Tahoe - January 4-7, 2019

[lizolas]

Martis Peak - January 5, 2019

In an effort to not repeat my current predicament of getting to the end of the December and thinking, “What the hell did I climb this year?” I’ve decided to make at least a brief post about everything I do outside - beyond the Bay Area, anyway.

On Thursday, Joshua proposed a trip to Tahoe - he was meeting people to go skiing, and I could “go do Liz things.” This sounded like a great idea, except there was a winter storm watch in the forecast. Of course we went anyway. Saturday started nice enough. I had looked through Bob Burd’s trip reports (someday I’ll learn to plan trips of my own) for snowshoe-able options near Northstar. This proximity bit becomes relevant later. I settled on attempting Martis Peak and Mt Baldy. A point on the CA/NV border is a county highpoint, but if I didn’t make it all the way to the border, I’d have a consolation prize midway.

The trail was completely snowy very quickly after the trailhead

The skies were still clear when I started up the trail at about 9 am, carrying snowshoes on my pack, but determined to try going as far as feasible without supplemental footwear. Since the approach follows the Tahoe Rim Trail for much of the way, there was a very visible trail broken through the snow for several miles. When I reached a “choose your own adventure” clearing in the trees, I went postholing through the snow for a couple hundred feet before deciding it was time for snowshoes.

The approximate location I decided to put on snowshoes

Gaiters turn out to not be as necessary as I used to think
After that I quickly re-joined the main road used for snowmobiling in the winter and decided to just follow that. The sky was growing cloudy and ominous and I wanted to make the best time possible. From there there’s just one junction to pay attention to - turning onto the trail to the summit rather than continuing on the TRT - and then I was at the summit. The wind had been steadily increasing for most of the last mile; every time I tried to take my phone out to look at the map, it complained that it was too cold and restarted. The routefinding wasn’t difficult in the slightest, but I was mildly irritated that I’d lost the Strava track I’d started. The summit was even more windy than the preceding hike through a clearing above the road, and I quickly took pictures (thankfully my phone cooperated) and retreated to the trees to eat a snack before I continued down. At this point my phone decided it had found the Strava track I’d started, so all wasn’t lost.

The actual summit

Looking toward Lake Tahoe from the summit

The sky looking increasingly ominous to the northeast
The way down was uneventful in terms of routefinding, but about halfway back to the car was when the snow began falling. As the snowfall increased, the trail got far icier than it had been. On the way up, it was mostly powdery snow with bare sections of dirt. On the way down, most of the dirt sections were iced over, making me take my time and place my feet carefully. I had more slips than I’d like to admit, but no actual falls.

Weather getting progressively worse
Back at the car, I realized that, much like the climb is only half over at the summit, my day was not yet over, and I had to figure out how to drive back. This probably would have been less daunting had I ever in my life learned how to drive in snow. Evidently I’m not the only one who hasn’t, though, because less than a mile from the trailhead, I was stopped along with 3 other cars behind a Caltrans truck. I found out when they finally ushered us through an hour later that the reason for the delay was multiple accidents restricting traffic to one way at a time. During this time I’d been texting Joshua about my predicament; the place where we’d stopped happened to be a bit slick, and on a hill, and I got scared and figured there was no way I had the requisite skills for this kind of driving. He suggested I meet him at Northstar (here’s where the close proximity of my hike to the rest of the group becomes relevant) and he’d drive the rest of the way back. Naturally, the road conditions from Northstar back to Truckee were substantially better than they’d been on the section that scared me, but it’s not like I was complaining about not having to drive.

Realizing I have to actually drive back now
Sunday it was still snowing rather heavily. I had planned to find a casual snowshoeing location without a summit, but somehow my snow pants made their way into the car that left early to beat traffic back. I decided I wasn’t going to sit around and do nothing all morning, so I drove down the hill (which was fine), drove around the lake (which was also fine), and then drove back up the hill (which was not fine). While I was down driving around the lake, Joshua informed me that they were concerned about the weather and heading back after the next lap. I proceeded immediately back up the hill, but by that point everyone in the area seemed to be trying to get out. Traffic was stopped, and following Google’s suggestion of side streets made it worse. Traffic there was also stopped, and the streets were steep, curvy slopes that were difficult to start and stop on. I got very stuck once and had to be pushed out (I apparently own a 4WD car for nothing, since I don’t know how to use it), but I wasn’t the only person who had that problem. Once I got out of the stop and go traffic, everything was fine again. I made it to the cabin and was going to start preparing to shut everything down, per Joshua’s request, when I received a text that in fact we did not seem likely to make it out today, and we’d be staying another night.

Joshua and Jack got food for an additional day, and rather than spend 10-15 hours fighting traffic and road closures, we left Monday morning at 8 and were back in Mountain View around noon.

Lessons Learned

• Learn to drive in snow, I guess. It’s not as scary as it seems.

Someday soon I should figure out how to actually use my car, huh?

Strava link, since embedding doesn’t work and they’ve been appreciating users’ patience while they resolve the matter for nearly a year now.