It was a tough hike but it had every type of terrain. It displayed everything in layers. It had huge granite bedrock, enormous granite boulders, streams, wildflowers, meadows, real broad, open vistas. It just had a variety of terrain. Some of it was easy. Most of it was hard. It wore me out.

I did. I used a mapping program and I created a rough map and then that went to a professional cartographer who made the maps you see in the book.

They've been gorgeous. There has been a profusion of them all along the trails from Southern California up. What I saw today on the way to Echo Summit there was just a huge evidence of a really good year.

The corn lilies are just barely beginning to wilt, and the same thing with the mule's ears. They're not even really rusting yet. I was up around Elephants Back and Roundtop yesterday and there were still fresh, perky mule's ears. All the streams have plenty of Indian paintbrush and lupine, and coming around Winnemucca Lake in the Mokelumne Wilderness it was up to my shoulders in some places. You literally had to fight though the flowers still.

I do. It's a trail I was on just yesterday. It starts at the Carson Pass. You can either go to Showers Lake, and that goes through Meiss Meadow. Or you can go from Carson Pass south to Winnemucca Lake. Both of those are just outstanding for wildflowers right around the middle of June.

It is. It really works your knees. It's a jarring hike but it's beautiful. You go through two big meadows. Bryan Meadow and Benwood Meadow and you've got a variety of terrain. A lot of granite.

My favorite has a terrible name. It's the Four-Q Lakes. They are just beyond Lake Schmidell. They are beautiful. Near Velma Lakes is a lake that's just gorgeous and I don't think many people go to it because it's somewhat inaccessible, and that's Fontanillis Lake.

In this area a few and we are very fortunate. There is the Tahoe Rim Trail Association and not only do they have a lot of volunteers, they get grant money for paid work. The Pacific Crest Trail Association has an awful lot of volunteers. The Forest Service. I think we have four national forests here. And there's the S.C.A. — I believe it stands for the Student Conservation Association. They go out and build lots of good trails.

I'm a year-round hiker. But I do like the fall. Honestly, though, my favorite season is late spring because the days are getting longer.

It's incredible. I came across three ladies who had done an eight-mile hike to Showers Lake from Carson Pass, and there wasn't one of them under 70. And it was a hot day.

Yes. One of the things I included in this book was essential gear. It cautions to always carry rain gear. You can just about guarantee around Lake Tahoe somewhere at 3 in the afternoon it's going to rain.

Ponderosa and Jefferys look almost identical but the pinecones are the giveaway. The ponderosa will have a cone that is very prickly, you can't hold it very easily. The Jeffery is called a gentle Jeffery. But the real key on the Jeffery is the bark will smell like butterscotch. The juniper and incense cedar are separated a lot by elevation. The incense cedars are in the foothills to about 5,500 or 6,000 feet. The juniper will have the blue berries on them.

They are. In Desolation they encourage using bear canisters but everywhere else in the Sierra it's mandatory. You are escorted out if you don't comply.

The majority of people might not. That just means the majority of people, and that includes myself, were just lucky. Hanging your food does nothing more than delay the bears reaching it. The bear is gonna get that food. But the canisters are indestructible and the bears can't carry them off. Most of the agencies will loan one out if you don't have one.

I've been hiking for a long time. I would give slide shows about places I where would do hikes. It would turn into people asking me to take them hiking. So I started hiking figuring I'd take some of the work out of it by using llamas. They would carry the lion's share of the supplies. They're wonderful animals. As things change in life, that business ended. I went back to high-tech work. I wrote papers for large corporations. So I had an ability to write. So this opportunity came up with Menasha Ridge Press. ... I pitched doing a book about Tahoe saying there's just too much there to ignore. They wanted 35 trails. I said let's do more. ... There is something in here, I think, for everybody. Tahoe is Tahoe. It's steep. It's hard to find flat places and I think the hikes in this book tend to be on the upper end of moderate to strenuous. But there's still enough to get people who are novices interested in it.

I do. I haven’t talked to publishers yet but it involves the central Sierra and there will be Lake Tahoe hikes in it.