4 Lessons Learned on the Tahoe Rim Trail

4. How to know when to call it. As they drove away I received a text to call my dad about my aunt who had been sick battling cancer. I had one bar and upon calling learned that she had passed away that morning. They didn’t know when the funeral would be so we decided to continue on the trail. A funny thing about this trail is that you would be seemingly in the middle of nowhere, but get a text or your phone would ring. I had turned the phone off to conserve battery life, but texts kept coming. Two nights later I got a text from my dad that the funeral was the following Saturday, in 4 days. With our 15 mile per day plan there was no way would be able to get back to LA in time. My heart was heavy and I found myself crying everytime I thought of her, but everyone was supportive of our decision to be on the trail. The next morning as we were just starting on the trail my phone buzzed with a text from my cousin. I saw I had service and called her back immediately. We talked and I cried about me not being there for her and to celebrate her mom’s life. Unknown to me Tahoe was one of my aunt’s favorite places and my cousin assured me she would be happy knowing this is where I was. We kept going, but my heart continued to be heavy and filled with sadness. We had put in a couple of long days and at some point I started to realize that we would be passing through the Tahoe City trailhead on Thursday, the one place we could come off the trail and find a way to our car at Tahoe Meadows, which would mean we could get back to LA by Saturday for the funeral.

All of this was going through my head and I decided that I would talk to Paul that night at camp about this, as this was not my decision to make alone. The last couple miles of this day included about 800+ feet of switchbacks to a ridge where we planned to camp, after already gaining about 5000′ throughout the day. As we started up the switchbacks my phone buzzed with a text from my brother saying that he was flying in from South Carolina for the funeral. I looked down and there was a heart shaped rock at my feet. Paul asked what was up and I started crying really hard. As we made our way up the switchbacks we talked about our options through my tears.

We discussed what was keeping me on the trail and when it came down to it, the answer was ego and pride. I had set a goal to hike the whole Tahoe Rim Trail and stopping with two sections left would feel like failure. I wanted to be able to tell my story of completing the full hike, not stopping short. There was also the concern of when our work schedules would align again allowing us to return and finish if we stopped. We knew at this point we could 100% finish these two sections, so this was no longer a question that we had in our minds.

The reality is that the trail will always be there and the last two sections are not going anywhere. What wouldn’t be there again was the opportunity to celebrate with my family the life of an amazing, strong, selfless woman. A woman whose entire life was about being there for others. Hearing her unique laugh in my head had helped me through the last few difficult days and I knew I wanted to honor her love and spirit. In the end the decision to come off the trail wasn’t that hard and once the decision was made, I was at peace. No more tears, just a beautiful gentle final sunset at camp with my husband.

We came off the trail in Tahoe City proud of the 140 miles we had covered and were faced with a new challenge of how to get to our car. That story will have to wait until the trip report, but let’s just say it involved margaritas, a bus, and a sheriff.

Saveria Tilden is a consultant and outdoor educator committed to outdoor participation and exploration. You can learn more about her at www.TheAdventurUs.com [spoiler open=”0″ title=”Recent Articles featuring Saveria” style=”1″][show_posts tag=”saveria-tilden” type=”excerpt” excerpt_words=”8″ limit=”3″ paging=”false” orderby=”date” order=”DESC” offset=”0″ post_type=”post”]

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