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. ...
Nick Russell is a dude of paradoxes. He’s youthful in appearance and athletically slim, but rocks a grizzled old man’s beard. He could be labeled a stalwart Backcountry Bob, but has core pipe and park credentials. He globe-trots to far-flung mountain ranges, but is most...
Sitting inside a brightly lit real estate office on a sweltering summer afternoon in early August, Norm Nicholls is searching for the right words....
There are ways to take the measure of a man. The years in his life; the life in his years. Two thousand one hundred twenty-five feet is as good a measure as any when it comes to Norman L. Sayler....
Shawn Estes was on a much-needed sabbatical. It was the summer of 2010, and for the first time since he started throwing a baseball on fields in Minden, Nevada, the 37-year-old major league pitcher was not on a team. No games on the schedule. No injury-riddled...
When Elena Hight speaks about optimizing her mindset, how activism and professional snowboarding have converged in her life or any other topic pertaining to her esteemed career, the 32-year-old South Lake Tahoe resident oozes both a casual tone and a depth of experience. With so...
It’s a sunny, warm afternoon at Kirkwood Mountain Resort, but it’s been so sunny and warm lately that the snow has turned to concrete. Nobody without obsidian edges is having much fun. Well, except one person. ...
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...
Jamie Anderson didn’t win 19 X Games medals and two Olympic golds without extraordinary talent. But the South Lake Tahoe snowboarder’s skill in staying chill—that is, the ability to maintain Zen at the world’s most tightly wound, high-stakes athletic events—is what sets her apart from...
Claire Hewitt-Demeyer had just unloaded a chairlift when she got the call. On this particular Friday afternoon in February 2021, the South Lake Tahoe snowboarder was taking advantage of the lifts at Kirkwood to get as many runs in as possible, rather than venturing out to...