Before Robert Erickson’s handmade furniture caught the eye of national collectors, before his three-legged Van Muyden chair joined the Yale University Art Gallery collection, before his fiddleback maple rocking chair was added to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Nevada City-area craftsman tried his hand...
They are nearly 100 years old, weigh 288,000 pounds and move at 4 miles per hour. And you can go a decade or more without seeing them in action. But when historic snowstorms pound the Sierra Nevada, the legendary rotary snowplows come out of hibernation...
The Met Gala is known for being a fashion highlight of the year each May, coming just a couple of months after celebrities tantalize the paparazzi with their wardrobe choices at the annual Academy Awards. As the weather continues to warm, however, fashion finds another...
Nick Cahill swings open the cantilevered glass doors of his 1988 Thomas Built Mighty Mite and steps into the driver’s seat. From the outside, the 23-foot-long adventure steed’s hood looks like it may have once delivered bread to grocery stores. The rest of the bus...
Robb Gaffney is outdoors. As you read this, there is no way he is sitting inside. If you know Robb personally, you most likely encountered him in an outdoor setting. You may have crossed poles with him on the side of a mountain, or perhaps you walked...
The washboard-infested road demands attention, but I can’t help but stare in the rearview mirror. The eastern horizon is on fire with the last rays of sunlight. Crimson clouds hang above a dramatic mountain crest glowing in bubblegum pink light. The sight is particularly satisfying as...
In their final days of life, Tahoe’s kokanee salmon put on a show. Flame red and hook-jawed, they thrash up Taylor Creek with an inescapable biological urge to spawn in the gravelly channel of the South Lake Tahoe stream where they were born. Between them...
On Monday, May 9, 2022, Adrian Ballinger stood on the summit of Makalu, the fifth-highest peak in the world at 27,776 feet. Ballinger, the affable mountain guide and CEO of Tahoe-based Alpenglow Expeditions, is no stranger to standing on the summit of the world’s tallest...
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...
For as long as organisms have roamed earth, there have been trails—pathways connecting one point to another for animals to find food, water and shelter. As human life evolved, so did trail networks, with early inhabitants sharing dirt pathways with animals in the quest for survival....