One of the things that we need to decide for our San Juan hut-to-hut trip is whether to use a trailer to bring our gear or to use panniers (basically bags that hang off the sides of the bike). Since Brian has both, we decided the best thing to do would be to simply try each method out. Out test ride was for the July 30th weekend in which we would ride the Tahoe Rim Trail (TRT). However, none of us had ever ridden it before so we didn’t really know if it would be a good trail to try out the trailer and panniers. If anything, after reading the trail descriptions from several sources online, it seemed like it would not be a good trail for our purposes.

Since Judy and I live much closer to Tahoe, we decided to do some recon of the TRT. We left in the morning, got to Tahoe City in the early afternoon, had lunch at a sandwich shop in town, perused a bike shop to see if they had any good maps (they didn’t, but they had a bathroom which I desperately needed), and got to the trailhead.

Another couple had just finished riding the portion of the trail that we were planning to ride so we asked them about it. They said that it was a fun trail to ride, but was technical in some places and that it was definitely not a trail that one would want to take a trailer on. They suggested an alternate route that would start on a fire road and eventually hit the TRT. This sounded like a good way to scout the TRT while getting in some good miles at elevation.

We did a bunch of climbing on a fireroad which turned into a paved road. We didn’t have the best map with us, but it indicated that we should cross the TRT. Unfortunately, we never found the crossing and ended up going well past it, eventually hitting a sign for Watson Lake. That at least gave us our bearings, and in the interest of putting some more miles in, we rode to the lake.

At the lake, a camper was able to help us get onto the TRT. We finally found it! The TRT is a really fun, largely singletrack trail. The portion we rode was a bit technical in places which was fun for me, but not as fun for Judy who ended up walking a good portion of it. We rode past some really nice views of Lake Tahoe below us and finally popped out on the same paved road that we had climbed up earlier in the day. We had actually stopped at this point on the way up, but unless we had ridden in a bit, there was no way of knowing that this is where the TRT was.

Going back was much easier since much of it was downhill. When it was all said and done, we ended up logging just over 18 miles. Not too bad considering this was at elevation. The plan for the next day was to ride the TRT from the other end (Big Meadow) so we decided to head there and try to find a place to camp along the way. Unfortunately, many of the campgrounds were full, but it wasn’t long before we found some availability at the Tahoe Valley Campground. It wasn’t the most secluded campground, but was good enough as all we really needed was a place to sleep.

The next morning, we headed towards Big Meadow. The TRT was easy to find from here. The beginning was somewhat technical which Judy didn’t enjoy. After the technical section, began some steeper switchback climbs. The big problem was that the bugs were out in full force. I was fortunate enough to be able to climb the switchbacks at a fast enough pace to keep the bugs at bay. Judy, on the other hand, was going slow enough that she was getting eaten by the bugs. After a while, we decided to turn back and find another trail to ride.

Judy found another trail in our guide book just a bit further down the road. We had no problems finding it and were soon cranking uphill on our bikes again. The bugs were still there, but not as bad as they were at Big Meadow. Nevertheless, they were still very annoying. Whether it was the elevation or that it was our second day in a row of biking, we were both pretty fatigued. The trail we were on was supposed to connect with the TRT (hmmm…that sounds familiar), so our plan was to hit the TRT and then decide what to do.

We rode for a while, mostly climbing. The map we had wasn’t very clear and we weren’t quite sure exactly where the TRT was. We met up with another pair of bikers who were also in the same predicament. Their map wasn’t much better. According to these guys, the problem is that off-road-vehicle types have blazed lots of new trails in recent years and these trails aren’t reflected in the maps. We rode around together for a while trying to get our bearings. It was hot, there was lots of bugs, and Judy and I were both kind of tired so we just decided to head back.

Going back was easy as it was almost all downhill. We ended up logging only 11.5 miles. This hut-to-hut trail is going to be interesting. An average of 20-30 miles per day for 6 days at elevation could prove to be pretty taxing. Fortunately, we still have a few more weeks to train and get in shape. Here are the pics from the trip.

Posted by Roger at 9:19 pm.