Yeah...I'm still alive. Finally getting back into the blog. As we get closer to snow I'll try to keep it up a bit more. Looks like a few people may be checking in so I should try to at least update this thing weekly. Let me know if it is somewhat interesting. Anyway...we spent 5 days in Lake Tahoe a couple weeks ago. We had a nice trip, short and sweet :) We arrived in Tahoe on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning we had a nice breakfast in town(South Lake Tahoe). After packing in a very nice vegi omelet we made our way to the Mt Tallac trail head. Our plan was to hike the 9735 ft peak of Mt Tallac. Me and my wife, my 2 cousins and their significant others( and my cousins 2 dogs) began the 4.5 mile/3200ft ascent under bright sunny sky's. The hike was very nice and offered excellent views of Lk Tahoe as we slowly made our way up the Mtn.
I felt very good as we continued to climb even though I could feel the lack of oxygen as we gained elevation. Once we got over 8000ft the altitude began to take its toll and I was soon forced to a flatlander's pace. I don't recommend going from sea level to hiking a 10,000ft peak in 24hrs but you gotta make do with such a short trip. It was somewhere around 9200ft that I had to lighten the load and leave the vegi omelet on the Mtn. After a quick breather I continued the remaining 500+ft to the summit. It was well worth the views once on the peak and of course I had to sport the NSR.com hat in our summit photo.
The hike down was pretty amazing as you had Lk Tahoe as a view on much of the return trip. The next couple days we spent getting out for a nice morning hike from my cousins house(she backs to National Forest land) and a couple of nice Mtn bike rides right out the door. I'm definitely jealous of the location my cousin gets to play in. Running, hiking, snowshoeing, xc skiing and mtn biking right out the back door, must be nice to be a DR :) She also has a nice hot tub on the back deck . It was great to sit out there and star gaze after a tough day on the trails!
It was nice to get back home to the kids as 5 days without them was kinda tough, but we all made it through it OK. We also all got sick and I've spent the last couple weeks trying to shake this funk. This is the second illness I've had since Labor Day and it has really sapped most of my fitness. Even though my fitness is not their I still plan on helping the team out this winter by trying to get my 5 races in the Mich Cup series. If I have to walk around the course I guess that's what I'll do!
For all you techno geeks out there, here is the dowload from my Garmin 305 shown below in Google Earth. Check out the link - http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/4249542 just below the little map, click on the Google Earth link and it will dump our route on the Google Earth map. Its pretty amazing stuff!
