Consistency Wins: Mt. Tallac

Mt. Tallac 10.8 miles 2:55, summit 1:42

I took advantage of our sad, snowless winter and tackled a mountain that I had never run before, Mt. Tallac. Its on the south shore of Tahoe and supposedly has the best view of any peak in the Lake. I would have to agree. The peak is 9,700 feet and the trailhead is 6,400. It's about 5.5 miles from the trailhead to the summit, so some fairly steep climbing is involved. The trail is also pretty rocky.

It took me 1:42 to get to the peak, but I screwed around taking a lot of pictures and took some time to drop clothes on the way to the summit. There were also a number of areas of the trail that were very icy which required slow going. I would say this run is about twice as hard as Mt. Rose due to the additional incline and the more technical trail, but I bet I could hit the summit under 1:30 with the right trail conditions and no picture breaks. I drank 15 ounces of water and ate one GU for the 3 hour run.

Everyone has different motivations for running. This is mine:

(click any of these pictures to enlarge). I took the red trail. The distance is mismarked on this map. My phone GPS had it at 5.4 miles to the top, which matched another trail book I looked at.

Fallen Leaf Lake in the foreground, Lake Tahoe in the background - pre sunrise. This is about 1 mile from the trailhead.

While Fallen Leaf Lake is on your left, Tallac is on your right. Kind of intimidating how high it is, thinking you only have 4 miles to climb up there.

Floating Island Lake, which is completely iced over in January (and P.S. should be buried under 10 feet of snow)

Lake Tahoe, with the sun just beginning to light up Mt. Rose.

Cathedral Lake. More of a pond. It is approximately 2.5 miles from the trailhead to this point, so you are halfway there. Unfortunately, you have climbed about 1,000 feet at this point, so you still have over 2,000 feet to go in a little over two miles.

Sunrise

After some steep climbing out of Cathedral Lake, you get this view. Mt. Tallac is on the right (out of the picture) and the trail switchbacks up this canyon to reach the saddle at the top.

Typical trail conditions. Very icy in a number of spots, and a ton of rocks.

Your first view of Desolation Wilderness once you crest the saddle. Aloha Lake is off in that direction.

Typical trail scenery for the last mile to the peak. The final climb to the peak is on talus rock like this. P.S. This is 9,000 feet. Lake Tahoe, welcome to your 2012 snowpack!

The clouds were doing a cool wind tunnel thing over Dick's Pass. The wind was howling up here (too bad I ditched half my cold weather stuff about a mile back -- idiot).