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Week 3: Spooner Summit to Kingsbury Grade

It’s not hard to land our run on a beautiful day in Tahoe.  We did just that.  It’s everything else that must align in order for this challenge to continue.  Now that we are getting rather far around the lake and farther from home, we arranged for Katie Chappell’s mom to be our shuttle.  With a late night baby fever at the Tyler house, the shuttle and our adventure had to wait.  Half dressed for work and half dressed for a run the next day, we were waiting on pins and needles to see if the poor little guy’s fever would break.  We made the call at 8:30 a.m. to jump in the car and do it!  Fortunately, our shuttle driver was still available.

Off we were to the Spooner Summit Trailhead!  The trail started right away with some up, up, up.  Every section seems to have it’s own character and uniqueness and as the summer goes on everything is changing before our eyes.  Right away we noticed it’s much more green and the wild flowers are starting to show their colors.  Through tall skinny trees towering over a sea of new growth trees and past fields of mule ears blooming bright yellow, we kept pushing up and up.  At one point we could look back up at Snow Peak and see the trail we descended the week before.  And then, around the next bend, the top of our run, was Genoa Peak.  Just waiting for us was a bench to enjoy the wide open view of Big Blue.

From there it was down, down, down.  There was so much to look at: the huge trees, the even bigger rocks that came in all shapes and forms, and of course, small peeks at Big Blue around every corner.  Next thing we knew, we were looking down on South Lake Tahoe’s high buildings and the Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course just off the shoreline.  We could tell we were close to SR 207 and the end of our run.  This is where the trail started to split in many direction.  As long as we kept following the TRT blue arrows, we had to be on the right track.  But then we got spit out onto a fire road with no more blue arrows! With a little Google Mapping by Katie Tyler, and with Katie Chappell pointing to the spot we wanted to be at on her Tahoe Rim Trail Pocket Guide, we charged ahead and about 5 minutes later, we were there!  Right on the side of the road looking across at a large cement stairway that will be waiting for us to come back and pick up where we left off for week 4.

With another 15 more miles under our belt and another section completed, we will proudly be sending a check to the #FightHardy fund.  We thought about Whitney Hardy the whole way and want her to have the opportunity to run again.

Whitney is the daughter of Tony and Molly Hardy, I can’t say enough about what a  great family they are .  Whitney was in a terrible accident while on her evening jog in Boston.  She was struck by a car and is now fighting hard to recover and we want to send her and her family all of our hugs and all the love from everyone in Truckee from high above Lake Tahoe.

For more information about #FightHardy, click here.

Next week we will be running from Kingsbury (SR 207) to Armstrong Pass.  We will be running for Girls On The Run Sierra.  Girls on theRun is a nation wide program with a local chapter here in the area that started with only one elementary school and has now grown to over 15 sites and always adding more.  The program is dedicated to inspire girls to be joyful, healthy and confident using a fun, experience-based curriculum which creatively integrates running.  With two little girls of our own, we look forward to them having the chance to participate and know that we are lucky to have a program like this offered at our local elementary and middle schools.

Thank you for all the support and wish us luck!