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Swamp Lake is a beautiful 13 mile difficult rated trail located deep in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and near to the town of Shaver Lake, California. Because of it’s remote location and all the snow they normally get up there, it’s also a trail that has a limited window upon which it can be run.

Our last day in Tahoe just happend to be on a Friday and, rather than just make a bee line back home, Cindy and I decided to take a round about route and use up the whole weekend to get there. And, being that there was still so much more that we’ve been wanting to see and explore in Northern Nevada, that’s where we headed off to – northeast along the historic Emigrant Trail, out to explore the area surrounding Lovelock, down to Fallon, east to Austin, south to Tonopah and then back into California via Highway 6. It was an epic journey taking two days to do but man, was it ever awesome! Here are some photos highlighting our trip back, I hope you enjoy.

Slickrock is one of the few trails up in the Tahoe area that we try to run at least once a year. Without a doubt, it’s one of the prettiest trails around, has just enough obstacles to give even a built up Jeep a challenge, is short enough that you can do it as a day run and has wonderful camping areas that make it a great overnighter as well.

Rich in history and with so many fun trails to run, it was really hard not to head back up into gold country and do some more exploring. On this trip, we decided to do a quick run out to Deer Lake and then make our way across Gold Valley to check out some of the side trails, mines and wildflowers that were supposed to be in full bloom. Here are some pics from our trip, I hope you enjoy.

A few weeks back, Cindy and I tried to do another run through the Donner Summit snow sheds but as luck would have it, Union Pacific crews were out there with heavy equipment and closed them to access. Unsure of how long they would be closed, we decided to head north of Truckee and do a quick run on the Bear Valley Trail. Here are a few pics from our day out. I hope you enjoy.

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.