We connected with Wendin Way after some fun (if blown out) single track, and I felt like I rode well through the dusty blown out sections. I ended the ride feeling much better about it than after the granite section, but I wasn’t entirely stoked. I told Greyson that I never needed to ride that particular section of trail again.
Is this view worth the hike? Meh, maybe.
Then on this Saturday, Greyson and I went on a hike out of Squaw Vally towards Shirley Lake. I’m getting over a cold, so I suggested just an easy hike, and this seemed to fit the bill – 4 miles round trip with not a lot of elevation gain. It was a beautiful (and hot for mid-October) Saturday, and we should have realized that this hike’s proximity to Squaw would mean crowds. We got off on a bad foot, immediately losing the trail and bushwhacking through scratchy bushes.
Greyson looks how I felt.
The trail isn’t well marked or well built, and it involved a lot of class three scrambling through boulders and loose rocks. Normally, I enjoy scrambling but the crowds, the hot sun and tight chest made for a not-so-fun experience. The trail also seemed to have been designed by a person who had never been hiking before who was also high. There was a lot of scrambling up loose washes full of round cobbles and the trail blazes rarely made sense.
Drought = dry waterfalls
We pushed on for awhile, but finally decided to call it and turn around before reaching Shirley Lake. It was nice to get outside and do something a little active, but, again, I don’t need to revisit it any time soon. Maybe when there is water and the waterfalls don’t look like the above.
There’s a lot of “Fitspiration” that I inherently dislike, and the above is one. I get the idea, and, it’s probably true 90% of the time, but there have definitely been some workouts I’ve regretted. I’ve gone on bike rides when I didn’t feel well and had an asthma attack, followed others into situations on my snowboard that were above my skill and comfort level, and gone to the gym when a night at home with friends and a bottle of wine would have been better for me.
While I fully “regret” neither the bike ride nor the hike, they were not the most fun, and I don’t need to repeat either one any time soon (if ever!). I’m not going to give up biking or hiking, but I wanted to acknowledge that not every adventure is going #amazing or #epic or #gorgeous or #sick and that’s okay! As long as the good outweighs the bad (and it does, by a long shot!), I’m going to keep going outside and living my #tahoefabulous life!
Tahoe Fabulous 