In a few weeks, I’ll be heading to California from Australia to do a thru-hike of the Tahoe Rim Trail. As well as the TRT, I’ll also be hiking the John Muir Trail from Kearsarge Pass through to Mt Whitney.

Lake Tahoe along the TRT

The hike has come around very quickly and I’m looking forward to seeing the Sierras again. There has been more snow this time compared to my last hike in 2015 where we saw virtually no snow for the entire hike.

The 2018 snow season has been interesting. March saw a lot of snow hit the Sierras/Lake Tahoe area which means that we will almost certainly see a reasonable amount of snow on the passes. As I am not that experienced in snow travel (read: not experienced at all), it is going to make for an interesting time.

The Tahoe Rim Trail Association (who I have to say have been fantastic with trail info) currently have the following on their website:

March storms dropped a lot of snow in Tahoe and you can still expect to find snow and ice on much of the trail at high elevations and on north facing slopes. Stream crossings and creeks are flowing above average so use caution at water crossings. Thunderstorms and snowstorms are possible any time.

A current year PCT blogger (Darwin on the Trail) traversed the Sierra in late May (i.e. a couple of weeks ago). There was significant snow and lots of time post-holing.  His instagram feed indicated white-outs and PCT’ers temporarily bailing to have a break from the conditions.

We are hitting the JMT section that Darwin was hiking in late June so I’m hoping the intervening weeks will have melted much of the snow. I think the passes will still be covered. In addition, the melting snow is going to mean some of the river crossings will most likely be sketchy. Fortunately, the worst river crossings of the JMT are behind us given we are starting from Kearsarge. Mid-June we will be on the TRT where I am anticipating much less snow.

Climbing Mt Whitney

I’m also hoping my physical preparations have been sufficient. The last time I hit the JMT which was in 2015 I was running around 20km or so and was pretty fit aerobically. This stood me in good stead with the high passes on the JMT.

This time around I am much stronger having done a lot of squats, lunges etc as well as having done work on my core. I think this will help with some of the longer days etc with the extra muscle strength. However, my cardio work this time around has been seriously lacking. This is partly due to a misjudgment on my part as I concentrated more specifically on hiking rather than running. That has brought with it time constraints as I have been very busy at work and have been travelling a lot which has limited my ability to get out for training hikes. I’ve been recently getting in some 45 minute runs so hopefully it is not too little too late. We will see in a few weeks!

Our trip from Perth will take us to Sydney on Qantas and then into San Fransisco arriving in the early morning. It is a long journey but fortunately our total travel time is far less in 2015 with a more direct route.

Travel route to SFO

We will then Uber/Taxi out to Concord where we will be based for the following days organising our pre-hike logistics. Stay tuned!