It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.
-Confucius
September 2026
I haven't bikepacked around Lake Tahoe even though these are my home trails and this is superb sub-alpine riding. It's partly because once you leave Myers going in a clockwise direction you are soon forced out onto hwy 89. The west side of the Tahoe Basin is mostly wilderness where bikes aren't allowed and riding the hwy until it's allowed to duck back into the mountains just never appealed to me.
2026. Kind of a weird year for my bikepacking. I'd had some resoundingly successful trips and some partial failures and some where I didn't even start. Usually September is setup as a short-ish bikepacking trip in prep for a longer ride in October but as September approached I had no plans for either month. I resolved to use September to get some final training in for a +/- 2 week trip on the Caldera 500 bikepacking route in October. Driving is not an option with diesel prices being what they are so I wanted to stay somewhat local. Rectifying not having ridden as much singletrack ringing Lake Tahoe as possible seemed the obvious answer. Then my available time allotment dwindled down to 4 days. Adjusting my route to fit my time slot and my somewhat, shall we say sedate pace, Joannie would drive me around to my start and I would finish by riding home.
Day 1. Climb, then climb some more.
The sounds of crashing through the brush to my left caught my attention. A bear popped out onto the trail just ahead of me, took a moment to process my presence then tore off downhill off the trail. 15 minutes into the route and I encountered a bear. The climb up Stanford Rock Trail went well. Easy even. I started down the back side now on the Tahoe Rim trail (TRT) and knew that the descent would be the technical crux of the route. Stopping at the bottom to filter water at the Ward Creek bridge I would soon be on new to me trails. Great trails led me over to and through Alpine Meadows, up to the ridge top bordering Palisades Tahoe and eventually I popped out to hwy 89 at the bottom of Olympic Valley. I took a break at the 7/11 before tackling the Western States trail and the big climb back up to Painted Rock where I decided to call it a day.
Day 2. Rock gardens.
I've ridden this section of the TRT but as soon as I turned up toward Watson Lake I was once again on new to me trails. Much of the remaining day could be classified as rock gardens, at least it felt that way to me. I stopped again at the lake to filter water. It was quite a lovely setting and I wanted to stay. Eventually I made it over to Brockway summit, crossed the hwy and and started pushing my bike. Most of this climb was a push through rocks. Then I got on the KB trail. I had been making poor time all day and was pretty tired so I stopped a mile or so before Incline Village for the night. I didn't want to drop into Incline and be committed to getting through and climbing out in order to find a camp spot.
Day 3. Easy cruising.
I had a goofy breakfast at the 7/11 in Incline then started the climb out. Filtering some water at the great spring just up the road on Old Mount Rose Hwy I knew today should be cruiser. Once again back on familiar ground. Hitting the Incline Flume trail I made good time over to Tunnel Creek Road. Climbing the newish trail beside the road took me up to the junction with the Marlette Flume trail, the 'famous' flume trail of Lake Tahoe. But I still had to climb a bit more up Tunnel Creek road to reach the TRT again. Up the TRT until rocky terrain forced back off the bike a couple hundred feet below a sub-peak, then a traverse below Herlan Peak to a branch up to Marlette viewpoint. I always take the short detour to the viewpoint and saw no reason today should be any different. Truly a worthy detour! Then I dropped down to Marlette Pk camground for a snack and to top off a little water at the well. Continuing on I picked up Capital to Tahoe Trail and followed it all the way down nearly to its junction with Ash To Kings trail. I had made good time and felt that I could go further but also seemed better to camp up here than drop the rest of the way down to my low point.
Day 4. Go home.
Lots of wind over night. I dropped the remaining distance down to Kings Canyon road and started the climb back up to Spooner Pass. After some steep climbs at the start it mellows out and fairly soon I was crossing hwy 50. Decision time. It was an easy decision though. My original plan called for climbing another `1800 ft on the TRT to 'the bench', then a technical section of the TRT back to Dagget (Kingsbury) summit, then dropping old Kingsbury down to the valley. I felt like I had neither the time nor the juice for that so chose to drop from Spooner down the Clear Creek trail to the valley floor. Once there it was simply a matter of road riding (of course I had a head wind!) `20+ miles back to my door. I got home around 3pm and cracked a cold one. Took a shower and cracked another.
Trail Notes: I didn't have a bunch of water points marked on my map. It turned out there was water pretty much wherever I needed some. The spring at the bottom of Old Mt. Rose hwy was a perfect spot!
I had no issues with bears though I did see that one and saw tracks and scat in other places. I'm sort of not used to camping on the edge of civilization so that issue went into some of my decision making of where to end my days.
Day 2 was definitely the hardest for me.
I modeled the route on Forest Baker's "Bones To Blue" route but simply didn't have enough time at my pace to complete his full route. It was great riding some new to me trails though!
Bike Setup: Revel Rascal 130/150 full suspension and full bikepacking bags.
Route Link: Tahoe Tussle Please note that the route linked only includes the route as far as Carson Valley and does not include the road route back to my door.
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