The Reno Arch in Downtown Reno (elev. 4,500’) stretches over Virginia Street at Commercial Row and is probably the most famous landmark in the city of Reno. At 10,776 feet of elevation, Mount Rose is the 2nd highest peak in the Lake Tahoe basin and is situated only 14 miles from downtown Reno, as the crow flies. With 6,200 feet of elevation difference between the summit, and downtown Reno, Mount Rose dominates the landscape to the south and west of the city. The neighborhoods in southwest Reno reach up into the foothills of the Mount Rose Wilderness. The trails and Jeep roads through these foothills have been the bread and butter training grounds for many of Reno’s trail runners for decades.
A common starting point for accessing the trails is the southern terminus of Pinehaven Road in the Caughlin Ranch neighborhood. According to John Trent, the race director of the Silver State 50/50 and long-time Reno resident and trail runner, the route from Pinehaven up to Mount Rose was blazed in the late 1980’s by Roland Martin and Fred Holabird. Later into the 1990’s, Sean Crom who was a two-time Corbitt Award winner as the nation’s top ultra runner in the 1990s, and also won AR 50 six times and was a 2:27 marathoner used to run the route with some frequency. John, Sean, and Joe Braninburg have also run the route in reverse in 1996, starting at the Mount Rose summit trailhead parking lot and summiting Rose before running down to Pinehaven. However, speaking with John and some other local trail runners, it seems that nobody has completed the route from the famous Reno Arch all the way up to the summit, which I believe would be an iconic run for this area.
We provide 2 variations: The all-off-road TH-to-Summit route from the TH at the intersection of Pinehave Rd and Sierra Pine Drive, and the route submitted by Jacob Cooper from the Reno Arch to the summit, which adds ~5 miles of road running. Both are one-way to the summit. Obviously if starting those running the shorter route will have to beat times of those running the longer one (and people running from Reno Arch might want to report their TH split).
