• Hawley Jarrett
• John Larue
• Matthew Barnett

• Louis Marin and Mickey Sullivan
• Quinn Proctor and Pete Sullivan
• Jackson Kuzmik and Bryin Schouten.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

Jerrod Haase, a South Tahoe High alum, is in his inaugural season as the Stanford men’s basketball coach. Photo Copyright 2016 Carolyn E. Wright

By Vytas Mazeika, Bay Area News Group

Stanford men’s basketball practice began Sunday. But whatever drills first-year coach Jerod Haase put his players through at Maples Pavilion, it’s unlikely to compare with the two-day Navy SEAL camp from a couple of weeks ago in South Lake Tahoe.

For example, the Cardinal hit the pool on Day 2 before sunrise for a couple of hours.

“It was about 30, 33 degrees outside,” junior guard Dorian Pickens said. “We were swimming in the pool and we had our hoodies on, and one of the tasks is we had to go underwater and take the sweatshirts off and pass them to the teammate, meanwhile treading water. They had to put them back on and we had to do it in a certain amount of time.”

Haase, who grew up in South Lake Tahoe, took advantage of a Navy SEAL training program once during his four-year stint at University of Alabama at Birmingham to teach teamwork and leadership in tough situations.

Read the whole story

By Tony Berendsen

If you’re a star gazer, you may be interested to know how to measure the darkness of your night sky? Maybe you’d even like to become a citizen-scientist and make a measurement from your backyard contributing data to the Globe at Night campaign?

The darkness of the night sky is actually measured as the brightness of the night sky; the brighter the sky, the fewer stars you can see at night.

During the day the sun’s bright light obscures our view of the stars. Then, during twilight as the sky dims, planets and stars begin to appear as sky brightness fades. The brightness of the sky at night depends on a variety of natural and human light sources. Atmospheric conditions such as clouds and haze can affect brightness too. Even the stars themselves contribute to sky brightness. If we removed all other sources of light, the sky at night would not be completely dark.

The night sky is impacted by light pollution. Photo/NASA

Beside the occasional light of the moon, it is human caused light that obscures the stars from nighttime view. We call this light pollution. It’s most prominent in urban areas, but exists in rural areas with poorly designed lighting. When outside lights are pointing up instead of shielded and reflected to the ground scattered light brightens the sky. It is true that just one poorly designed light can locally outshine the shimmering majesty of a billion stars in our galaxy.

“Globe at Night is an international citizen-science campaign to raise the awareness of the impact of light pollution,” according to the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. If you take part in sky brightness measurements through the program, you will be contributing to a worldwide map of the sky brightness from the surface of our planet documenting the loss of our view of the stars across the planet.

The program asks people to become citizen-scientists and to collect sky brightness measurements during specific times of each month of the year. For October this year measurements are made from Oct. 21-31.

To make and report a measurement, go online and follow the instructions on what to observe and how to report. Constellations are used to identify the area of the sky to be measured. If you aren’t constellation savvy a star gazing app or star chart from Astronomy magazine or Sky and Telescope can be very helpful.

There are several methods for measuring sky brightness, Globe at Night uses comparative star charts. Some additional methods are Sky Quality Meter, the Bortle Scale, and recently an app that works with iPhone — Dark Sky Meter pro.

As a traveling outreach astronomer I see the Milky Way in dark sky locations many times during the year. When I’m home in Reno, I can see our galaxy from my backyard. But that could change with one poorly placed light adding too much brightness to my neighborhood.

How many stars can you see from your backyard citizen-scientist? How bright is your night sky?

Tony Berendsen runs Tahoe Star Tours. He may be reached at 775. 232.0844 or tony@tahoestartours.com.

By Priya Hutner, Tahoe Weekly

Adrian Ballinger and Emily Harrington returned home two weeks from the day they left Tahoe after attaining their goal to summit Cho Oyu, the mountain known as the Turquoise Goddess, in record time.

Speaking from his home in Squaw Valley, Ballinger had been home less than 48 hours, where he’d returned from the top of the 26,906’ peak five days prior.

Admittedly exhausted, Ballinger was bright, positive and upbeat. He was on a high, overjoyed and elated that the trip was a smashing success. All of the prep, all of the training and all of the logistics favored the team on their whirlwind adventure.

“It was an amazing summit day. It was warm and sunny, there were very few climbers on the mountain and we got to ski the whole way down,” said Ballinger.

Read the whole story

Almost all the money needed to purchase the Johnson Meadows property in South Lake Tahoe has been secured. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife this week allocated $4 million to the Tahoe Resource Conservation District for the acquisition.

In March the California Tahoe Conservancy gave the TRCD $4.234 million for the purchase.

The approximately 209-acre property is the largest privately owned meadow in the Lake Tahoe Basin and the last large private property holding in the lower nine miles of the Upper Truckee River.

The Tahoe Fund is also a funding partner and trying to raise an additional $100,000 to help secure the entire $8,315,000 necessary to acquire the property.

The parcel combined with adjacent public land would connect more than 1,000 acres of river floodplain in near continuous public ownership within the river’s lower nine miles.

The U.S. Forest Service Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit will soon begin closing recreational facilities around the Lake Tahoe Basin for the winter season.

Seasonal closures apply to many Forest Service recreation sites including beaches, campgrounds, and picnic areas, which traditionally close in mid-October. Forest roads close around mid-November for soil protection and public safety.

Tahoe recreation sites close Oct 16.  Campgrounds closing include Nevada Beach, Fallen Leaf, Bayview, Meeks Bay, William Kent and Kaspian. Day-use areas and beaches closing include Nevada, Pope, Baldwin, Meeks Bay, William Kent, and Kaspian.

Blackwood Canyon, Luther Pass and Watson Lake campgrounds and Chimney, Kiva and Secret Harbor beaches will close Nov. 15. No services, such as water, restrooms or trash collection will be available at these sites after Oct. 30.

Meeks Bay Resort will close Oct. 16, and Round Hill Pines Resort closed on Oct. 1.

Camp Richardson and Zephyr Cove resorts remain open year-round.

The Taylor Creek Visitor Center is open weekends through the end of October and the Tallac Historic Site closed at the end of September.

Although facilities on National Forest lands in the Lake Tahoe Basin close for the winter season, the grounds and lake access remain open year-round. Keep in mind that parking lots and gates close and services, such as water, restrooms and trash collection are not available.

Participants in the various Lake Tahoe Marathon events on Oct. 7-9 could cause delays for motorists.

On Friday there will be runners on the shoulder of the road between South Lake Tahoe and Incline Village. One westbound lane of Cave Rock will be coned off for runners between 8-9:30am.

On Saturday runners will be on the shoulder of the road or bike paths from Sand Harbor to just south of Homewood on Highway 89 at Meadow Road. The CalNeva Marathon will run from 6:30am-1pm.

The Carnelian Bay Half Marathon will start from Waterman’s Landing at 9am, finishing at 1pm.

The runners mostly will be coming through Tahoe City between 10am and 12:30pm.

There will be a detour onto McKinney Road between 9am and 1pm, just south of Homewood to create a safe finish area for the runners.

On Sunday, runners in the Lake Tahoe Marathon and Emerald Bay Half Marathon will be on the highway between Homewood and South Lake Tahoe from 7am-2pm.

The McKinney Road detour will be in effect just south of Homewood again from 6:30-8am.

Inspiration Point at Emerald Bay will be closed to southbound traffic from 9:15-10:30am.

Northbound traffic on Highway 89 will be closed near Spring Creek between 7-11am.

In South Lake Tahoe the race course will use bike paths, Tahoe Keys streets, bike paths, back streets, and the Highway 50 sidewalk in the Stateline area.

By Brad Branan, Sacramento Bee

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK — When naturalist John Muir explored Lyell Glacier in Yosemite National Park about 150 years ago, the river of ice stretched as far as 10 football fields between the peaks of the Lyell Canyon, a glacier one might expect to see in Alaska, not California.

Today, it’s a sliver of the natural feature Muir called a “living glacier.” Over the last 130 years, the glacier has lost 78 percent of its surface, shrunk from about a half square mile to 66 acres.

Stand on the glacier and it’s hard to hear anything except the sound of melting water rushing underneath. A big patch of bedrock is exposed in its middle.

Read the whole story

With the onset of cooler, wetter weather, the Tahoe National Forest is preparing for prescribed fires that will occur
throughout the fall, winter and spring, as conditions allow.

Planned projects include burning piles of stacked vegetation and low to moderate intensity understory burns of vegetation on the forest floor. The primary goals of these projects are to reduce the severity of future wildfires and provide protection for communities in the wildland urban interface. In addition, the prescribed fires will promote a diverse and more resilient forest, as well as improve wildlife habitat.

All four ranger districts on the Tahoe National Forest are planning to implement prescribed fire. Some of the planned projects include:

• The Sierraville Ranger District will conduct understory burning at Lewis Mill and west of Highway 89 (south of Little Truckee Summit), as well as pile burning in the areas of Loyalton Pines, Sierraville, Calpine, and Sagehen Summit.
• The Truckee Ranger District will conduct understory burning east of Stampede Reservoir and on the west side of Highway 89 and Prosser Lakeview/Prosser Heights.

South Lake Tahoe Recreation Department is offering two American Red Cross certified lifeguard training courses.

The courses are being taught by Liz Terzian. Participants will be trained and certified to provide care for breathing and cardiac emergencies, injuries, and sudden illness until emergency services take over.

Participants must be at least 16, be able to swim 300 yards continuously while demonstrating breathing control and rhythmic breathing, tread water for two minutes using legs only, and complete a timed event. The class includes 7 hours and 25 minutes of online learning and 20 hours of hands-on instruction.

To schedule the precourse swim session, call 252.917.1867. The deadline to register is Oct. 14. Classes start Oct. 21.