Mountain Biking Luther Pass to Armstrong on the Tahoe Rim Trail

You should see the smile on my face right now. Oh yeah! Alright, we're starting off another beautiful ride today in Lake Tahoe on the Tahoe Rim Trail. I'm going to take the Tahoe Rim Trail over to Armstrong and go down Armstrong. From there, I'll probably hit Powerline and ride back to the bike shop. I caught the shuttle this morning from Over the Edge Sports in South Lake Tahoe. I haven't done this ride before, but I've heard this trail gets climbing quick. I start feeling pretty useless. I drove up from my house, which is about sea level, this morning. Woo baby! Pain and pleasure. Directions for this ride are pretty simple. Straight on the Tahoe Rim Trail, then a left on Armstrong. Of course, I'll have the details in a link to my blog in the description. You can get the GPX file, see my Strava, all that fun stuff. I'm also on the Fuel EX 9.8. It's a Trex 27.5 plus bike. I'll have a whole separate video talking about the bike. I'll link it right here once it's uploaded. I'm hoping today is the day I see a bear. Saw a bear in Whistler, but it's a Canadian bear. I want a good old-fashioned American bear. That was a hard start. Feeling good, though. Sweat is drying. Feels nice and cool on my face. I'm always so amazed when I get home and look at the footage. How great the GoPro does capture the beauty of being out here. It's definitely worth coming out and seeing for yourself. The video does a pretty good job, too. A little bit of a tricky spot here. Let's follow the right side. Got a little split here. This is Saxon Creek, which is also called Mr. Toads. I'm not a fan. You guys might be. Have at it. I'm going right. I'm mostly not a fan of toads because you lose all this beautiful elevation so quickly. I like the long, winding, flowy descents. It's my thing. About every hour, I take a break, have a honeysinger, and refuel. Let's take a little look out here. If this is your first time watching one of my trail guide videos, you've got to download the Trailforks app. It allows you to do offline mapping, so you always know where you're at. This ride today seems pretty straightforward. You see a little piece of single track that goes off to the left when you're supposed to go right. And then you're like 10 miles out of the way, going the wrong way. This is what my dream piece of single track looks like. A little exposed, green, right up to the skinny little trail, mountains in the distance. I'd rather be descending than climbing, but can't have it all. Now we're in the groove. Oh, this is it. This is it. Alright, we've got a little intersection here. Let's check out the signs. It does look like that is the way. Yeah! Forgot I had a front derailleur. I was still in the big gear up front. Hurting myself. Are we going back downhill? Because I'd like to go back downhill now. That's some flow right there. This bridge smells new. Smell it before I saw it. Alright, now we're at the road. We're going to pass straight through. Hit the Armstrong connector. This was the trail that I took my buddy Josh on, who hadn't mountain biked that much. You know, you look at the map and you're like, okay, it's a blue. Not a problem. And then you get out here and it's like, oh man, this is too hard. This is not beginner friendly. I hate being that guy. You know, you want to share the sport with people and you want to show them how fun it is. But then you take them out on something that is just too much. They're going to hate the sport because of it. That was my exact same experience with snowboarding. Spent some time on the bunny hill. And then my buddy was like, oh yeah, come on out to the blues. And it was horrible. We just walked the whole way down. So that was the end of snowboarding. I'm a skier. If you guys are digging this video, this is what I do. Go out and try to ride the best trails in the world. And take you guys along with me. So hit that subscribe button. Turn on notifications so you never miss an episode. On the road again. All right, we're going to head right here on Corral. And we're going to just keep heading right. So I'm going to take the Sierra Sidewinder because that heads more towards the bike shop. Because that's where I'm heading. But Corral is also a fun trail. There we go. All right. We're going to head right. Incense Cedar Trail. Hang a right. Keep heading this way just because it's towards the bike shop. Fun little section here on the Incense Cedar Track. Okay, power line. We're going to head right. It's not too late, but I have a feeling I'm not going to see a bear today. Okay, let's keep right here. Come on through. This moto trail, as it's called on Trailforks. That was cool. Not as cool. All right, coming out of this, we're going to hit the sign for power line. So that's a right. Let's cross the creek. Power line. Pretty warm day out here. I brought 2.5 liters of water and just finished it and still got a few miles to go. So be prepared. Load up. Don't get caught off guard. Dang it. Just swallowed a bee, I think. And I think it stung me on the tongue. Maybe just a bite. Have to investigate here. So I don't feel a stinger. But it definitely feels like something's going on here. A little bit harder to talk now. I'm just kidding. Probably shouldn't joke about it. Always an adventure out on the trail. Hey. All right, finished the ride off the power line. Now we're just heading to our ski run boulevard. All right, just came back to the shop, dropping off the bike. We've got a time of 4 hours, 22 miles, and about 2,600 feet of ascent. So your mileage may vary, but that's a good guideline to go off of. Thanks for watching, you guys. I'll see you on the trail.