Volunteers keep Tahoe trail system functioning

Tahoe Rim Trail Association crew leader Shea Imgarten, right, brings material to help mask a social trail at Van Sickle Bi-State Park in Lake Tahoe. (Image: Kathryn Reed)

Lopers, picks, shovels, mallets, McLeod’s, saws, carts and other items dotted the hillside. Instead of this lineup of tools being employed to build something, they were used to decommission 1,300 feet of social trails in Van Sickle Bi-State Park in June.

Finding a shortcut seems ingrained in human behavior. In nature this means creating trails in places that weren’t meant to be walked on.

Fifty-five volunteers alongside a slew of Tahoe Rim Trail Association personnel set about creating a landscape that no longer invited people to get off the designated route. After several hours the user-created trails were no longer visible. It went beyond just not being inviting. No evidence of their existence could be seen.

Normally slash piles are disposed of by fire. Not so this summer. Nevada State Parks crews left them for the Tahoe Trim Trail folks to use in June.

Using picks, shovels and McLeod’s, holes were dug to “plant” logs like they were mini trees.

“Ice-berging is a more permanent way to decommission switchbacks,” Shea Imgarten, a TRTA trail crew leader, explained. “They can last 20 years. It’s better than throwing logs and needles on the dirt.”

Rocks found by volunteers helped stabilize the planted log, with dirt filling in the hole.

Eileen Mosse, from left, Andy Rothman and Seyil Yoon stabilize a log in the ice-berging process of trail decommissioning. (Image: Kathryn Reed)

Manzanita—some from the slash piles, some trimmed from plants growing slopeside—were replanted. Not whole bushes, but trimmings. This propagation really works.

“I’ve done a lot of landscaping. There is a lot of crossover with this work,” Andy Rothman, a trail leader, said.

Other debris from the slash piles were scattered about in a semi-methodical way to look as natural as possible. Only plant material found on-site and hand tools were used.

These trails were about seven-tenths of a mile in from the main parking lot; in between the initial vista point and the waterfall.

Some worked from the top, others from the bottom. At the end, looking up or down, only those who were there June 6 would likely be able to know where the work occurred.

In the end, TRTA Executive Director Lindsey Schultz declared this was the best those trails have looked in 20 years.

Land and water

When hikers create their own trails it can lead to unintended consequences like trampling sensitive habitat and the inevitable destabilization of the ground which creates erosion problems. This in turn can lead to sediment reaching Lake Tahoe.

Sediment is a major reason the lake’s clarity isn’t what it once was. Clarity is worse in the summer compared to winter readings.

The annual Lake Tahoe Clarity Report released in June shows the annual average clarity remains at a plateau.

“In 2025, as in previous years, the seasonal decrease in water clarity appears to be well correlated with the seasonal peak of particles,” the report states. “Given that water clarity has not shown an overall trend toward improvement in several decades, we suggest that understanding the nature of the particles is a priority area for research to identify the current drivers of water clarity.”

Jim Large, recipient of the TRTA Peak Award for volunteer work, helps with digging a trench for a log. (Image: Kathryn Reed)

Why this day?

American Hiking Society launched National Trails Day in 1993. It is always the first Saturday of June. Organizations across the country put on various events with the goal of getting community members to be trail stewards.

“What is really cool is people will go up there in the next years and won’t know what each of you did today,” Schultz told the group before work started. “But you’ll know. That will be inside of you forever.”

She reflected on her first trail day as a 9-year-old when her dad took her to Mount Rose. It’s moments like those when you don’t necessarily know the impact you are having on one’s life, she said.

“You might get a small human in your life to know the importance of conservation,” Schultz said. She was once that child. This was her 15th Trails Day.

Eileen Mosse remembers reading a Sunset magazine article in the 1980s about the Tahoe Rim Trail that lead her to declare she would be part of it one day. Now that she lives in the Carson City area most of the year with husband Leon she is a guide in training. Last year they did the 165-mile trail in segments.

On this particular Saturday the couple was doing everything asked of them and then some: digging, lifting, hauling, burying, sawing.

Larry Green of South Tahoe works to decommission a user-created trail on the South Shore of Tahoe. (Image: Kathryn Reed)

For South Lake Tahoe’s Larry Green this was his 13th Trail Day. He’s a lover of working with rocks—building stairs in particular. The Lake Tahoe Community College math instructor admits he might be the only one out there using math to figure out the best build.

While stair building was not on the agenda this particular day, Green was seen with a variety of tools in his hands and seeming to never take a break.

Of the 750,000 people who use the Tahoe Rim Trail each year, less than 2 percent give back in terms of financial donations.

Grant funding is drying up, making donations all the more imperative. In fact, the Youth Backcountry Program, which serves several Tahoe kids, was facing a $90,000 funding gap going into this summer.

TRTA still needs volunteers to work this summer; check out the calendar.

Also at Van Sickle on that first Saturday of June were 28 volunteers with the League to Save Lake Tahoe who picked up 137 pounds of trash in the park and Stateline area.

Note: A version of this story first ran in the Tahoe Mountain News.