Growing up in Fresno, Calif.—a pretty good basecamp for exploring the Central Coast, nearby national parks and the San Joaquin River—gave Helena Guglielmino a taste for the outdoors early on. In 2014, while living in Truckee and attending Sierra Nevada College (now the University of Nevada, Reno, at Lake Tahoe), she adopted an energetic lab-border collie mix, which increased her outdoorsiness level a few notches. In 2018, she moved to Reno and realized just how much public land is accessible from here; that cemented the deal. She is now a seasonal trail-maintenance employee for the Tahoe Rim Trail, and she’s been the RN&R’s outdoors columnist since May 2024. Her first guidebook, Urban Trails: Reno, was released on Oct. 1 and will be available online at Mountaineers Books or Amazon. Sierra Arts Gallery, at 17 S. Virginia St., is hosting a launch party from 4 to 7 p.m., Saturday Oct. 25.
What made you decide to write a guidebook?
I did an internship with Outdoor Writers Association of America in 2020. Through the association, the editor at Mountaineers (Books) found me, and she reached out.
Why did the publisher want a Reno book in particular?
They’re looking at just how large Reno’s growing. … And I think Reno’s beginning to get this reputation as an outdoor place.
As your editor at the RN&R, I know your writing voice, and I know you’re not afraid to be transparent about some of the difficult parts of hiking, or even about mistakes you’ve made. You bring that same honesty to this guidebook. I haven’t seen that done in a guidebook before.
Yeah, this is me. I’m bringing my voice to it. I am very aware, because, like, my family’s not outdoorsy. A lot of my friends like to hike or backpack, but not to the level that I do, so I am very aware that the adventures that I take, the hikes that I go on, the things that I do, maybe sound really extreme. When I tell my family I’m going backpacking for three days, they’re like, “That’s crazy. That’s insane.” But I’m just an average person. I’m at an average fitness level. I go out there; I have a really hard time. It’s not like magic and butterflies all the time. I’m very aware that the outdoors don’t feel accessible to a lot of people … so I want to let people know, yeah, I’ve made so many mistakes, and that doesn’t preclude you from being able to enjoy being in nature.
As you researched the book, was there anything that surprised you?
I kind of knew this going into this book, but it just reinforced this idea that we have such great access. We have so many dedicated organizations and people who want to build a sustainable trail system here. I’ve written about sustainable trails in Reno before and the connectivity that we’re trying to achieve in this area. Organizations like Truckee Meadows Trails, Biggest Little Trail Stewardship, Tahoe-Pyramid Trail—then, of course, our land agencies locally—they are all coming together to build this thing. Essentially, they want to provide access from every neighborhood into the outdoors.
Has doing this book project made you want to do another project?
It’s kind of unlocked this really nerdy thing in me. … I’m sure people at work are so tired of me talking. They’re like, “Oh, we saw this really cool state park in Nevada.” I’m like, “Oh my God, let me tell you about all the things and the history, and why it’s named this way.” And I’m sure they’re like, “Please shut up.” So I think it would be cool to keep working on things of this nature. … In what form? I don’t know. We’ll see.
Is there anything else you’d like to mention?
Almost every hike in this book (besides the ones that are in Washoe Valley) pretty much touches a neighborhood in Reno, Sparks, North Valleys or Spanish Springs. It was really important for me to keep the hikes as local as possible, so that people can do these after work, on their lunch break, on the way to run errands. A lot of other guides will do a few hikes here in Reno and then focus on stuff in Tahoe or Truckee or in the higher elevations. It was really important for me to highlight just how much is available to us here.