Highway 50 over Echo Summit is expected to be open by 8:15pm after being closed since just after 6:30pm Sunday.

Two vehicles collided on Oct. 2, with at least one person transported to Barton Memorial Hospital.

While snow has been falling intermittently in the Lake Tahoe Basin since this afternoon, the California Highway Patrol would not say if weather was a factor in this crash.

No names or hometowns of the people involved have been release.

No citations were issued.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

By Colton Lochhead, Las Vegas Review-Journal

A Nevada Supreme Court commission on Thursday called for sweeping reforms of the state’s guardianship system in hopes of better protecting the state’s growing elderly and infirm population.

The 236-page report comes as a culmination of 15 months’ worth of commission meetings dating back to June 2015 and includes dozens of recommendations for changes in guardianship law, policy and court rules.

Most notably, the report calls for all people under guardianship to have the right to an attorney, which is not currently granted in Nevada.

Read the whole story

Comments are being sought on the draft environmental impact report for the Palisades at Squaw residential housing project in Olympic Valley.

Currently zoned for high-density residential development, the proposed undeveloped 19.9-acre project site could include up to 63 residential lots consisting of 33 lots for single-family homes and 30 lots for half-plex units, a 100-foot-wide open space easement along the site’s northeastern boundary, a private park, a multipurpose trail easement and right-of-way for utilities and roadways.

Comments will be taken until Nov. 4. The Placer County Planning Commission will have a public hearing on the project Oct. 27 at 10am at the North Tahoe Event Center in Kings Beach. More info about the project is online.

The project does not require approval from the Placer County Board of Supervisors.

A free medication take-back event will take place Oct. 22 from 9am-noon in Tahoe City. It is hosted by the Placer County Sheriff’s Office in partnership with Tahoe-Truckee Future Without Drug Dependence.

Pills should be emptied from bottles into plastic bags and then sealed. Liquids may be dropped off in original bottles. personal information should be removed or crossed out with a permanent marker.

Unacceptable items include sharps and lancets, medical waste, illicit drugs, aerosols and hydrogen peroxide.

In April, Placer County collected 5,700 pounds of medications at the take-back event. This was a 58 percent increase from what was collected at the April 2015 event.

By Molly Hucklebridge Coolidge

When Krysinthia White’s team, 20 Percent Survival, completed the MedWAR Tahoe Challenge at the Taylor Creek Sno-Park, they knew it was not a first place finish. Yet they were still smiling after six flat tires, a bee sting, and multiple wrong turns.

“From our perspective, last place was the best place,” says White. “We had the entire lake [Fallen Leaf] to ourselves and pretty much the entire trail.”

20 Percent Survival is one of 10 teams of wilderness enthusiasts and medical responders who participated in the inaugural MedWAR Tahoe Challenge last month.

MedWAR, which stands for Medical Wilderness Adventure Race, is an all-day competition. In teams of four, racers navigate through various physical activities and complete wilderness medical scenarios. The winning team is determined by race time and points accumulated during the scenarios. For the Tahoe Challenge, teams could also earn extra points for collecting trash and showing their respect for the sensitive ecosystem where the event occurred.

The race is designed for participants with or without a medical background. For the Tahoe Challenge, participants varied from military personnel from Travis Air Force Base to medical staff from Arizona.

“We had an amazing team from all different backgrounds and with different skill sets which made our team whole,” says White. She says her team, who came from Reno and Carson Valley, drew from their experience in the outdoors as well as their varied medical experience as emergency and trauma nurses, ski patrollers, and as a summer camp medic.

Team EPI, from South Tahoe and Reno, received first place for their fast finish of five and a half hours and how well they responded to the medical scenarios. The team was comprised of Jeff Meagher, a building contractor; T.J. Middlemis-Clark, a water engineer; Greg Koeck, a paramedic; and Jeff Koeck, a pharmacist.

This is the first MedWAR to take place in the Lake Tahoe area. After a running start from the sno-park off Highway 89 in South Lake Tahoe, teams kayaked on Fallen Leaf Lake, mountain biked up and down Tahoe Mountain, and trekked through public land in the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit.

Along the way, racers encountered volunteer “victims” depicting medical incidents. Victims acted out a drowning, hypothermia, an allergic reaction, and a climbing accident. Racers also encountered a mock bear mauling incident and a winter avalanche. Calling an ambulance was not an option and all teams were expected to assess, stabilize, improvise, and – when appropriate – treat the patients with the items they had available. Volunteer proctors and staff, mostly comprised physicians and staff from Barton Hospital, assessed how well each team responded.

“All scenarios resembled realistic events that could happen when you are in the backcountry and help is not immediately available,” says Terry Orr of Barton Health’s Tahoe Center for Orthopedics who, along with Steve Bannar and Khristy Gavigan organized the event. “It is our hope that racers and volunteers walk away with a new understanding for how to handle situations in the wilderness and how they can be more prepared.”

Molly Hucklebridge Coolidge works for Barton Health.

Bud Jones decided how he was going to leave Squaw Valley. Photo/Truckee Donner Historical Society

By Abby Stevens, Moonshine Ink 

No one can remember Bud Jones ever changing his clothes. His garb was Levi jeans and jean jacket, a cowboy shirt, big boots, and a black floppy hat with grease rings around the top. He usually kept a tin of Star Tobacco and a flask of whiskey close by, and reportedly sold his wife to a sheepherder for the price of a horse, forever claiming he got the better end of that bargain. Yet beneath his tough exterior lay an industrious entrepreneur and surrogate parent with a fierce dedication to a still wild Squaw Valley, when cows and horses outnumbered skiers.

In 1931, Bud — then a rancher from Folsom — arrived in Squaw Valley (to be named Olympic Valley when the valley was chosen as the site for the 1960 Olympics) with his cattle and horses and founded the Squaw Valley Stables. For the next 31 years Bud would run the Squaw Valley Stables, and a pack station, which supplied visitors to the valley with tools for backcountry fishing and hunting trips. He also supplied milk to residents in Tahoe City and along the Truckee River all summer long. He embodied the rough independence for which this high mountain area is known, an attitude that shakes up local debates — for example about how to manage the land, and how much you can tell people what to do — even today.

Locals who knew him well will never forget him. He resided in a small, shingled cabin that was “completely lopsided,” recalled Mazie Carnell, a longtime Tahoe and Sierra Valley resident who spent her summers with Bud in the ’30s and ’40s milking cows and driving horses. It was one of the only houses in the valley at the time, she said. It was located right next to the horse corral and had no running water. Bud leased the land the house and corral sat on from the Smiths and eventually the Poulsens.

Read the whole story

It’s Fan Appreciation Day on Oct. 7 at Lake Tahoe Community College.

The Coyote soccer teams will face conference rivals Lassen Community College at 2pm (women) and 4pm (men). Snacks, beverages, games, prizes, and free Coyote swag will be plentiful.

This is an opportunity to see the new field and root for the home team.

After the games, next door to the physical education building’s gymnasium, where all are welcome to a Latino Heritage Celebration from 6-8pm.

Both events are free.

To the community,

This letter is for anyone interested in seeing students in Lake Tahoe Unified School District (LTUSD) get the best opportunities possible.

Dr. Annie Davidson is a candidate for LTUSD School Board Trustee Area 1. Whether you are able to vote in trustee Area 1 or not, I encourage you to consider Annie’s obvious commitment to our community along with her academic and professional resume that make her an ideal board member for success of our children. Yes, I call her Annie, because that’s what she prefers to be called and that’s how I’ve known her as my amazing partner and wife of many years – she’ll actually blush on occasion when called Dr. Davidson, but that modesty can’t disguise her incredible passion, expertise, and experience for public education. As someone with ties to this community throughout 42 years, I need to explain how fortunate we are to have Annie as an option to help lead our schools.

When it’s time to vote, remember what sets Annie apart:

1.     Commitment. Annie’s continued activity in our community and schools is unrivaled by other candidates.

2.     Expertise. Annie knows her way around any level of school and stands ready to apply her professional and academic expertise for the betterment of LTUSD.

3.     Independence. Annie has no ties to LTUSD, current or historical, and brings a fresh eye to the exciting future for our local schools.

First and foremost, Annie and I have two young children in the school system. LTUSD, with its encouraging improvements in recent years and exciting potential now and forward, is the main reason that we came to the area when our oldest daughter was ready to start Kindergarten. Annie is absolutely committed as a parent to helping create the best educational experience possible for all children – not just our own. She has led enrichment classes in drama and music, volunteers in classrooms regularly, tutored troubled teenagers, and continues to support Tahoe Parents Nursery School.

Annie comes from a family of educators and that devotion to students is apparent in her educational and professional choices. After receiving a bachelor’s degree in science from Cornell University, she chose to further study education and teach in high-poverty schools in Burlington, Vt. Why is this important to LTUSD? Over 50 percent of our students qualify for free and reduced lunch according to family income. Annie is not only experienced with diverse economic strata in education, she cares – it was Annie’s classroom experience that made her determined to have an impact on a larger scale and obtain her doctorate in education leadership and policy. From there she went to work at McGraw-Hill Education where she achieved a reputation among educational researchers nationally for her interests in equity for student assessment. Annie is a recognized expert in student assessment – that expertise will be incredibly valuable to the LTUSD system in terms of data interpretation and decision making. Annie continues to do some consulting work with research organizations nationally and keeps abreast of current topics in education.

Vote for Annie, either when you see ballots hit your mailbox later this month, or in November on the general ballot.

Sincerely,

Matt Lucksinger, South Lake Tahoe

A house near the state line in South Lake Tahoe goes up in flames Oct. 2. Photo/SLTFD

A vacant house in South Lake Tahoe was destroyed by fire early this morning.

Investigators are still trying to determine to the cause of the 2am Oct. 2 blaze on Chonokis Road.

Estimated damage is $150,000.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

By Associated Press

Nevada has officially recovered as many jobs as it lost during the Great Recession and hit a new record for employment.

Gov. Brian Sandoval announced Friday at the Governor’s Conference at Business that as of August, more jobs were created in Nevada in the past six years than the 186,400 that were shed in the downturn.

The state’s previous record employment was in May 2007, when Nevada had just under 1.3 million jobs. But Nevada’s economy was battered by the recession and the state bottomed out at 1.1 million jobs in September 2010.

The biggest losses came in construction and hospitality. The state still has 70,000 fewer construction jobs than it did pre-recession, but growth in other sectors compensated for the shortfall.

It now has just over 1.3 million jobs.