Month: July 2012

With so much to see and with so little time to see it all, Cindy and I decided to head back out to the Northern Nevada Desert and do some more exploring! On this trip, we started off our day by heading out to the Pine Grove Hills and explore an old ghost town there bearing the same name. From there, we headed north up toward the Singatse Range to climb the ruins of the massive Bluestone Mine and beyond before making our way back to Tahoe. Below are highlight photos that we took along the way.

For our Gold Rush Run, we decided to explore the short but difficult rated Snake Lake Trail which is located on the eastern edge of Gold Valley and then circled around down and out west on the Mother Lode Highway until we reached the historic town of Downieville. From there, we headed on a long journey north and off pavement to the old mining town of Poker Flat and eventually, La Porte before calling it a day.

As many of you know, we spend our July’s up in Tahoe and typically use our time up there to hike and wheel the extensive network of trails the area has to offer. And, while we still plan on doing that again this year, we decided to change things up a bit and utilize our northerly location to explore some of the Northern Nevada desert as well.

Unlike previous years, summer arrived up in the Sierra’s a lot sooner than I’ve seen it in a really long time and, because of this, we decided to head up and do our annual Rockin Rubicon run a lot sooner than normal too. In fact, in spite of the fact that we ran the Con in June, the trail was surprisingly dry and with wildflowers already starting to wane.