A Guide To Ten Days On The Tahoe Rim Trail

For the majority of hikers, the Tahoe Rim Trail requires two permits: an Overnight Camping Permit for Desolation Wilderness ($20) and a Campfire Permit (free) for stove use. A permit for Desolation Wilderness typically requires interaction with the quota system to reserve a campsite on a specific day at a specific location, however those hiking the PCT or TRT can simply call the Forest Service Supervisor’s Office (530.543.2694 Monday – Friday, 8 AM – 4:30 PM) and purchase a permit that is valid for camping anywhere along the TRT/PCT in Desolation Wilderness for trips beginning in the next 14 days. Do note that it is then sent to you by USPS, so plan in advance. To obtain a Campfire Permit simply complete the online education and print it for your trip.

A large single-sided, waterproof map containing the entire trail. This, like all Tom Harrison Maps, is excellent. The Tahoe Rim Trail is somewhat discontinuous, with short sections through park parking lots or other urban areas, but it marks the trail heads on both sides, so it’s easy to get to the next area. In the North East Mt. Rose Wilderness area, at Relay Peak, there is a bit of a choose your own adventure section, where multiple, parallel trails are a part of the TRT and this map shows one trail going off the map to the North, however that trail is well marked and shortly returns to the map.

This app guide’s most useful feature is indicating the location of good campsites and the location of the next reliable water source in relation to your current location. Just the locations of those two items makes it worth purchasing. In addition to these critical locations, it has Lake Tahoe vista points (where the lake is visible) and random trail facts. It’s not the most beautiful app, in fact it’s fairly ugly, but it’s functionality makes up for this shortfall.
One minor annoyance I found is that there are times on the trail where there are partial views for about a quarter mile, or a stretch of trail in which it would be possible to camp just about anywhere, though on the map it’s noted as a specific location. This isn’t always the best spot in the stretch, and was annoying when we woke up for the sunrise only .3 miles from a viewpoint, but found that where we had camped was actually superior to the marked viewpoint.
In summary, the campsite locations called out between Tahoe City and Painted Rock were noticeably better than just picking a random place to lay-down and would have been useful if I were camping in that section. Improvements to the app would include rating the campsites, to help with planning purposes (we pushed on from Painted Rock, which is a 10/10 campsite only to find the next two locations to be rather buggy and viewless in comparison) and including a feature similar to Gas Buddy for updating the water sources throughout the year. The app does have a comments section, but the only comments I read were over a year old.
Note: I only used this app for the free demo section from Tahoe City to Brockaway, so my comments and experience are exclusive to the UI/UX and this portion of the trail.

I typically only use paper maps, however after a few international adventures where quality paper maps were unattainable, I turned to apps, and now download maps for offline use in advance of trips just in case. I downloaded this app the night before beginning the Tahoe Rim Trail to replace MotionX GPS, which is feature rich, but very difficult to use. I’m happy I switched, as Maps 3D GPS is far easier to use. This app is pretty great for: finding any hiking trails in the world, following imported trails, viewing your current location, downloading maps for offline use, and creating paths that snap to the trail on your phone (with cell service). All recorded, downloaded, or planned routes include the elevation profile with broken out gain & loss metrics. There are numerous different map types, but I found, unsurprisingly, the most useful was the “hiking” map created Thunderforest & OpenStreetMap.

The 3D map is even pretty neat and was useful for showing my hiking companion, who was unfamiliar with topographic maps, the terrain ahead. I only have one complaint: waypoints are attached to individual, downloaded maps, so it’s impossible to view all the waypoints from a trip if different maps are used. This is especially confusing if you have overlapping maps, which I did on this trail (West Tahoe, North Tahoe, NE Tahoe, etc). I’d like to be able to organize the waypoints into folders independently from the downloaded maps, which would both ensure they don’t get deleted when I delete the no longer needed maps off my phone, as well as allow for easy exporting of all waypoints from a specific trip.

Unlike Elizabeth Wenk’s incredible JMT Data Book, Tim Hauserman’s Official Guide to the Tahoe Rim Trail (endorsed by the Tahoe Rim Trail Association) is nearly useless. I couldn’t have been more disappointed in the book. It’s written as a one-book-fits-all, rather than as an actual guide for those looking to hike the entire Tahoe Rim Trail and thus there is a ton of unnecessary information. In addition to that, it’s very difficult to use, with unclear mileage (“about 1 mile past the last dirt road, you cross another dirt road…” when no previous dirt road was mentioned), long winded descriptions of non-pertinant information, no mention of suitable campsites, and very difficult to piece together descriptions. It also mentions that there is no water between Lake Watson and Brockway Summit, which is true, but there is no water at Brockway Summit either, so it should really be stated that there is a ~17 mile section from Lake Watson to the spring after Mud Lake that has no water. From water source to water source makes far more sense than water source to dry trailhead.

We chose the starting point of our hike based on water supplies, how we arrive to Lake Tahoe, and where our resupply would be located. We wanted to carry the most water when we had the least food in our packs, so we chose to finish the trip at Kingsbury Grade North, south of the dry sections between Tahoe Meadows, Marlette Campground, and Spooner Lake. We also stashed water in the car, in case we needed it upon completion. We chose Tahoe City for our resupply since it’s about the halfway point from Kingsbury North and it’s a location where the trail crosses a road, so we could quickly drop off and pick up our resupply. Also, since we live in Oakland, we could easily take Interstate-80 to Tahoe City first and then south around to Kingsbury North, potentially returning to Oakland via Route 50, the southern route.

Our campsites were chosen for roughly equal mileage days and rated 1-5, where a 5/5 campsite was excellent and 1/5 was terrible:

• Kingsbury North to Star Lake (5/5) | 14.6 mi
• Star Lake to Round Lake (3/5) | 17.2 mi
• Round Lake to Tamarack Lake (4/5) | 17.4 mi
• Tamarack Lake to Desolation Swamp (1/5) | 18 mi
• Desolation Swamp to Twin Peaks Ridge (5/5) | 15.1 mi
• Twin Peaks Ridge to Slope of Mt Watson (4/5) | 20 mi
• Slope of Mt Watson to Mt Baldy (5/5) | 16.6 mi
• Mt Baldy to Nook in the Boulders (5/5) | 16.1 mi
• Nook in the Boulders to Spooner Lake (2/5) | 18.4 mi
• Spooner Lake to Kingsbury North | 12 mi

Resupply location is obviously tied to starting location and is hopefully near the midpoint of the hike. I had trouble finding information about resupplying on the trail that wasn’t just “go grocery shopping in Tahoe City”. I had already purchased everything for the trip and thus wanted to stash a bag that I could quickly retrieve, rather than shopping in an unfamiliar store. As such I decided to pack a stuff sack lined with a trash compactor bag and hang it using the PCT method just outside Tahoe City. This turned out to be an arduous task as the 50′ 3mm cord I brought along had reflective material woven into the mix that increased the friction to the point that the bag could not be pulled over the branch. With a new cord I was able to hoist the bag, though the location was not ideal as it was near a heavy day use trail. I left a note with the bag and fortunately no mammals—humans nor bears—messed with it prior to our arrival. Our friends decided to take a safer route and left a package for themselves at the Tahoe City Post Office, adding two miles to their day.

If you own a vehicle, transportation is easy: drive to Lake Tahoe and park in the dirt patch next to the road at the Kingsbury Grade North Trailhead. There are two different parking areas, so unless you arrive midmorning on a Saturday there should be space. The official trailhead sign is located at the Northern lot. We parked our car here for 10 days without issue.