It’s hardly newsflash material that Lake Tahoe is a treasure trove for the budding adventurer. The colossal body of water on the California-Nevada state line has beaches hemmed in by alpine forests, some of the finest hiking in the Sierra Nevada, and fantastic high-end ski hotels. But there are still secrets in these hills. Head north from Tahoe on either the 267 or the 89 for about 20 minutes and you’ll come to the railroad town of Truckee, which is the gateway to what’s surely one of the most unique walking paths in the Golden State: the Donner Pass Summit Tunnel Hike.
Covering three miles each way, the route shuns the views of uncrowded Donner Lake and the surrounding pine woods by passing through an abandoned train tunnel. Walkers brave this dark, dank cavern for several miles, with long sections where the only sources of natural light are a few breaks in the concrete walls. It’s a photographer’s dream and offers something a little different from the usual Californian mountain trek.
There are moments when the tunnels drop away to offer sweeping panoramas of the region, along with intriguing graffiti art displays inside the caverns themselves. You’ll also be walking in the footsteps of history – the 1,659-foot tunnel is a leftover from the age of Westward Expansion, built by Chinese immigrants in the 1860s.
The graffiti galleries of the Donner Pass Summit Tunnel Hike
One thing you simply can’t ignore while making your way through the shadowy tunnels of Donner Pass is the montage of eye-catching graffiti that marks the walls. It comes in a multitude of shapes and sizes, from basic tags to bigger works that depict skeletons, big lettering, and human figures. As the light shifts through the gaps in the tunnel walls, it will illuminate different pieces of graffiti throughout the day, while other bits of spray paint are always in the sun, out on the exterior walls of the tunnel itself.
The transformation of these centuries-old tunnels into an ad hoc graffiti art gallery has been the source of some controversy and debate. There are hikers who find the displays intriguing, and as previously mentioned, the walk is now a well-known haunt for photographers. However, there are some that see it as little more than public damage and a blight on an otherwise fascinating historical monument.
Speaking to Tahoe Magazine in 2023, Phil Sexton, a former director of the North Lake Tahoe Historical Society, remarked that “it’s not so much graffiti any more as it is vandalism. A lot of it is obscene, some of it’s political, a lot of it is just nonsense.” As such, the local summit society has now instituted graffiti clean-up programs in the tunnels and there’s even a push to get the area officially classified as a National Historic Landmark.
A step-by-step guide to hiking the Donner Pass Summit Tunnel
