Written by Richard Bolt
As I do on most "business trips", my attendance at the USA Track & Field Annual Meeting (Reno, NV) afforded yet another opportunity to trail run on some new real estate. The area around Reno is ripe with good trail runs so I left it to my friend Dave Dunham to find us good scenic trail. Since Dave has been into bagging county high points, we settled on Snow Valley Peak (elevation 9214') just East of Lake Tahoe. Fortunately for us, the weather has been mild in the Sierras and the route was entirely snow-free.
We started our run at Spooner Lake State Park (Elevation 7000') near the intersection of route 28 and route 50, 18 miles West of Carson City. From Spooner Lake we followed NFD 038 Rd (dirt) into North Canyon which took us to just under 9000' and within .2 miles of the summit.
From there we took a short dirt road to the summit which featured 2 small buildings and a couple communication towers. Despite the man-made structures, the view from the summit was amazing. We could see Reno to the North, Carson City due East and all of Lake Tahoe to our West. It was a very clear and cool (35 degrees) day so we could see for many, many miles in every directon.
From the summit, we bush-wacked down to a singletrack trail that lead South along the ridge and back towards Spooner Lake. Eventually the trail lead back down to the road we came in on so we followed the road back to Spooner Lake. The total distance was about 10.5 miles with 2200' of climb and descend. At a very easy running pace it took 2 hours to complete the run. After spending several days in meeting rooms adjacent to a smokey casino, this quite, crowd-free run was just what the doctor ordered.
Read Dave Dunham's account of this run at: http://ddmountainrunr.blogspot.com/2008/12/county-high-points-nevada.html
See Dave Dunham's photos of this run at:
http://s153.photobucket.com/albums/s209/davedunham/2008%20Reno%20County%20HPs/
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