Felt pretty good today on 5 minute fast/slow intervals. Went mostly barefoot, but stopped to put the vibrams on when I thought I felt blisters coming. Lots of people on the river today – stopped by the bridge to let some kids use my phone to call for a ride. Sweaty!

Ann is still recovering from a big ascent of Mount Rose starting at the Galena creek trailhead, a 4500 foot climb, and so she offers to shuttle between trailheads for me today. (I stayed home to work on next weekend’s WordCamp talk.) So I get dropped off north of Mount Elwell, the highest peak in…

I invite Cara, a traveling Canadian without a climbing partner for the day, to come with me to meet Ann, Vanessa, Mike, and Carolyn to check out Twin Crags above lake Tahoe. Vanessa launches by sandbagging Cara (mistakenly she claims) on a 12b roof, and after she retreats safely we all enjoy single pitch trad…

The Access Fund’s adopt-a-crag program gives me a good opportunity to check out the Lover’s Leap climbing area for the first time, and help improve some trail while I’m there. The day begins without the usual tools or guidance of the Eldorado National Forest personnel due to a mysterious fire that destroyed their warehouse down…

Continuing to branch out – I ride my bike to Vanessa’s house for a morning run. She shows me a nice connector between Keystone and Evans canyons on Peavine. So many trails to explore out there! Morning is definitely the time to do it – it was already getting warm at 7am.

It doesn’t look like we’ll have time to start our backpack of the Tahoe Rim Trail this summer from our doorstep, as cool as that would be. Instead we figure the part of the trip from Mount Rose to our doorstep would make a good warmup weekend trip. It’s been a while since we did…

My first ever participation in an organized running event is a blast. The RTO is an epic relay race that starts and ends in Reno, looping around Lake Tahoe on roads, highways, and bike trails. Of the 250 participating teams, our team of 12 is in it for the fun. We accomplish that mission, and…

My morning run on the playa is an homage to my RTO team, the Tater Trots. Running barefoot on this white expanse isn’t as comfy as one might hope, but not bad either. It ranges from smooth and hard to gravelly and sharp.

Like last year I spend half a day doing “vertical mulch” rehabilitation on old road tracks through a wilderness area. The idea isn’t to erase the track instantly, but to get it reseeded with local vegetation and discourage further incursions. It takes a long time, but a few hours work by ten volunteers does make…