Story Pop: Snow Valley Peak, NV - Shotgunning with Bill the Lion

In this episode, Philip heads up Snow Valley Peak, the quiet high point above Carson City where the Great Basin meets the Sierra Nevada in a long sweep of granite, sage, and sky. It’s a climb with views that stretch from Washoe Valley to the blue bowl of Lake Tahoe — and a ridge that carries more history than you’d ever expect from a trail this gentle.

As Philip moves along the Tahoe Rim Trail, the story shifts from the landscape to the shoreline below: the east‑shore forests cut over by Comstock logging, the improbable engineering of Marlette Lake, and the granite point where Thunderbird Lodge still sits, built into the rock like it grew there.

And then comes the legend.

This episode dives into the eccentric life of George Whittell Jr., the millionaire recluse who bought most of Nevada’s shoreline and filled his estate with a menagerie that included cheetahs, an elephant named Mingo, and — at the center of it all — Bill, the African lion who lived on the property like he owned it. Bill padded along the granite paths, lounged by the boathouse, and, in the most unforgettable image ever to come out of Tahoe, rode shotgun in Whittell’s 1936 Duesenberg as the two cruised the empty shoreline roads.

Shotgunning with Bill the Lion blends ridge‑top hiking, Tahoe history, and one of the strangest true stories ever tied to a mountain view. It’s Snow Valley Peak — and the legend beneath it — the way only Off You Pop can tell it.

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Transcript

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This is Off You Pop, the podcast for hikers and adventurers who want to be epic in just one day. There's a ridge above Castle City Nevada, where the world splits cleanly in two. To the west, the Sierra Nevada rises in granite waves, resting in the blue bowl of Lake Tahoe. To the east, the great basin opens like a vast sunbleached ocean. A place where the land folds into itself again and again until it disappears into Mirage. Snow Valley Peak sits right on that hinge. It's not the highest summit in Nevada, not the most dramatic, not the most photographed, but it's the high point of Carson City, the skyline above the state capital, and one of those mountains that feels bigger than its elevation, because of the stories stitched into its slopes. This episode begins on that ridge, but the story doesn't stay there, because Snow Valley Peak is connected in ways both literal and mythic to one of the strangest figures ever to shape the Tahoe Basin, George Whittle Jr., the reclusive Playboy millionaire who bought up most of Tahoe's east shore, a man who built a stone fortress called Thunderbird Lodge with secret tunnels, a private zoo, and a pet lion named Bill, who rode shotgun in his sports cars. Yes, a lion riding shotgun on the east shore of Lake Tahoe. Woodall's eccentricity preserved the entire shoreline from development. His stubbornness kept the casinos, condos, and neon lights away, and his legacy still shapes the view from Snow Valley Peak today. The long, untouched sweep of granite and pine running from Sand Harbor to Deadman Point. But this ridge holds more than eccentric millionaires and shotgunning lions. It holds Marlet Lake, one of Nevada's greatest engineering wonders. A man-made alpine reservoir perched improbably high above Tahoe, built in the 1870s to feed waters of the Comstock mines. Its water once raced down a 13-mile wooden flume, dropping thousands of feet to power the silver boom. Today it's quiet, blue, serene, but engineered brilliance lies beneath its surface. And all of it, the geology, the engineering, the eccentricity, and the myth, ties back to Snow Valley Peak, the Carson Range, and the trail we're walking today. This is the story of a mountain, a mansion, a lion, a lake, and the strange, beautiful, engineered wild world of Nevada. This is Snow Valley Peak. This is shotgunning with Bill the Lion. And this is Off You Pop. Snow Valley Peak rises quietly above Carson City, part of the long granitic backbone of the Carson Range, the easternmost expression of the Sierra Nevadas. It's not a dramatic summit, no volcanic cones, no knife-edge ridges, but it has a kind of quiet authority. The mountain is built from the same Sierra Nevada batholith that underlies the Taho basin. Pale, coarse-grained granite, uplifted over millions of years, fractured by three-four cycles and shaped by wind. Up here, the geology is straightforward and honest. Granite underfoot, alpine grasses and low shrubs, clinging to shallow soils. A ridge that has been sanded down by the weather into a broad, walkable crest. Geographically, Snow Valley Peak sits on a decisive line, the divide between two major watersheds. To the west, every drop of water eventually finds its way into Lake Tahoe, then out into the Truckee River. To the east, the water drains towards the Carson River, disappearing into the Great Basin. Stand on the summit, and you're standing on the hinge between two completely different worlds, Alpine Lake Country on one side and high desert on the other. The views make that divide obvious. Look west and the land falls away in a long, smooth descent towards Tahoe. The lake sits in its granite bowl, deep blue and perfectly framed by the desolation wilderness peaks. On a clear day you can trace the shoreline from Emerald Bay all the way to Incline Village, the water catching the light like a sheet of hammered metal. Turn east and the Sierra Nevada ends abruptly. The granite gives way to the pale folded basins of Nevada. Carson City sits directly below, tucked into the foothills. Beyond it, the land opens into the long reach of the Great Basin, a geography of dry valleys, distant ridges, and horizons that seem to keep pulling away from you no matter how far you look. Snow Valley Peak is also the official high point of Carson City, thanks to the way the municipal boundary climbs all the way up to the ridge. And when you use city limits, the actual legal boundary, Carson City ranks as the second highest state capital high point in the United States at 9,216 feet. Only Salt Lake City sits higher, thanks to its boundary reaching Grand View Peak at 9,410 feet. Denver, despite its nickname as the Mile High City, comes in third. It's a quiet fact, but it gives this broad Wind Calc summit, an unexpected place in the geography of American capitals. The Tahoe Rim Trail reaches Snow Valley Peak from the east in long steady switchbacks, climbing through open Jeffrey pine forests before breaking out onto the granite crest. Up here, the trail feels almost effortless, a smooth path across weather-polished rock and alpine grasses, following the natural curve of the ridge. It's one of the gentlest high points on the entire 170-mile loop, a place where the geology opens itself rather than forcing you to fight for it. The TRT doesn't actually tag the true summit. Instead, it skirts just below it, giving hikers a sweeping view of both Tahoe and the Great Basin without ever leaving the comfort of the trail. If you leave the trail and follow the ridge itself, staying on the high spine before the slope finally commits to the Tahoe side, you'll notice a small human detail in an otherwise natural landscape. Near the crest, a few hundred yards west of the true summit, is a single wooden post with a six-digit number carved into it. Its purpose isn't documented in any public land management resource, but its placement on the ridge makes it feel part of the geography of the peak. One of those small unexplained features you notice only when you leave the trail and follow the land itself. Everything else up here is shaped by wind, granite, and watershed. Snow Valley Peak doesn't need drama to matter. It's the quiet high point above Nevada's capital, a broad, steady rise into the sky, where two landscapes meet, and the view tells the whole story. Long before the east shore of Tahoe was a place people came to escape, it was a place engineers came to solve a problem. In the mid-1800s, Virginia City and Gold Hill were booming on the strength of the Common Stock Load, one of the richest silver deposits ever found in North America. The mines in the growing town needed water, far more than the local springs and tunnels could provide, and they needed timber for shoring, mills, and charcoal. The nearby hills were stripped quickly. The solution laid higher and farther west in the Sierra Nevada and the Carson Range. The answer became the Marlot Lake Water System, now recognized as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark. It wasn't just a reservoir, it was a network, dams, flumes, a tunnel through the mountain, and a high-pressure pipeline that did something no American system had done before. Carry water over mountainous topography using an inverted siphon with record-breaking pressure. Engineers enlarged the dam at Marlet Lake and created Hobart Reservoir to store water high in the Carson Range. From there they built miles of wood and flume to move water and timber down toward the east side. But the real engineering wonder was what happened next, getting the water across Washoe Valley and up again to the ridges above Virginia City. Civil engineer Herman Schusler was hired in 1871 to design a system that could do exactly that. His solution was an inverted siphon pipeline, a 12-inch riveted iron pipe that dropped from the mountains, crossed the valley at a low point, and then climbed back up to a ridge above Gold Hill. At its lowest point, the pipeline sustained a head of roughly 1,870 feet, generating pressures around 810 psi. At the time it was the highest head pipeline in the world, more than double the next highest. To make the whole system work, engineers also drove a 3,994-foot tunnel through the watershed divide along an inclined tunnel that allowed water to pass from one basin to another without dropping all the way down and losing elevation. Combined with more than 21 miles of pipeline and over 45 miles of flume, the Marlot Lake water system could deliver around 6 million gallons of water per day to the Comstock towns. From a ridge like Snow Valley Peak, it's hard to imagine all that. A reservoir high in the granite, a tunnel bored through the mountain, flumes clinging to the slope, and a pressure pipeline pushing water across a valley and back up to a mining district. But that's what was happening here in the 1870s. The quiet basin of Marlot Lake was part of a machine, an engineered answer to the problem of how to keep a silver boom alive in a dry high desert. The forests on the east shore paid for it. Logging for the Carson Tahoe Lumber and Fluming Company stripped hillsides above Sand Harbor, Glenbrook, and the ridges facing Virginia City. The water system moved water and timber, and the mines consumed both. By the time the Comstock era faded, the infrastructure remained, the dam at Marlette, the tunnel through the divide, and the old flume grades and the pipeline routes. The forests slowly began to recover, but the land had already been through one full cycle of industrial ambition. By the early 20th century, the east shores of Tahoe were still visibly marred by decades of heavy logging. The hillsides above Sand Harbor, Glenbrook, and the slopes beneath Snow Valley Peak had been cut over so aggressively that large patches of forests were thin, uneven, or missing altogether. It was still beautiful, but it wasn't pristine, a recovering industrial landscape carrying the marks of extraction. And land that looked like that in that era didn't command prices you'd expect for Tahoe. From Snow Valley Peak today, Marat Lake looks palm, a high reservoir feeding modern pipelines instead of wooden flumes. But if you know the story, you can see the ghosts of the system, the basin that was dammed, the divide that was tunneled, the valley that was crossed by a world record siphon. This is the engineered landscape that existed long before anyone thought about preserving it. George Whittle Jr. doesn't start as a Tahoe character. He starts as a San Francisco one. He's born in San Francisco in 1881, into a family whose roots go back to the gold rush and whose money comes from water, gas, banking, and real estate. One grandfather helped found what became the Pacific Gas and Electric Company. Another is tied to the San Francisco Water Company. When his parents married in 1879, they effectively merged two fortunes into one empire, and George and his twin brother Nicholas are born into that combined wealth. Then tragedy and entitlement arrive together. Nicholas died of diphtheria at age four, leaving George the sole heir. He grew up knowing very clearly that an immense inheritance is waiting for him, and he said more than once that his chosen profession is simply to live off that inheritance. As a teenager and young man, he pushed harder against the expectations of that world. He raced cars, he chased circuses, and literally followed the Barnum and Bailey around the country. He had an affinity for large animals, and he attended multiple colleges and universities, but never graduated. He was no four. By his early twenties, he could reportedly speak seven languages. His personal life was just as restless. At twenty two, he married a chorus girl. His father had to pay to have the marriage annoyed, and shortly afterward, he eloped with Josie Cunningham, a dancer from a British stay show. In 1919, he married Alaya Pascal, a Parisian debutante who remained his wife for the rest of his life, though they spent little time together and had no children. Financially, he was both lucky and shrewd. Just months before the 1929 stock market crash, Without liquidated roughly $50 million in stocks and bonds. And when the Great Depression hit and wiped out fortunes across the country, he was sitting on all that cash. He then moved his residency to Nevada to avoid California's state income tax, shifting both his business headquarters and his personal life across the state line. By the mid-1930s, he was rich, restless, and looking for space. The Tahoe story begins not with a grand vision but with a bailout. In 1937, a Reno acquaintance is trying to buy 27 miles of Lake Tahoe shoreline on the Nevada side with the intention of subdividing and developing it. The deal is going badly. Whittle steps in to provide the money, essentially rescuing the transaction. The agreement becomes tangled, and when the dust settles, Whittle himself ends up as the owner of nearly the entire Nevada portion of the Tahoe Basin, about 40,000 acres, and almost all the waterfront from Crystal Bay to State Line. This is not a small purchase. It's one of the largest private land holdings in the Sierra Nevada, and at the time it's understood as a development opportunity. Whittle's early vision is clear. A large resort and casino at Sand Harbor, another major development at Zephyr Cove, a hotel and casino complex with 200 cottages, an aerial tram climbing from the lake shore to a proposed ski resort above what is now Incline Village. He hires Frederick Delongchamps, a prolific Reno architect, to design a three-story French-style chateau as his Tahoe residence, the future Thunderbird Lodge. The house is part of a personal retreat, part anchored for a much larger plan. Tahoe, in Whittle's mind, is going to be both home and enterprise, a private estate wrapped in a commercial playground. At this point, George Whittle Jr. is not a conservationist. He's a developer with an enormous land bank and the money to build whatever he wants. The change doesn't arrive as a single dramatic moment. It arrives as a pattern. Whittle moves into Thunderbird Lodge, tucked into the rocks just south of Sand Harbor. He begins living on the shoreline he owns, the granite points, the coves, the forests running straight to the water. The resort plans are still there. Sand Harbor Casino and Hotel, Zephyr Cove development, aerial tram, ski resort. But over time, something happens. The onset of World War II is one clear factor. Large-scale resort construction becomes less practical, less urgent, and in some cases politically and economically untenable. Sources note that his vision for the Sand Harbor Hotel and Casino, with its cottages and trams, is abandoned with the onset of the war. But the war isn't the whole story. Even after the war, when development returns to Tahoe in force on the California side, Whittle does not revive his original plans. He doesn't sell off shoreline parcels for resorts. He doesn't partner with casino operators. He doesn't push for the aerial tram or the ski resort. Instead, he increasingly withdraws from active development. What we see in the record is plans drawn up but never executed. Land held but not subdivided. Proposals considered but not pursued. Shoreline retained rather than sold. There's no manifesto, no public statement, no, I've changed my mind, speech. He simply doesn't build. Historians and preservations often describe him as an accidental conservationist. A man whose personal preference for privacy and solitude resulted in one of the most significant acts of de facto preservation in Tahoe's history. Living on the land seems to have reshaped his relationship to it. The shoreline stops being just an asset and becomes a habitat for him, for his animals, and for his isolation. The more he inhabits it, the less he wants to see it transformed into the resort complex he once imagined. From Snow Valley Peak, you can see the outcome of that quiet pivot. The long, undeveloped arc of Nevada's east shore, forest to water, granite to lake, is the physical record of Whittle's change of heart. A shoreline that stayed wild, not because of policy or planning, but because one man with the power to build simply chose not to. Thunderbird Lodge sits on a granite point south of Sand Harbor, built so tightly into the shoreline that it looks less like a house and more like the land deciding to take architectural form. Designed in the late 1930s by Reno architect Frederick de Longchamps, the lodge is one of the most distinctive structures on Lake Tahoe. Not because it's grand, but because it's intentional. Every material, every angle, every walkway is chosen to make the estate disappear into the rock and forest around it. The main residence is built from granite quarried directly from the site, giving the walls the same pale, coarse texture as the surrounding shoreline. Heavy timber beams frame the upper floors. Roof lines pitch steeply to shed Sierra storms. Windows face the lake, not the road. The lodge doesn't announce itself, it hides. It's low, angular, and anchored to the rock, a structure meant to blend rather than dominate. Thunderbird Lodge was never just a single building, it was a compound connected by stone paths and carved walkways that thread through the granite, the main house built of stone and timber, intimate rather than palatial, the card house, a separate building for private gatherings, the caretakers' cottage tucked into the trees, the boat house built directly into a natural cleft in the shoreline, and stone stairways and terraces that are cut into the rock itself. Even the circulation of the estate reflects its purpose. Thunderbird Lodge was designed for privacy. Paths curve out of sight, rooms are small and inward facing. Service corridors keep staff invisible. Inside the lodge feels like a mountain refuge rather than a mansion. Stone fireplaces anchor the rooms, timber ceilings press low. Hallways turn sharply, creating pockets of quiet. It's a house built for someone who didn't want to entertain crowds. Someone who wanted to control whoever entered. The shoreline around the lodge was shaped with the same intention. Granite steps descend into hidden coves. Walkways follow the rock instead of cutting through it. The boathouse is nearly invisible from the water, tucked into the granite, as if it were always there. Thunderbird's Lodge is not a resort. It's not a showpiece. It's a fortress of solitude built from the land itself. And today the estate is preserved as a historic house museum. Its granite walls, timber beams, boathouse and shoreline parts maintained so visitors can experience the architecture exactly as it was built. A rare example of early 20th century Tahoe design carved directly into the rock. Thunderbird Lodge was the fortress, but the legend, the part that still ripples across the lake, begins with a lion. Not a rumor, not a circus story, a real lion living on the east shores of Lake Tahoe. Bill arrived at Thunderbird Lodge in the late 1930s, a young African lion with paws too big for his body, and a mane just beginning to come in that George had purchased from a circus. Whittle had grown up around performers and exotic animals, his father's fortune intertwined with the Barnum and Bailey circus, and Bill was, in a way, a return to the world George had known as a child. But Tahoe was not a circus. It was granite pine and deep blue water, and Bill adapted to it with a kind of regal calm. He grew enormous, broad shouldered, copper maned, a presence you felt before you saw. Staff described him as quiet, watchful, and unbothered by anything except boredom. Bill moved for the estate like he owned it, padding along the granite paths, lounging near the boathouse and settling himself in warm corners of the lodge, with the slow confidence of a creature who understood he was the apex of the shoreline. And Bill wasn't alone. Whittle filled the estate with animals, the way other men filled theirs with furniture. For a time there was Mingo, a young elephant who wandered the grounds until the granite proved too unforgiving for his feet. There were cheaters, slick and restless, kept in reinforced enclosures near the caretaker's cottage. Monkeys chattered from small outbuildings, great Danes patrolled the paths like sentries, and peacocks screamed from the rooftops at dawn. It wasn't a zoo, it wasn't curated, it was simply Whittle, a man who populated his solitude with creatures that matched his appetite for the unusual. But even with elephants and cheetahs on the property, Bill remained the star. He was the heartbeat of the shoreline, the animal everyone remembered, the one who made the East Shore feel like a place where reality bent just a little. And then there was the car. Whittle owned a 1936 Dusenberg Model J, a long hooded Foam bright, straight eight masterpiece of American engineering. It was the kind of car that didn't just drive, it announced itself. The sound of the engine echoed off the granite cliffs, a deep mechanical growl that didn't belong in the mountains, but somehow fit perfectly with the man who drove it. Locals learned to recognize that sound before they saw the car. A low rumble rolling across the shoreline, a vibration in the air that meant Whittle was coming down the road. And sometimes, he wasn't alone. This is the moment people still talk about. The image that has survived decades of retelling, the story that sounds impossible until you learn it's true. Whittle would take Bill for rides in the Ducemberg, not in a cage, not in a trailer, and not as a stunt. Bill sat shotgun. A full-grown African lion, mane blowing in the wind, paws resting on the door, riding besides a millionaire recluse as they cruise the narrowy shore roads of Lake Tahoe. Imagine being a local in the 1940s, you're driving the shoreline rounding a bend, and suddenly you see a Ducemberg, a car worth more than most houses, and in the passenger seat, a lion, looking at you with the calm indifference of a creature who's seen everything. People didn't forget that sight, they told their children, and their children told theirs, and the story became part of Tahoe's oral history. Not because it was sensational, but because it was real. A man, a lion, and a sports car on a nearly empty shoreline. That's the moment, that's the legend. This is shotgunning with Bill the Lion. Now let's get on the pop. Most people or summit Snow Valley Peak by starting at the Spooner Summit Trailhead. Walking along the Tahoe Rim Trail. Snow Valley Peak is just a short side spur from the Tahoe Rim Trail. Now this is the conventional route. This isn't the route that I took when I decided to climb Snow Valley Peak. I really wanted to do it the unconventional way. And the unconventional way is the shorter summit route. This begins at Lake Tahoe and then winds all the way up to Snow Valley Peak, adding a significant amount of elevation gain. Most people will tell you this is the short route, but it's really not significantly shorter, maybe a mile or two, but has significantly more elevation. And so I left my house at four in the morning with the intent to arrive at the shore around 5 a.m. to get started just before dawn. It was going to be an extremely hot day with forecasts in their triple digits, and so I wanted to get out a little bit before dawn. So I drove up to Lake Tahoe and through Incline Village to the parking lot at Chimley Rock Beach. When I got to the parking lot, what I didn't realize was that the parking lot was not open until 6 a.m. And from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. it was a paid permit, $12 for the full day. And so I had a little bit of a dilemma. I'd actually arrived at the parking lot around 5.20, and so I'd had some time to kill. And I didn't want to do the Spooner Summit route, but I and I really wanted to take this particular route from shore to summit. So I decided to drive out of the parking lot just a short way down the road, park up next to the lake, and do the shore piece of the trip. So it's maybe two or three hundred yards down from the road, you can get to the shoreline and dip your toe into the shore. And so I didn't kind of do this contiguously, but I did get this part of the hike out of the way. And I was sitting on the shoreline, looking back south down the shore, towards Thunderbird Lodge. And it was kind of difficult to see. It's very interesting how well it is molded into the shape of the granite rock. You can see the tunnel that was used as a way for Whittle to bring his boat into the lodge itself. And you can sort of make out some of the buildings, but it's not like there's an impressive mansion sitting right on the edge of the lake. It's really well integrated into the lake itself. And at that time of the day, the sun was just coming up. The moon was still high in the sky, but you just started to get that alpin glow, that sort of light blue, pinky tinge coming up and reflecting off of the west side of Lake Tahoe. It was really great to see that sort of water level view that early in the morning. And so I made the short climb back up to my car and then drove back up to the parking lot. And by this time it was like 5.50. And I realized perhaps there's a little bit of a loophole here. The parking lot is officially open at 6 a.m. But the paid permitting does not start until 7 a.m. So technically I could have gone on my hike and then at 7 a.m. I could have got a ticket. But I realized it was text to pay. So I texted the number to get to the link to pay. And I thought, you know what? Let's just start hiking. Hopefully, I've got a signal. I can I can pay my parking on the trail. So I made a decision to risk it. And then at 6 a.m. exactly, I made my way up the Marlot Dam Trail to start the hike. And so the best place to park is to the south of the parking lot, up high, up the high south corner. And that's really at the start of the Marlot Dam Trail. There's no signpost saying this is the Marlot Dam Trail. So don't be looking for a sign. There's just a metal barrier that you sort of go around and start the trail. And it's fairly obvious that this trail is heavily used by mountain bikers. There's hardly any footsteps, but lots of mountain bike tracks along the trail. And because of that, it's it's fairly easily braided. And so it's quite easy to walk along and never, you know, particularly steep. There's an occasional switchback as you're making your way up this gully up towards Marlot Lake. And it made pretty short work of it and was it was traveling pretty quickly. And it was it was kind of cool that early in the morning. And you're in this typical alpine forest with these occasional granite boulders sticking out of the side of the gully and this deep cornice of the morning where you're sort of shaded underneath these pines. And those are these are these younger pines that are still still recovering this day from industrialization. It doesn't feel like old growth forest quite so much. It's certainly much better than it would have been, you know, 100 years ago, but it never feels kind of old growth. And there's still sort of these weird patches that don't make sense, unless you remember that the whole face was strip mined back in the 1870s, 1880s to contribute to the Comstock Load mining. And as you're going up, you're starting to make some gains in altitude. And once in a while you can look back and see Lake Tahoe below you through the trees. Not it, not all the time, but once in a while you hit a little bit of a clearing and you start to see yourself getting higher and higher. And to the north, you can see Sand Harbor, which today is a little bit of a beach resort that folks will go to, particularly at the weekends. And so I was anticipating when I got back to the parking lot after the hike, it was going to be packed full of beachgoers. And spoiler alert, I wasn't disappointed. But after about an hour, I reached the junction of Marlot Dam Trail and then Marlot Lake Trail. And it quite simply just splits off. One trail sort of heads up and over a ridge to the north and the other continues climbing off to the right. There's no signpost here, doesn't say this is Marlot Lake Trail, this is the way the Snow Valley peak. There's no signage whatsoever. Just as you're reaching that peak, though, if you you all pass the signpost and it's just for cyclists, warning them that it's steep and technical. For hiking, it's not steep and technical. Maybe if you're traveling at speed on a mountain bike, but even then it didn't feel particularly steep or technical. So you turn off to the right, so you start heading sort of up and south, and now you're on Marleck Lake Trail. And it continues to climb just for a little bit, but then it sort of levels out. And you're sort of leveling out on this shoulder, this shoulder of this peak. I think it's 8716, that you're going between sort of to go over towards Snow Valley Peak. And you climb, you're hiking through a fairly flat open area with this typical Lake Tahoe grey granite boulder outcrops around you, and it's a fairly open area. You can see you see a fair distance through the forest. And as you're hiking onwards, you suddenly remember to pay the pay the parking fee. So I did. I stopped and I paid and I had a signal. And I thought I'd have a signal because one of the unfortunate things about Snow Valley Peak is they put a telecom tower on top of it. So I was fairly confident I was going to be able to pay the parking. And I did, I paid the parking, so it was good to go. Didn't have to worry about that anymore. And as you're coming up and around towards Marlot Lake, the trail joins another trail, which then starts to descend, I would say towards the lake, but it's really just a little bit a little bit south of the lake. The the trail never connects with Marlot Lake itself. It's probably about half a mile south of Marlot Lake. And as you start coming back down toward the lake, you can see through the trees, and up above you is Snow Valley Peak. And it looks like a massive climb before you. Because you've sort of been climbing and climbing and climbing. Then you start descending, and then you realize you're sort of dipping into a little valley that's going to lose you some altitude, and then you have to climb right back up again. And as I'm climbing down back into Marley Lake, I note that they have been doing a lot of construction because they're rebuilding and reconstructing the dam. You know, it's been around for since 1877, so it's time for a little bit of repairs. So that's what they've been working on this year. And most of the trails were closed during the week, but we were there at the weekend and they'd reopened the trails just for the weekends because there was no construction going on. And so as you climb back down through the forest, you eventually meet a road which is at this point quite heavily worn through all the construction traffic that's going on during the week. And you have to uh head south and continue downhill a little bit to connect with another road which takes you up to Snow Valley Peak. Now there is a signpost there that says Snow Valley Peak, 1.1 miles, and TRT 0.9 miles. So that's the way to go. And there's another metal gate there that you need to get around. And now you start the ascent proper up to Snow Valley Peak. And it's a wide mud road, not too rocky, and actually not very steep in the end. It does sort of a couple of really long switchbacks. So you're sort of gently going up the mountainside. At this point, the temperature is starting to pick up a little bit, starting to get a little bit warmer now. It's still only seven in the morning, but you can tell it's going to be a hot day and starting to sweat a little bit as I'm going up the hill. And as I'm going up through the dust, I know there's not really any human footprints up this road, at least at this time. Remember, most people who are going to climb Snow Valley Peak will start at the s the Spooner Summit. I've seen very few accounts of people doing this shorter summit route. And I will say it's a bit disappointing because it's really cool to start from the lake and then make your way up from the lake all the way up to Snow Valley Peak because it feels like it's more of a complete journey rather than you just did a little side side hustle from the Tahoe Rim Trail. Now, as I'm ascending up, now there's no trees, it's fully exposed, you're on the ridgeline here of the Carson Range. You've come up and over the shoulder of that unnamed peak, dropped into the valley through Marlett Lake, and now you're out of the trees. And when you look back, you can see the lake and the distance, but between you and the lake is that unnamed peak. You can tell you sort of come over the shoulder, not over the peak itself, but sort of around and over the shoulder to the north. And as I'm following up the path, I start to notice that there are some footprints in the dust in the road. And I look closely at them, and they're definitely four prints. There's no human prints next to them, so it's not a domesticated animal. And so I'm just trying to determine what type of animal it is. And I haven't made that determination, but it could be coyote or it could be a mountain lamb, but it's kind of hard to tell. It's not really clearly well formed. But we know there are some big cats out in the area or big dogs out in the area. I don't see any on this morning, or not at this time. It's gotten a little light and it's kind of hot and dusty. I do see quite a number of grouse on this particular hillside, and they're really well camouflaged in the foliage on the hillside. They're sort of grey and speckled. I just see one above me, probably about a hundred yards, and was actually quite impressed with myself that I managed to spot it. I haven't been particularly good at spotting wildlife, particularly how well adapted and camouflaged they are in these massive landscapes. But I was pretty pleased to see this one. But I, you know, I left it alone and kept my head down and kept climbing. And as you get climbing higher and higher, the world really starts to open up before you. And as you're looking southward, you're looking through this huge valley that then eventually leads out into Lake Tahoe. And Lake Tahoe, the full wet breadth of it, starts to become more and more visible. So eventually I make it up to the Tahoe Rim Trail. And you can tell as you're at the Tahoe Rim Trail, there's markers actually either side of the road. And you're transecting the Tahoe Rim Trail. So you're really just crossing over to the other side to continue the road all the way up to Snow Valley P. And as I as I'm transecting it, a group of three young women come down the TRT and I say hi and ask them what they're doing, and they tell me they're doing the whole Tahoe Rim Trail. So I ask them what day they're on, and they say this is day two. So and they admitted that they uh they recognized its early days, and so I just gave them a little bit of a warning it was going to be super hot that day, but hopefully they they realize that. And they went on their way, and so I just continued up, and this is the part this is the little spur that goes from the TRT up to the Snow Valley Peak. It's about 0.2 miles, it's really not very far, and it's not very steep. You just follow the road all the way up, it winds its way up to the telecom towers that are at the top of Snow Valley Peak. Now, when you get there, the peak is dominated by some big solar arrays that are powering the telecom tower. And that little trig point doesn't really stick much above the ground, but you can see it's there. Somebody's left a little rock, it says Snow Valley Peak, and the altitude they've sort of written in charcoal on the rock. And then behind it's a little concrete block, a square concrete block. Somebody's piled some flat stones on. And inside there is the register. So if you're looking for the register, it's this inside this very distinct rectangular concrete block. And then I take a moment to look in the view. And behind you, you can see Snow Valley Peak East, which is a little bit below you and heading out towards the Great Basin. I didn't think to go over and tag that peak while I was there, but I probably should have done since I was up there. And then you can sort of see, you know, Carson City behind. And you know you're standing right there on the second highest high point of a state capital city anywhere in the US for what that's worth. But when you look the other way and you look out to Lake Tahoe, that's the wow moment. You can see the entire lake. And at this point, the ridgeline is completely devoid of trees. So it's not like you've got anything hindering your way. It's completely open. It's an open meadow. And so what I did was I sort of went back off the peak a little bit. It only drops 100 feet and went out to like a little outcrop just to the west where you get the full impact of the view of Lake Tahoe. And this is this is spectacular. You can see the entire Lake Tahoe Basin. It really is a spectacular view. It might be one of the best views you can get of Lake Tahoe. Even though the peak itself is not prominent, it's not significant, it's not a big, jagged, tough climb, and there's a telecom box on it. If you just come off and you take that view in, it's amazing. You can see the entirety of the basin. For those who are following what we're doing in Blister Pot with the Tahoe five peaks, you can see all of the other five peaks that are dotted around the lake. To the north, you've got Rose, and then sort of across the opposite side, opposite corner of the lake, is Granite Chief, and then you look down to the south, and you can see Tilak. And then you look back on the ridge line you're standing on, you see the sandy peak of Friel, and in the foreground below you is Genoa Peak. So it's really a great view, and it was a perfect blue sky day, so not a cloud in the sky, and you just see this the spectacular mountains ringing the lake. And then it was time to make my way down. And so what I actually where I was actually standing right there, there's a little marker. It's got it's a local mystery, the 1915 marker that's probably marking the boundary of of the of Carson City and the state park. But nobody seems to know online what that what that marker actually means. Anyway, made my way back down the way I came. So back down the road, back in the valley, and it was starting to warm up. And so I get back to that road that leaves to Marlot Lake, and I have to climb back out of that little valley, and it just felt hot and sweaty and kind of miserable because the heat was really starting to build. But quickly you're back over that ridge, and then it's sort of a nice downhill ascent all of the way. And I didn't really start to see people until about half a mile from the parking lot. I started to see some folks coming up who were going for a little hike. Most of them were not hikers, they were wearing you know street sneakers and flip-flops and stuff. But I ended up seeing maybe seven or eight people as I ended up back into the parking lot. And when I got back into the parking lot, bear in mind when I left, I was the only car in the parking lot. It was packed. So many people with haulers and towels and chairs all ready to go to the beach and sit on the shoreline. It was really humming. And so I just got back in my car and called off a little bit and then fought my way out of the parking lot. But what an experience. I would highly recommend Snow Belly Pete. But if you're really going to do it, do it properly. Do it from shore to peak. I think it ended up being a half miles. It was about 3,200 feet in elevation game. It took me about four hours, four, just over four hours, four hours and 15 minutes or so. So it's a really good way to get out there and hike, do a great morning hike. And I love the story behind this one. You start there, you can see the Thunderbird Lodge. You can think of Bill the Lion tearing along the street. And uh then you climb up to them, past Marlett Lake, that engineering wonder, and end up on the second highest high point of any state city. So it's got a really wonderful story behind it. You go, it's classic Lake Tahoe hiking. It's manageable, I think, for most hikers. It's never particularly steep. The trail's fairly easy to follow. And then you get the reward at the top of the resplendent view of the entire Tahoe basin. So definitely one for you if you're looking for something a little less rugged around the lake to hike, and I would entirely recommend it. Now, off you pop.