ABOVE THE RIM; NEARLY COMPLETED TAHOE RIM TRAIL LOOP IS A LOFTY VISION.

Byline: Brett Pauly Daily News Outdoors Editor

He called it his ``impossible dream'' - building a footpath encircling Lake Tahoe that would cross two states, six counties and 150 miles of unspoiled Alpine territory.

What was Glenn Hampton's vision in 1977 just got a whole lot closer to reality after the last major hurdle in completing the Tahoe Rim Trail was overcome.

With the U.S. Forest Service signing off Oct. 27 on a proposal to scratch out the trail's final 10-mile stretch near Mount Rose, the course's keepers can move forward with their goal of finishing the project in three years.

``We keep saying, `Done by 2001,' '' said Lynda McDowell, executive director of the Stateline, Nev.-based Tahoe Rim Trail Association. ``We are close to closing the loop.''

Final permission to complete the project should come this winter from the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, overseer of the area's development standards, which, McDowell said, has ``approved everything else.''

The news couldn't come too soon for Hampton, 65, who teaches forest ecology, natural history and survival skills at two colleges in Vermont.

``I'm sort of getting to the end of my trail, and it's a wonderful feeling that the Tahoe Rim Trail that was my dream so many years ago is going to come true,'' he said. ``It will be my legacy. Nobody will ever take that from me.''

A former recreation officer for the Forest Service's Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit, Hampton took an early retirement in 1984, handed off his project to the Tahoe Rim Trail Association he founded three years earlier and promptly moved east. He hasn't seen the trail or the lake since.

``I hope they invite me to the ribbon-cutting. I guarantee you I will hike the whole thing,'' said Hampton, who was an Angeles National Forest ranger in Pearblossom before transferring to Tahoe. ``That's a promise.''

From the scenery available to hikers who travel the trail's 12-mile Nevada section from Spooner Summit on Highway 50 south to Kingsbury Grade along Highway 207, it's easy to understand Hampton's passion and the zeal with which the association has carried his torch.

Starting at an elevation of 7,200 feet, the segment climbs to about 7,750 in less than two miles and begins to serve up expansive views. To the east is arid Carson Valley; to the west lies 6,229-foot Lake Tahoe, dubbed a gem by some and ``the eighth wonder of the world'' by no less an authority than renowned boxing referee, television judge and lawyer Mills Lane of nearby Reno, Nev. To call it simply beautiful is certainly an understatement.

The exclamation point on one recent hike was a six-pack of black-tailed mule deer that showed little fear as two-legged visitors approached.

Still farther westward are the peaks and valleys that compose El Dorado National Forest's Desolation Wilderness and neighboring Granite Chief Wilderness in the Tahoe National Forest. To witness the verdant vastness of Tahoe's west side eases the eyesore of so much treeless turf on its east side. Felled by design, the tall timbers were victimized by drought and, later, by beetles that infested their dry, compromised barks.

Stunning vistas aside, the Tahoe Rim Trail is admired by backpackers for being a rare, mammoth loop course - finishing at its point of origin. Most treks that long are linear, meandering from point A to point B.

``It's kind of cool. In most of my hiking, you go 15 to 20 miles and can't see where you've been,'' Steve Andersen of Mill Valley said. ``The Tahoe Rim Trail is the only hike I was able to look back on at the end of the day and see my progress. You can actually stand up, turn around and say, `Oh my God, I was there yesterday.' You are always able to get a reference of where you are.''

Andersen and his hiking partner, Art Presser of La Selva Beach, tackled the track in August and are credited by the Tahoe Rim Trail Association as the first to complete the trail in its entirety. The team trekked for 16 days and took three layover days - fly-fishing for more than 100 rainbow trout at Star Lake to the southeast, then repeating the angling feat while day-tripping to the Rubicon River to the southwest. They bushwhacked through the incomplete sections - two miles in the Page Meadows area near Tahoe City (to be finished in 1999) and the 10 miles from Nevada's Mount Rose to California's Martis Peak (``Done by 2001'').

``It was the most fun I'd had in 20-plus years of backpacking,'' said Andersen, who undertook the Tahoe odyssey after unseasonably late snow pack in the High Sierra ruined plans to challenge the John Muir Trail.

Meanwhile, there was an air of celebration Saturday during Tahoe Rim Trail Association's annual meeting as members marked the Forest Service's OK to construct the trail's last section.

Dedicated to building and maintaining the 24- to 36-inch-wide pathway over the ridge tops surrounding Lake Tahoe, the 700-member nonprofit volunteer group's funds are derived primarily through its Adopt-A-Mile program. For a $5,000 donation, the group shepherds one mile of the trail; 106 of its 150 miles are registered to foster hikers.

Yet even after the Tahoe Rim Trail is completed, its namesake association's work won't be done.

``The biggest challenge now is to put in place a club to maintain that trail in the condition they want it to be,'' Hampton said.

``It would be nice to finally move into the preservation stage,'' echoed McDowell, who had waited her entire eight years as the association's executive director to see the track's last segment approved by the Forest Service.

To reach the Tahoe Rim Trail Association, call [phone], e-mail tahoerimaol.com or write to: Tahoe Rim Trail, P.O. Box 4647, Stateline, NV 89449. Their Web site is www.tahoerimtrail.org.

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos, Map

PHOTO (1--2--Color) Left, the scenery along the Tahoe Rim Trail's Nevada section from Spooner Summit to Kingsbury Grade can be particularly stunning, as evidenced by this vantage. Top, the view of Sand Harbor and the vast lake from the Tahoe Rim Trail as it slithers through Lake Tahoe Nevada State Park.

Courtesy of Tahoe Foto/Wolfgang Kohz

(3--Color) HAMPTON

MAP: (Color) LAKE TAHOE AND THE TAHOE RIM TRAIL

Dionisio Munoz/Daily News