Peavine Peak

Peavine Peak - April 25th, 2015

Reno, NV

Distance: 10 mi (Round Trip)

Elevation Gain: ~3800 ft.

Highest Elevation: 8,269 ft.

Dogs: Allowed

Difficulty: Intermediate

8:01 am - 30 minutes into the hike and no snow on the trail

On Saturday, April 25th, Allison and I were both really excited to finally have found time to do a really difficult PCT training hike. Planning a 3 month hike while still participating in normal life and still maintaining our sanity had recently left us with little time to do longer training hikes.  We had also recently taken four days off so I could rest my left knee which had been giving me problems.

8:43 am - The rain turned to snow several minutes ago.

The hike turned out to be a really successful training hike.  Let's just say Peavine Peak was harder than 3/4 of our days on the PCT will be and we rocked it.  We made better than average time with Jaxxon in tow, downright terrible conditions, and full packs (30 and 45 lbs respectively).  My legs felt great and our cold weather and waterproof gear really work amazingly well.

10:49 am - 2hrs of snow and wind later, we reach the peak
and the sun came out!

The hike was ten miles and gained 3,800 ft of elevation in the first five miles with a maximum elevation of just about 8,000 feet.  To put this into perspective, we will only have one section of the PCT in the first 3/4 of the hike that contains anything this hard!  It rained all night the night before and we started the hike early, 7:30 am.  After gaining about 1000 ft of elevation the rain turned to snow which proceeded to turn into a small snow storm as we continued to gain elevation.

11:54 am - Almost all 2" of the snow is gone.

By the time we got to the top there was about two inches of snow.  The sun broke through right as we reached the summit and the temperature rose from below freezing to probably 45-50 in a matter a hour or so.  All the snow the snow turned to liquid water during this time and made a little creek out of half of the service road which we hiked on during the upper 1/3 of the hike.  What was really crazy is that about 45 minutes later the dry-desert ground had slurpped up all the snow melt and the ground was almost dry by the time we got to the car.  It was one of the most extreme weather days I've ever had during a hike.  Talk about a good hike to show us that we were in a good place, training wise, for our PCT hike.

Me at the summit.