For the next two weeks representatives from a professional survey research company will be conducting travel surveys with visitors and residents at several recreational and commercial locations throughout the Lake Tahoe Basin.

Results from the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency’s travel mode survey will be used to track the success of and help plan multi-modal travel options around Lake Tahoe. The short survey conducted on tablets is intended primarily to gather data on travel patterns to commercial and recreation areas, but also will be used to collect visitor-specific data and demographic information. The data will be used solely for the transportation planning process.

The survey is being conducted by NuStats. Data collected via this survey provides transportation planners with annual comparisons on seasonal residency, age, gender, income, vacation stay locations, auto occupancy, and types of transportation in regards to how visitors travel to the Lake Tahoe area. Results of the study will be made available to the public.

Timothy Stoll

Timothy Roger Stoll died suddenly of galloping pneumonia on Feb. 12, 2016. He was  77.

Dr. Stoll, an icon of the Tahoe area, practiced dentistry for more than 50 years in South Lake Tahoe and Minden.

He was born June 16, 1938. While a young boy vacationing with his family in Zephyr Cove in the 1940s and ’50s, he vowed he would make Lake Tahoe his home. Upon graduation from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in San Francisco in 1965, Dr. Stoll came to Tahoe and met with the oldest dentist practicing in the community, Dr. Knudsen. He had limited funds to start a dental practice, so he asked how to start. Dr. Knudsen advised him to “just open your doors and buy your equipment as patients pay their bills.”

Fifty years later, Dr. Stoll was respected among his colleagues and admired with a large following of devoted patients. He put his heart and soul into his dental practice and his level of dentistry was praised by dentists from around the world. He was proficient in all aspects of dentistry, periodontics and cosmetic reconstruction. When his grandson, Talon, asked his grandfather what he liked best about his job, he responded, “I like helping people.”

A perpetual storyteller, he had a large repertoire of jokes ready for anyone who would listen. His capacity for laughter and fun knew no bounds. In addition to making people laugh, he was always ready to lend a helping hand to his family, friends, members of the community, and even the wildlife surrounding his home.

Dr. Stoll’s passion for wildlife and the wilderness led him to a life as an avid sportsman. He loved horsemanship, fly fishing, camping, scuba diving, deep sea fishing, skiing, boating, snowmobiling and shooting, and spent much of his free time in Colorado, Nevada, Wyoming, Alaska and the Caribbean. He obtained his instrument rated pilot’s license, which allowed him greater access to the places he loved to go.

No matter how successful Dr. Stoll was in his professional life he was the humblest of men. His golden rule was to always treat everyone fairly and with respect.

Dr. Stoll loved to rise before the sun, feed his horses, stoke a fire, and quietly immerse himself in a wonderful book. He loved the sweet silence of the morning and was the epitome of the saying, “still waters run deep.”

Dr. Stoll is survived by his wife of 45 years, Phil; children Paul Stoll, Heidi Stoll, Ellery Stoll, Kari Testa, and Marina Ellery; nine grandchildren; and sister Susan Barnes.

A memorial Services will be on Feb. 27 at 11am at Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course in Stateline.

In lieu of flowers the family requests donations be made to Calvary Chapel, P.O. Box 17671, South Lake Tahoe, CA 96151.

·       Jessica Perasso and Dana Dose will be giving a free talk about managing diabetes on March 9 from 6-7pm in the board room at Lake Tahoe Community College.

·      Four pilots deliberately had their planes’ tires skimming Lake Tahoe on Feb. 11 in an attempt to set a Guinness World Record for the longest airplane water ski. Participating were Kevin Sloane of Fly Truckee Tahoe, Kevin Quinn of Points North Heli, Trent Palmer with RC Heli Pilot, and Toby Smith. The men should know within three months if their 30 miles set a record.

·       Dale Dodd, owner of Scusa, Big Daddy’s and Izzy’s Burgers in South Lake Tahoe, is opening an Italian restaurant in March in the old Carrows building near Stateline.

·      There will be a screening of Patagonia’s “Jumbo Wild” on March 10 at 6:30pm at Tahoe Beach Retreat in South Lake Tahoe. Staff from the League to Save Lake Tahoe will share how challenges like those depicted in the movie relate to Lake Tahoe. Cost is $10 for adults, $5 for those 18 and younger.

·       Ryan Sommers, assistant chief for North Lake Tahoe Fire Protection District, will be the interim chief starting March 19.

Eric Munsing will give a talk titled Cars that Run on Sunshine: Making Electricity Greener on March 2 at Lake Tahoe Community College.

Munsing will talk about the opportunities and challenges facing California in the state’s effort to reach its climate change goals. Renewable energy and electric vehicles are considered to be two important energy solutions, but both present many technical challenges for the aging electrical grid. Munsing will discuss how the electricity system is being adjusted to allow for a cleaner, greener future.

Munsing is a researcher in the Energy, Civil Infrastructure, and Climate group at UC Berkeley.

This is a free event begins at 6pm in the board room.

By USSA

LILLEHAMMER, Norway – The Winter Youth Olympic Games closed the cross country competitions with a Nordic mixed team relay. The U.S. team included one female cross country skier, Hannah Halvorsen (Truckee), one male cross country skier, Hunter Wonders (Anchorage) and one nordic combined male, Ben Loomis (Eau Claire, Wis). The U.S. team finished eighth overall in a 3×3.3k race on Friday.

Russia won the Nordic mixed team relays, 21.1 seconds over Norway who stole second from Germany by just 0.4 seconds.

Loomis, Wonders and Halvorsen worked together in this unique event in its inaugural year. They each had strong individual legs, which scored them in eighth overall. Wonders had the second fastest leg of the men’s cross country ski leg, just 15.2 seconds behind Norway’s Vebjoern Hegdal.

El Dorado County on Feb. 21 is closing both directions of Highway 50 between El Dorado Hills Boulevard and Bass Lake Road, as well as the Latrobe Road on-ramp to eastbound Highway 50, the Bass Lake Road on-ramp to westbound Highway 50, and White Rock Road between Valley View Parkway and Entrada Circle.

These closures are for blasting operations for the Silva Valley interchange project.

Both directions of Highway 50 traffic will be detoured around the closures via El Dorado Hills Boulevard, Serrano Parkway and Bass Lake Road.

Closures are as follows:

• Eastbound lanes from Latrobe Road to Bass Lake Road will be closed from 6-8am.
• Eastbound on-ramp at El Dorado Hills Boulevard-Latrobe Road will be closed from 4-8am.
• Westbound lanes from Bass Lake Road to El Dorado Hills Boulevard-Latrobe Road will be closed from 6-8am.
• Westbound on-ramp at Bass Lake Road will be closed from 4-8am.

Emerald Bay appears even more dazzling when not whizzing by in a car. Photo/Kathryn Reed

By Kathryn Reed

For more than 100 years automobiles have been subjected to the whims of Mother Nature when it comes to being able to drive around Emerald Bay on Highway 89.

For the past few winters the closures have been minimal because the snow was close to nonexistent. This year, though, it seems like every storm brings multiple days of impassable roadway.

“I’m told from our maintenance supervisor and superintendent up there that this is actually quite normal for an active winter season like we’re having. They’ve both been working up there going on 30 years,” Steve Nelson, spokesman for Caltrans, told Lake Tahoe News.

Snow on the afternoon of Feb. 19 covers Highway 89 north of Bayview Campground. Photo/Kathryn Reed

On Friday, most of the pavement from the gate at Emerald Bay Campground to the lookout at the Vista Point across from the Bayview Trailhead was clear of snow. But instead of vehicles on the road, a couple dozen people were out walking on it.

Being able to walk – or snowshoe and cross country ski – this stretch of highway is rare. That’s why when the opportunity presents itself it’s worth doing. It’s not a long trek, but is one with such incredible views.

Normally eyes are focused on driving that narrow stretch where the private Cascade Lake is on one side and Emerald Bay is on the other. On foot it’s even more impressive – both the natural beauty and the engineering feat to build the road.

Other than the two sanctioned bike rides around the lake and the marathon events, being on the road without a vehicle can be dangerous.

It’s rare to be able to safely walk on Highway 89. Photo/Kathryn Reed

A dirt road was first built in 1913 around Emerald Bay. It was a tourist attraction at the time for steamers to bring people into the bay to watch as dynamite blew up giant granite boulders that would fly more than 100 feet into the air. For decades the road was never opened in the winter.

This section of roadway is still dicey. No avalanche control is allowed in the area, unlike other stretches of state highways in and around the basin.

Landslides and avalanches are what keep the road closed. Clearing it of snow usually isn’t an issue.

Cascade Lake in the foreground, with Lake Tahoe in the distance. Photo/Kathryn Reed

“There are as many as 15 active slide zones in that four-mile stretch of the highway and no way for us to control it like we do on Highway 50 due to the terrain, so for the safety of the traveling public, we have to close it until the snow has settled and we can go in and clear it all off,” Nelson said on Feb. 19.

Caltrans drivers in a grader and blower were working in tandem on Friday, with the hopes of being able to have the highway open today. To know for sure, click on the state icon on the home page of Lake Tahoe News.

By John Rosemond, Tribune News Service

A 4-year-old boy informed his preschool teacher – a friend of mine – that he’d broken his iPad.

“Oh!” my friend said. “What a shame. Did you drop it?”

“No,” the boy said, very matter-of-factly. “I got mad that my mom wanted me to share it with my sister, so I slammed it on the table and it broke.”

His next sentence: “Now we have two of them so I don’t have to share.”

When the teacher conveyed this to me (as an example of the devolution of parenting since she began teaching), the first thing that came to mind was a gift I received in the mid-1980s from a complete stranger. I had written a column in which I speculated that video games were addictive and shortened a child’s attention span. A few weeks later, UPS delivered a state-of-the-art Nintendo accompanied by a lengthy letter from the president of Nintendo Corporation. It took him nine pages to tell me that I was dead wrong, that video games stimulated all manner of intellectual and social skills. They are, he said, a veritable fount of marvelous benefit.

Read the whole story

By Soumya Karlamangla, Los Angeles Times

Under a law expected to go into effect by April, women in California will be able to stop by their neighborhood pharmacy and buy birth control pills without a prescription.

Proponents argue that easing women’s access to birth control will reduce unintended pregnancies, which make up as many as half of all pregnancies nationwide.

The new initiative is part of a larger effort to simplify America’s healthcare system, proponents say, as more people becoming insured under Obamacare look for quick and convenient ways to get medical care.

Read the whole story

Placer County sheriff’s detectives are investigating the destruction of a statue of the Virgin Mary in Kings Beach as a hate crime.

Sometime last weekend suspects removed the head, hands and fingers of the granite state at Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church. The fingers were found on church property.

Several churches in the area were vandalized last year, though authorities are not saying if the crimes are related.

Anyone with information about this case is asked to call Detective John Riella at 530.581.6325 or Placer County Crimestoppers anonymously at 800.923.8191.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report