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Using Top Trails^™

Organization of Top Trails

Top Trails is designed so you can find the perfect trail and make every outing a success and a pleasure. With this guide it’s a snap to find the right trail, whether you’re planning a major hike or just a sociable stroll with friends.

The Region

At the very front of this guide, the Lake Tahoe Trail Features Table lists every trail covered in this guide, along with attributes for each trail.

The Lake Tahoe Overview Map provides a geographic overview of the Lake Tahoe region and shows the areas covered by each chapter. A quick reading of the regional map and the trail features table gives you a quick overview of the entire region covered by the guide.

The Areas

The region covered in this book is divided into areas, with each chapter corresponding to one area in the region. Each area chapter starts with information to help you choose and enjoy a trail every time out. Use the table of contents or the regional map to identify an area of interest, and then turn to the area chapter to find the following information:

 An overview of the area’s parks and trails

 An area map showing all trail locations

 A trail features table providing trail-by-trail details

 Trail summaries highlighting each trail’s special features

The Trails

The basic building block of the Top Trails guide is the trail entry. Each one is arranged to make finding and following the trail as simple as possible, with all pertinent information presented in this easy-to-follow format:

 A detailed trail map

 Trail descriptions covering difficulty, length, and other essential data

 A written trail description

 Trail milestones providing easy-to-follow, turn-by-turn trail directions

Some trail descriptions offer additional information:

 An elevation profile

 Trail options

 Trail highlights

In the margins of the trail entries, keep your eyes open for graphic icons that signal features mentioned in the text.

Choosing a Trail

Top Trails provides several different ways of choosing a trail, using easy-to-read tables and maps.

Location

If you know in general where you want to go, Top Trails makes it easy to find the right trail in the right place. Each chapter begins with a large-scale map showing the starting point of every trail in that area.

Features

This guide describes the top trails of the Lake Tahoe region. Each trail has been chosen because it offers one or more features that make it interesting. Using the trail descriptors, summaries, and tables, you can quickly examine all the trails to find out what features they offer, or seek a particular feature among the list of trails.

Best Time

Time of year and current conditions can be important factors in selecting the best trail. For example, an exposed grassland trail may be a riot of color in early spring but an oven-baked taste of hell in midsummer. Other trails may be cool and shady all year. Where relevant, Top Trails identifies the best and worst conditions for the trails you plan to hike.

Difficulty

Each trail has an overall difficulty rating on a scale of 1–5, which takes into consideration length, elevation change, exposure, trail quality, and more to create one (admittedly subjective) rating.

The difficulty ratings assume that you are an able-bodied adult in reasonably good shape using the trail for hiking. The ratings also assume normal weather conditions—clear and dry.

Readers should make an honest assessment of their own abilities and adjust time estimates accordingly. Also, rain, snow, heat, mud, and poor visibility can all affect the pace on even the easiest of trails.

Vertical Feet

When gauging the difficulty of a trail, hikers and bikers often underestimate elevation change. Vertical feet accounts for all elevation change, not simply the difference between the highest and lowest points, so that rolling terrain with lots of up and down will be identifiable.

For routes that begin and end at the same spot—that is, a loop or out-and-back—the vertical gain exactly matches the vertical descent. With a point-to-point route, the vertical gain and loss will most likely differ, and both figures are provided in the text.

The more strenuous routes have an elevation profile, an easy means for visualizing the topography of a route. These profiles graphically depict the elevation throughout the length of the trail.

Top Trails Difficulty Ratings

1 A short trail, generally level, that can be completed in 1 hour or less.

2 A route of 1–3 miles, with some up and down, that can be completed in 1–2 hours.

3 A longer route, up to 5 miles, with uphill and/or downhill sections.

4 A long or steep route, perhaps more than 5 miles or climbs of more than 1,000 vertical feet.

5 The most severe, both long and steep, more than 5 miles long with climbs of more than 1,000 vertical feet.

Surface Type

Each trail entry provides information about the surface of the trail. This is useful in determining what type of footwear or bicycle is appropriate. Surface type should also be considered when checking the weather—on a rainy day a dirt surface can be a muddy slog; an asphalt surface might be a better choice (though asphalt can be slick when wet).

View south toward Freel and Jobs Peaks (Trail 49)