Round Lake to Kingsbury S Trailhead

Mileage: 27.0 miles (inc 0.8m side trails), total 171.0 miles

Elevation: 6,463 feet

Last night was quite cold at our campsite at Round Lake. The wind was blowing quite strongly off the lake and, unfortunately, single wall tents are not the best at excluding drafts.

After breakfast, we had a nice downhill stretch to warm up with. The trail was quiet apart from one group we passed who were playing music and asked if this was the way to Sacramento.

After the first hour, we had covered over 3 miles and arrived at Big Meadow trailhead. The plan today was to do an 18 mile day and camp at Star Lake which would leave a 9 mile day the following day to finish the trail. As that 9 miles was predominantly downhill, I suggested to Ben that we do the whole lot today. He was up for it so we decided to do a 27 mile day and finish the trail today.

The trail began what would be over 10.5 miles of ascent today with a big climb up Armstrong Pass which was 8 miles in itself. As we were going for a big mile day, we had to push it on the ascents. Fortunately, the trail was well graded with switchbacks to make the climb easier.

We bumped into a large group as we were a few miles away from the top of Armstrong Pass. Two of the party were thru-hiking the TRT but were only on Day 2 at that point. We took a group photo for them and they did the same for us.

From there, it was another two miles to the top of Armstrong Pass. It seemed to take forever especially with the knowledge we had so many miles to cover. However, we were feeling much fitter than we had the first few days.

The trail descended quite steeply from Armstrong Pass. This section of the trail was much drier than it had been on the climb up Armstrong Pass and reflected the marked difference between the Tahoe area and the area to its east.

The next climb was steeper but shorter. It was very hot on this section without the cover of the pine forest. The trail went straight up but eventually we hit some switchbacks.

The path was very narrow and it was hot under the sun as we paused to get water. Shortly afterwards, we reached the top and a great view. We had a good chat with some mountain bikers at the top and, as we knew we now had the mileage in the bag, called ahead to book accommodation.

We had 10 miles from here to the end of the trail. It was mostly downhill although had a mile or so of uphills. We passed beautiful Star Lake on the way down which is where we had planned to spend the night initially.

The trail wound its way upwards through a canyon and then onto the eastern side of the range giving us a view down into a very dry Nevada.

Finally, at around 7.30pm, we reached the trailhead at Kingsbury South and completed the trail. We were exhausted after such a high mileage day but elated to have completed our thru-hike of the Tahoe Rim Trail.

After getting back to the car, we drove an hour and a half south through the night to the first town we found and stopped for the night, exhausted but very happy to have finished the Tahoe Rim Trail.