What I remember most about that hike near Carson Pass is not the tinseled sparkle of snowmelt streams or the icy dip in a mountain lake. It is what I found growing on a swale of granite that appeared to hold a thimble of soil:...
Lake Tahoe was looking more like an ocean. Mid-May, an inevitable late-season system was about to hit the Sierra Nevada. Temperatures plummeted below freezing. Westerly winds blew dark, fast-moving clouds across the sea-foam green water. The waves had white caps....
In a nondescript clearing surrounded by a ring of lodgepole pines stands a monument to the humble origins of a conservation powerhouse. The tucked-away sign—often passed without notice by climbers, runners, mountain bikers and campers—memorializes the initial conservation victory of the nascent Truckee Donner Land Trust,...
Just inside a door opening to the sheltered exterior stair, a rectangular piece of slate painted with a mountain scene—a bear fishing in a creek—hangs on the wall. The word “WELCOME” is stenciled above the woodsy image in large black letters....
Allow me to introduce you to my new(est) lustful fixation—the electric bike, considered to be moral turpitude on wheels by some, or healthy outlet by others. For the uninitiated and e-abstainers who’ve willed their fisted palms from gripping the handlebars of these taboo idols, all e-bikes...
On June 9, 2015, the El Dorado County Animal Services received an unprecedented call. They were asked to remove a large rattlesnake from underneath the porch of a home in the Bijou neighborhood of South Lake Tahoe, in the core of the city’s population center....
The Angel of Tahoe is seated on her sofa with the mid-morning light streaming through a window that looks out to the greening fairways of Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course. Beyond them, the snow-clad slopes of Heavenly rise to the sky. Slowly, she begins to tell...
When Leland Stanford hoisted a silver-plated hammer above his head in a remote patch of uninhabited Utah, the world awaited his strike. The American West was only recently connected to the rest of the nation by telegraphic wires, and ceremony organizers had contrived to put one...
A failed sunset balancing act under Rainbow Bridge results in one indelible moment captured on camera A highline, as a noun, is an elevated length of tubular webbing tensioned between two fixed objects. The webbing is an inch wide and has a tensile strength of 4,000...
Reverend Rusty Reams and his Great Bingo Revival bring a hip new twist to a classic game Moments of bingo glory don’t quickly fade from one’s memory. Like the time my family and I went all in on a weeklong game at sea. Although I was...