Kirk and I had been exchanging emails for more than a year before we got
together for this hike. He'd been climbing in the Sierra decades before I took
it up more seriously and had found my trip reports a source of amusement and
reminiscence. Memory jogged by something he read, Kirk would email me a funny
story in return. We'd made tentative plans to get together before, either in
the Reno area where he's lived these past 30yrs or in the Bay Area where I've
resided for an equal time, but circumstances didn't work out. This weekend I
was back in Reno with my daughter for more club volleyball at the Convention
Center. I had dropped her off at the Silver Legacy on Friday night where her
team had reserved rooms and spent the night myself on the south edge of town
in my van. It was a pleasant enough spot away from the traffic noise but still
garnered the attention of one of Reno's Finest, who came out to check on me
around 10:30p. Finding no foul play at work, he was very cordial in letting me
know that it was fine for me to stay where I was, and would be patroling the
area to ensure mine and the community's safety. He had a far kinder demeanor
than the Highway Patrolman who visited me in Ramona a few months earlier.
Since play didn't start at the Convention Center until afternoon the next day,
I had arranged to meet
Kirk Saturday morning at the Raley's parking lot. Only a few blocks from where
I'd spent the night, I was there a few minutes early. Close to our 7a meetup
time, I watched a blue Subaru cruise the parking lot, making more than a full
sweep around the perimeter before finally spotting me close to the middle.
Kirk proved as gregarious in person as he had been via email. We spent all
morning chatting each other up with more stories to share than we could
possibly fit in so short a time, but by the end we had a rough backstory on
each other's lives and escapades. Intermixed with these were various tales of
Sierra adventures, odd partners, old memories, exaggerated lies and embarrassing
truths. The hiking and climbing were more of a backdrop to our animated
conversation, and a fine one at that.
Incline Peak
At Kirk's suggestion, we drove up and over Mt. Rose Summit on SR431 to pay a
visit to a couple of minor summits overlooking Lake Tahoe,
from Tahoe Meadows. I had sent him a
link showing what I'd climbed (and not climbed) in Washoe County with which he
found several candidates in this area. Unofficially named Incline Peak rises
to the north above Incline Village and west of Incline Lake. I had been here
more than 20yrs earlier to do a one-way hike from SR431 across Rose Knob Peak
and a few other summits to Kings Beach. Incline had not been on the agenda or
radar that day. So as we started down
I had a few feeble
memories come back to me - I recalled getting off-route almost immediately as
I followed the road down to the lake before heading cross-country and eventually
finding the trail that Kirk now led us to in a more effortless manner. The
ground was a mix of snow and bare earth,
only lightly traveled with
little evidence of recent use. It's an older trail, overshadowed these days by
the more popular Rim to Rim Trail accessed from Mt. Rose Summit, but still
quite serviceable. We followed the trail on and off, losing it periodically
until we were on more continuous snow cover and lost it for good. The snow had
both old and new layers, with even the new stuff well-consolidated. It had
come down the previous day as heavy stuff typical of a late-season storm. We
left the vicinity of the trail (somewhere under the snow) to follow a slightly
roundabout route along that eventually becomes Incline's
NW Ridge. Just below the summit the views opened up to a fine
with the new snow lightly coating Relay Peak's south
side and much of the higher elevations.
I paused somewhere along here to don my snowshoes for little more reason than
they are more fun to wear than carry. Kirk elected to keep his strapped to the
back of the pack as the snow continued to be consolidated enough to not really
need them.
We reached
not long after 9a, having taken a leisurely hour and a
half to get there. It would be difficult to tell if our shortness of
breath was due to the altitude, the 1,000-foot gain or too much jabbering back
and forth the whole way up. We spent about 10min atop the summit, walking a
short distance south to photograph . There's also a fine
view
across Tahoe Meadows to Slide Mtn and unnamed Peak 9,225ft. Our
route down was much the same with a slight variation as we were leaving the
summit when I suggested we take a nice looking slope of untracked snow
down the .
I thought this might entice Kirk to put his snowshoes on
as well, but he didn't seem to mind a little shallow postholing. With some help
from the GPS we managed to find our tracks in the forest easily enough,
getting back to the start soon after 10a.
Peak 9,225ft
Originally we had planned to tag Tamarack Peak if we had more time. Having the
necessary time for a second peak, I modified the plan by suggesting we head
east across the highway for the unnamed summit that neither of us had been to.
Kirk was game and after tagging the car we simply continued across the roadway
and into the forest on the other side. Here the snow was a little less
consolidated than the west side and we stopped early to put on snowshoes,
perhaps a little
too early as we found ourselves crossing a small, mostly
snow-free .
A little dirt-walking on snowshoes didn't seem to hurt them
and eventually we were on more .
There were portions of road and
trail that we followed but in general we relied on the GPS to keep us heading
in the right direction.
When we were able to spot the summit through the trees after some 45min, we
noted it was a much different animal compared to the relatively easy of Incline
Peak. The slope was far rockier, more of .
As we reached
the base of the more difficult section we took off our snowshoes and proceeded
in boots. It lasted only a short time, perhaps 15min, before we found our way
to . Large granite boulders, much like those we had just
scrambled
through, marked the highpoint. We took off our packs for a short break while
tagging the .
were not as good as found on Incline Peak
due to the trees that grew amongst the boulders. The best views I found were
to towards the lake and to
across Tahoe Meadows. We spent the last hour returning via essentially
the same route,
to the highway by 1p. Kirk had a few beers on ice
that we shared to mark the end of our short adventure, a tasty craft called
Monk's Blood that I had not been introduced to previously. Mmmm. Now back to
Reno for the estrogen-fueled extravaganza that is Girls' Club Volleyball...
Continued...