Lost Ring Found, Castle Rock Trail, Lake Tahoe
4:52pm, March 2nd, 2026, I received a text requesting a lost ring search on the Castle Rock Trail. This scenic trail is a one mile hike to a rock outcrop that provides spectacular views of Lake Tahoe. With the trailhead at 7,400+ feet in altitude, I expected a good amount of snow along the trail and the search area. The text included a description of how the ring was lost and satellite images with pinned gps coordinates.
March 3rd, around 8:30am, I arrived at the trailhead with metal detecting equipment and snowshoes. Fortunately the night-time temperatures were cold enough to create a frozen top crust on the deep snow and I didn’t need to use the snowshoes. The hike to the search site was just short of a mile with a little over 400 feet of elevation gain. With minimal cellular reception, it took a little extra time to locate the pinned gps coordinates. Within 10 minutes of searching, a solid repeatable signal was located. A quick dig in the snow revealed the lost ring. So within 15 hours of being notified, the ring was recovered. I scheduled a meetup with the ring owner that afternoon in Carson City, so the total time from being notified to the return of the ring was less than 24 hours.
