28 Nov Setting the Bar
Of all the talented and influential women skiers from the Reno-Tahoe area, Dodie Post Gann and Marcelle “Marce” Barkley Herz share space on the short list of all-time greats....
27 Sep Galen Rowell: A Dynamic Mountain Light Remembered
In 1969, I was walking along the base of El Capitan in Yosemite Valley with a couple of climbing buddies when we ran into Galen Rowell. I was new to the sport and not up on my Yosemite climbing history, and thus had never heard...
30 Apr The Trailblazer Who Forged the Flume
If trails could talk, the Marlette Flume Trail would fill volumes. As one of the most historic, popular and scenic trails in the world, the Marlette Flume Trail represents far more than just a tourist attraction. This 4.5-mile-long ribbon of decomposed granite along a benched cliff...
30 Apr Flashbacks From a Mountain Biking Mecca
Living within my 67-year-old body is a 20-year-old playing Frisbee with friends on a drought-stretched beach in North Lake Tahoe. It’s early spring 1977 and there’s zero snow at lake level. Between throws and catches, a faraway flash from across the lake, high above the...
25 Sep Decades-Old Mountain Mystery Put to Rest
Only while skiing Sun Valley Resort’s Bald Mountain was Jeanne Smith Gaida able to feel the spirit of a man who had cast a long shadow on her life....
25 Sep Martin Arrouge: The Sheepherder Who Unlocked World-Class Ski Terrain
The story of how Wayne Poulsen developed Olympic Valley in company with—and then without—Alex Cushing is well documented. There is no need to repeat it here. What is far less known—even among ski historians—is the embryonic influence of Martin Arrouge, the man responsible for introducing...
26 Apr Steve McKinney: Transcending the Continuum of Excellence
Steve McKinney was one of the best all-around athletes in Tahoe history. Given the long line of exceptional athletes who have called this region home—dating back to the skiing pioneers of the mid-nineteenth century—that is saying a lot. ...
30 Nov An Extreme Journey
Tahoe has played a pivotal role in the world of winter sports several times in recent history: the 1960 Winter Olympic Games and, in the 1980s, the creation of the snowboard halfpipe and the birth of the “extreme skiing” phenomenon. My intersection with extreme skiing was...
25 Apr Dick Buek: Wild by Land, Air and Ski
Lake Tahoe and Truckee tend to attract free spirits. Few have been freer than Richard “Dick” Buek....
25 Apr Family Ties
Many an athlete has represented the Lake Tahoe region over the years on the grandest winter sports stage of all: the Olympic Winter Games. After the most recent iteration in Beijing, JC Schoonmaker can add his name to that lengthy list. But while a significant...