Tahoe Rim Trail nears completion
by John Trent,Outpost Staff
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Truckee students in great outdoors |
After years of dealing with the logistical and environmental impact requirements of a 150-mile trail winding through six counties, two states and close to a dozen federal, state, county and regional jurisdictions, there is a sense that the end is near.
"(The 2001 completion date) has reinvigorated a lot of our members," says McDowell, who always speaks with an energized momentum. "We've been meeting with all the agencies we've had to deal with, and we think it looks good. For once, I don't have to say 'This is going to take us another five years to build, followed by another five years.' It's an exciting time for us."
The Rim Trail organization has more than 800 members, a $140,000-a-year operating budget and close to 100 of the trail's miles "adopted" by individuals, families and businesses for $5,000 apiece. The group's annual fundraiser, a concert at Sand Harbor, continues to be a strong source of revenue, earning more than $5,000 last summer. The group weathered an insurgent movement three years ago when board member Charlie Smith, frustrated by the Rim Trail's inability to build more than just a few miles of trail each building season, demanded an audit to see where the organization's funds were going. The audit turned up just what McDowell has said all along: the drawn-out process of drafting environmental impact statements for sensitive areas rich with wildlife or archeological resources, such as the Mount Rose Wilderness Area, is costly and time-consuming.
Smith, who has since formed his own trailbuilding group, The Hardrockers, says he thinks the Rim Trail should have been completed by now: "I believe in building trail, not sitting around talking about it." His group has also helped create trail in the Tahoe area. In the summer of 1996, the Hardrockers built a handicap access boardwalk near Sand Harbor.
But from McDowell's perspective, slow and steady has been the only course the Rim Trail can follow. A case in point was a few years ago, when trailbuilding in the Mount Rose Wilderness came to a stop as Forest Service biologists attempted to determine if the establishment of the trail would impact the Northern Goshawk - an animal federally designated as sensitive, with special management concerns. It appears that the Rim Trail's caution has been rewarded; tentative plans are to build trail into the Mount Rose/Tahoe Meadows area sometime in 1999.
The normally full-steam-ahead McDowell, 51 - who still retains much of the same passion for Lake Tahoe of the 5-year-old girl who once wanted to fill her piggy bank with pennies to buy the entire Tahoe National Forest to save it from being cut down by loggers - says the experience has been important in the maturation of her organization.
"We've got to remember that we are just one on a long list of priorities for organizations like the Forest Service, Nevada State Parks and TRPA (Tahoe Regional Planning Agency), and they are doing everything they can to help us," says McDowell, whose groups of volunteer trailbuilders finished a two-mile stretch from Spooner Summit to Tahoe Meadows last year and this summer will be putting the final touches on a section on the Pacific Crest Trail into the Desolation Wilderness Area before moving to the final portion in 1999. "The dream of completion is so strong. I always have to remind myself that yes, there will be a trail someday. That keeps me going."
By the Year 2001, organizers of the Tahoe Rim Trail hope that their 150-mile trail along the ridgetops of Lake Tahoe will be finished. Photo by John Trent. |
Adds Rim Trail president Carole Maupin: "Certain board members have commented if they knew how hard it was going to be when this first started, they might not have started in the first place. But there is such a strong feeling of obligation to finish."
State district ranger Mark Kimbrough knows first-hand about this feeling of obligation. In summer 1991, Kimbrough brought a busload of 100 volunteers to a spot near Spooner Summit to build trail. He still has their photo on his office wall in Carson City. Their faces stare back at him - tiny, yet significant. They have the look of 100 people who feel that yes, for one day anyway, they made a difference.
"Everyone has a vision of a 150-mile trail around the lake ... theyíre all very excited about it, but they all have different reasons for wanting to do it," Kimbrough says. "It's like those people you read about who want to protect the wilderness in Alaska, but who have never been to Alaska. It's the dream that's important to these people. When they actually get hands-on experience building or protecting the wilderness, it's a wonderful feeling. It can stay with you a long, long time."
McDowell, who laughs and cries easily, has a difficult time containing her emotions whenever she presents an Adopt-A-Mile family or friend with a 16-by-20 engraved photo of the mile they have agreed to sponsor. McDowell hikes the mile with the adopting family or friend, individual or group. Sometimes the mood is solemn as the gentle mountain breezes lifting through the pine trees. Other times the mood is buoyant, as lively as the swirl of trail dust at their feet.
One thing is constant, though.
"The tears," McDowell says. "The trail becomes so personal. Not only to you, but to the families, the people who adopt the trail. It really does become a part of you."
In a recent interview, illustrating the type of bond the trail has created for so many, Washoe County public defender John Morrow stands up from his desk in his Reno office when a reporter mentions McDowell's comment about how the trail ìreally does become a part of you.î Behind Morrow's desk, there is a 16-by-20 engraved photo of a mile he adopted in memory of his daughter Beth, who died at age 23 in 1982 in an avalanche at Alpine Meadows Ski Area. He points at the photo.
"I look at that mile behind my desk here, almost every day," Morrow says. "And I think, 'What a wonderful place. What a wonderful thing that trail is,' to so many different people."
So work on the Rim Trail continues. The winter is a time of planning for McDowell, who will set dates for hike-a-thons, for camps for trailbuilding training, as well as continuing to mind the myriad of regulations and impact statements demanded by the multitude of agencies overseeing the Rim Trailís work.
But for the first time - perhaps since Glenn Hampton, a Forest Service planner at South Lake Tahoe first came up with the idea of a rim trail around Lake Tahoe in the mid-1970s - there is a feeling that the trail is almost home - almost finished.
"Our credo, our slogan is, 'Done By 2001,'" says long-time crew leader Rosie Kimes, who lives not far from a mile of the trail she and husband Chuck adopted near Spooner Summit."We have great hopes and plans. We want to get this baby done."
Posted Dec. 16, 1997
Copyright 1997 Nevada Outpost
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