Picture when you were little, and you’d hear your parents say
or in my case, grandparents say “when I was your age, I had to walk everywhere,
in the snow, uphill, both ways!” Well… welcome to the Venegas Death March as Cue referred
to it… the entire trip! Up and up and up is the direction we went on the Tahoe
Rim Trail… the whole way!
We started at Incline Village in North Lake Tahoe with the
intention of backpacking all the way into Heavenly Village in South Lake Tahoe via
the Tahoe Rim Trail. Our intentions were good… I promise! Now I’ve never pretended
to be a master map reader, but I figured I knew enough to get by and plan a
trip without anyone else’s input. I bought the maps, read the Rim Trail web page,
kept up on the current trail conditions leading up to the trip and assured my
partners that all was as well as I thought it could be. I knew there would be
some elevation gain but I had no idea it would be four days of uphill. And I’m
not talking a little bit up uphill here and there, I'm talking Everest kind of uphill! If you’re
ever going to do the Rim Trail I highly recommend seriously evaluating your direction of
travel.
So, let’s talk a little about my partners for this trip. Cue,
the guy that’s been on every one of my backpacking trips to date so far. This
was the first time that he had complete confidence in my abilities to plan a five-day
backpacking trip and I couldn’t have been more excited to take on the challenge!
Then there’s Matthew. Matthew is the son of one of my very best but
ridiculously protective parent friends. He was 14 at the time and this was
going to be his very first backpacking trip. Let’s do the math real quick… Cue,
an Eagle Scout who has complete trust in someone that has never fully planned a
multiple day backpacking trip and a teenager with a mother that will undoubtedly
kill anyone that allows anything to harm her baby boy, also joining us was a spastic black lab and
the alien/goat dog best known as LF… yup, we’re off to a good start!
So off we go, five butts in the truck (two with fur) and our
fully loaded packs in the back. We were ready to see Tahoe like we’ve never
seen it before and boy did we! We got into Tahoe around 9am and were on the
trail within about 30 minutes. Up we went, around a bend and then back around
completing about a mile loop… in the wrong direction! Ok, maybe we were slightly
distracted because of the views, which were amazing by the way, or maybe we
just didn’t look very close at the map. Either way, we were back on track in no
time… back uphill we went. We made it to our first night’s camp site that was
only supposed to be a few miles in. I say a few because after walking that far,
I don’t actually remember what it was supposed to be. I do remember however,
Cue thinking we doubled our original millage plan. Who’s counting anyway when
you end up in a beautiful place like we did? We also had cell service that
night which helped ease the worry back at home. We set up camp, did the usual
camp chores of filtering water, charging up phones and battery packs and looking at the map for tomorrows journey. That night we inhaled
dinner and went to bed before the cold really set in.
The next morning, we woke up, packed up camp scarfed down a
granola bar or some hot chocolate and off we went. The wind was crazy the whole
day. It felt like the higher the trail took us, the windier it got. Other than
the wind beating the crap out of us all day, the hike to our next camp site
wasn’t as demanding as the previous day. As soon as we hit camp, we dropped our
bags, the dogs fell over where they stood, and we parked it on the bench just
trying to regain some of the energy that the tornado like winds had knocked out
of us throughout the day. But the show must go on… water, we needed to resupply
our water. I threw on my camp shoes (Crocs, don't judge me) and found a creek about 50 yards
from our camp. I took the filter bags and purifier down to get water for dinner
and tomorrow’s hike to our next camp. As I was standing by the creek filling up
the bags, I felt something on my big toe. I stomped my foot down against the
ground in an attempt to knock whatever it was off and apparently that just
pissed the culprit off. I felt an even stronger chomp on my toe, so I kicked
off my Croc and saw the biggest black ant I’ve ever seen chewing on my toe like it was a chicken leg fresh off the grill! I reached down, smacked my foot and ended up falling halfway into the creek…
luckily nobody was around to see my circus act of an attempt to simply gather water.
Morning came as we knew it would and we packed up camp. We
hit the trail and set out for our next destination. Now I’m not sure if you’ve ever
been in a full-on fight with a mosquito gang but I can assure you that it is
not as glamorous as it sounds. We had to walk directly through about two miles
of what I would consider to be the mosquito ghetto. These bastards were armed
and dangerous and gave zero you know what’s about personal space. We ended up
putting on our extra layers from our bags just to try and defend ourselves. We
must have looked like a pack of masked burglars walking through the woods that
morning.
About midday we made it to the Highway 50 crossing. Going
from the secluded woods for two and a half days to darting traffic on a major
highway was something that had I been alone would have been exciting… I wasn’t
alone and immediately realized the danger of trying to get five butts (two with
fir) across safely. We waited and waited, it felt like we waited forever for that road to be clear from both sides. I was determined to hold our
position and not cross until I couldn’t see a car in either direction… so we
waited! Once we made it across, we were rewarded with restrooms (vault toilets)
that didn’t require us to dig a hole for our business or find a tree to pee on.
One last amenity to find… water!
We took a break before hitting the trail again. We looked
for water but didn’t find any. We had previously walked past Spooner lake that
we could’ve filtered water from but the leach warnings that were posted all around
the lake deterred us. I almost got taken out by an ant the day before, a gang
of mosquitos today and now we have to deal with blood sucking leaches... no thank you! We
figured we’d filter water at one of the creek crossings that were ahead on the
trail. The only problem, the creeks were dry… all of them.
We knew we needed water and we needed it soon. We ended up
bushwhacking through about a mile of brush. Cue puled out his phone and saw
that there was a creek down off of the trail that we might be able to filter
water from. We talked it out and all decided that it would be our best bet. And
through the woods we went! We found the creek and filled up every container we
had. We loaded our packs down with about 8-10 pounds of extra weight just in
case we didn’t come across more water. The next five miles (literally uphill in the snow)
were about the roughest of the entire trip… so far!
We picked a camp that night that seemed as though it was at the top
of the world. I will never forget that view of Lake Tahoe and I don’t think the
boys will either, it was incredible! We watched the sun dip down behind the Sierras
and it was one of the most peaceful feelings I’d had in as long as I could remember. We went to
bed that night in one of the most beautiful environments one could ever imagine,
knowing that tomorrow would come, and we’d do it all over again.
Morning came just has it had the previous days and we set
off on what was supposed to be our shortest day yet, just 5 miles to go! Five
miles came and went, and we were running out of water with no resupply in
sight. Every creek bed we came across was dry. Every creek we found on the map
was dry, everything was dry. All I remember thinking was, there was no mention of the
lack of water on any of the Rim Trail info pages I read, nobody mentioned it in
the Rim Trail reviews and after getting 70 feet of snow over the winter, how in
the hell could there be no water?
We pushed and pushed ourselves that day. I’m not sure that I’ve
ever pushed myself harder while keeping my composure. We all did, we had no choice.
We were dangerously close to running out of water and still had a few miles to
go. To make matters worse, we could see the casinos that line the shore of South
Lake Tahoe in the distance with what felt like miles and miles of land between
us. We kept on, didn’t give up, mentally lost our shit a little and then regained it. We
made it… finally! A day earlier than planned and thirsty... but we made it! We walked right out of the woods into a neighborhood. "Hello
civilization" had to be the thought of all five (two with fir) of us. I called
for an uber so that I could go pick up the truck while Matthew’s sweet soul approached a gentleman
standing outside of one of the houses to ask for water for the dogs. We were tired, dirty and thirsty but we were done!
We didn’t break Rule #1 (don’t get dead) we almost broke
Rule #2 (hydrate or die) but we survived the Venegas Death March nonetheless!
Plan, research and get input from everyone in your group regardless of your
amount of pride… it just might save your butt the next time you get outside!
