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LILY LAKE TRAIL ABOVE: Tim Hauserman walks across the smooth trail work through a talus field. | Joyce Chambers
MASTER TRAIL BUILDING BY T I M H AU S E R M A N
THE 2-MILE LONG
Lily Lake Trail was completed this spring after four
years of trail work, mostly by Tahoe Area Mountain Biking Association (TAMBA). It traverses the steep slopes between the Angora Lake parking lot and Desolation Wilderness trailhead at Lily Lake above Fallen Leaf Lake, providing spectacular views of Fallen Leaf Lake and Desolation Wilderness.
The Trail
4 miles RT Moderate-Strenuous
12
The trail descends 800 feet from Angora Lake on what is a well-graded trail for hiking and a challenging but unique mountain bike route. I hiked it recently and decided it might be the most amazing trail construction project I’ve seen in the Tahoe region. Scott Brown was the lead architect and trail builder for TAMBA. Along with a steady and revolving crew of volunteers, especially his friend Tim Holdener, he spent three days a week for four building seasons trying to build a trail in one of the more challenging locations imaginable. He set out not only to build it but turn it into a rideable and fun trail for bikers. It was a 4,000-hour labor of love.
In addition to traversing through steep terrain with limited avenues to carve out a route, the Lily Lake trail travels through several huge fields of rock talus composed of giant boulders. The builders decided that they wanted riders to be able to smoothly ride through the talus — which meant rearranging thousands of pounds of rocks by hand into polished pathways through the boulders. “We worked hard to eliminate steps; those are a pain in the butt to ride up. We tried to make things smooth,” said Brown. “We were building from as soon as the snow melted, until it snowed again in the fall. I’d often look at a section and say, ‘I don’t know how we are going to do it.”’
