Brant Allen’s three-month stint at Lake Tahoe has lasted 34 years so far. After graduating from UC Santa Barbara with a marine biology degree, Allen was looking for short-term jobs in freshwater fisheries. He ended up taking a temporary position at a picturesque alpine lake shared...
California is home to some of the biggest trees in the world. Redwoods, Douglas firs and Sitka spruces that tower over the lush forests of the north coast. Giant sequoias of incomprehensible girth scattered across disparate groves of the Sierra Nevada. Stately sugar pines stretching...
Most people come to Lake Tahoe and find a marina. Mansoor “Elie” Alyeshmerni came to a marina and found Lake Tahoe....
California is no stranger to natural disasters. Between earthquakes, mudslides, floods and wildfires, the Golden State had been handed the short end of the stick by Mother Nature countless times....
In the decades since the Tahoe Keys housing development in South Lake Tahoe was built on sensitive marshland, it has vexed environmentalists as a problem without an easy solution. The 250-plus-acre area, which once acted as a sort of filter for the meandering Upper Truckee River...
Just past the break of dawn in early May, Will Richardson is in the parking lot of Aspen Grove in Incline Village, preparing to lead a group of birdwatchers into the woods. Coming from Truckee, Reno, Carnelian Bay—and even as far away as Oregon—each member...
Throughout history, the fate of wolves has been tied to the attitudes and actions of humans. This long history is filled with thousands of years of deification and reverence for the animal, and vicious killing campaigns and demonization that nearly wiped the species off the...
Less than an hour’s drive north of Lake Tahoe lies the wide expanse of Sierra Valley—a land of endless vistas, marshes, sagebrush, tiny towns and sprawling ranches that have operated for well over a century. It is a place to watch for sandhill cranes and antelope,...
It is a clear, crisp day in mid-December, and I am visiting the northernmost sequoia grove in California, located in a remote patch of conifer forest outside the small town of Foresthill. Sunbeams filter through the thick forest canopy onto a thin layer of snow...
Brian Newman was standing on Echo Summit when the Caldor Fire crested the ridge and moved into the Lake Tahoe Basin on August 30. At approximately 7,382 feet, the summit does not have a reputation as a path for wildfires. Instead, the Sierra pass and its...