Tahoe Fund was awarded a $130,000 Recreation Trails Program grant to restore the Incline Flume Trail, also known as the “other flume trail.”

The restoration work will be led by the Friends of Incline Trails in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service, Tahoe Rim Trail Association and Tahoe Area Mountain Biking Association. Trail days are scheduled for June 15-17, July 21-23, Aug. 12, and Sept. 26, 28 and 30.

They will be build a retaining wall in a particularly erosive area, and install interpretive and way-finding signage. It will also help fund the transfer of the historic bull wheel (located nearby the trail) from the Nevada Land Trust to the Forest Service.

Tahoe Fund partnered with Friends of Incline Trails to provide funding for the environmental permitting to have the trail adopted by the U.S. Forest Service. The new designation as an official Forest Service trail was received in May.

The Incline Flume Trail, known for its flat terrain and lake views, runs for seven miles from Mt. Rose Highway across Diamond Peak Ski Resort to Tunnel Creek Road. It is the site of a former flume system that operated in the Comstock Era.

In December 2015, David and Cheryl Duffield donated 18.6 acres of land along the trail, including the historic bull wheel, to Nevada Land Trust, a nationally-accredited nonprofit conservation land trust based in Reno whose work includes a portion of the Tahoe basin. Volunteers from TAMBA, Tahoe Rim Trail Association, and Friends of Incline Trails built the missing link of the trail through that section of property last fall, opening the trail from Mt. Rose Highway all the way to the Tunnel Creek Trail. The land will be transferred from the Nevada Land Trust to the Forest Service later this year, putting the entire trail in public hands for the first time in decades.