Outdoor recreation opportunities abound during Tahoe’s shoulder season Shoulder season in Tahoe is the valley between two mountains, the lull between summer adventures and winter thrills. During this stretch—generally from mid-September to mid-December—residents and the area’s rare visitors enjoy the bounty of the low season....
Record 2016–17 winter opens the door to a backcountry snowboarding adventure in the Southern Sierra Hideous knocks and squeals reverberate through the truck cab with every rotation of the tires. The veteran shocks and struts on our trusty Tacoma absorb heavy blows in a vicious off-road...
Athletes increasingly engaging in both downhill and Nordic skiing Tahoe’s downhill resorts—totaling some 24,000 skiable acres—may get most of the excitement, attention and crowds. But with hundreds of miles of groomed trails at cross-country resorts around The Lake, Nordic skiing provides not just an alternative, but...
One local’s quest to reinvent surfing, skiing, soaring and history Craig Beck doesn’t dabble in hobbies. When the longtime Tahoe local gets into something, he tends to go all in. Whether he’s flying homemade hang gliders or working on his latest project—Tahoe Native Surfboards—Beck is...
Truckee Olympian Katerina Nash has achieved much success since her youth in communist Czechoslovakia To be clear, Katerina Nash is not defending communism. As a child of Soviet-run Czechoslovakia and the late 1980s Velvet Revolution, she is quick to say that democracy and America are good,...
“Practically speaking, a life that is vowed to simplicity, appropriate boldness, good humor, gratitude, unstinting work and play, and lots of walking brings us closer to the actually existing world and its wholeness.” —Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild I was fortunate enough to grow up...
“There is a Paiute proverb to the effect that no man should attempt the country east of the Sierras until he has learned to sleep in the shade of his arrows. This is a picturesque way of saying that he must be able to reduce...
Scratching a summer itch to shred at Nevada’s Sand Mountain Recreation Area It’s mid-August, there’s not a snowflake in sight, but once again, we’re strapping in. Wishful thinking about snowboarding just isn’t enough for freaks like us. Driving east from Fallon on lonely U.S. Highway 50, you...
Like the precious metal that once lured eager prospectors, the Lost Sierra contains miles of prime singletrack waiting to be discovered We were huddled around the steering wheel, laughing at ourselves. Our idea for a pre-dawn start disappeared about seven hours prior. We thought we could...
The Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) meanders 2,650 miles from the barren desert near Mexico to the lush forests of Washington at the Canadian border. While over 40 million people live within a short drive of this mountainous trail, those who take on the challenge of...