Steph Curry played in the ACC tournament in 2014. Photo/LTN file

By Ron Kroichick, San Francisco Chronicle

One way to bounce back from a disheartening loss in Game 7 of the NBA Finals: help your team successfully recruit free-agent forward Kevin Durant.

Another way: Play golf on the shores of Lake Tahoe.

Warriors guard Stephen Curry, with new teammate Durant now in place, soon will check the second item off his list. Curry will play in the American Century Championship, the celebrity event scheduled for July 22-24 in Stateline.

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Fire restrictions will go into effect July 11 within the Tahoe National Forest.

Restrictions include:

• No open fires, campfires or charcoal fires are allowed on Tahoe National Forest lands outside of designated areas, even with a valid California Campfire Permit, except within the oven at Wheeler Sheep Camp.
• Lanterns and portable stoves using gas, jellied petroleum or pressurized liquid fuel are allowed, unless otherwise restricted, with a valid California Campfire Permit available from Forest Service offices during business hours.
• No possessing or using any kind of firework or other pyrotechnic device, including explosives.
• No smoking, except within an enclosed vehicle, building, or designated recreation site.
• Internal combustion engines are restricted to National Forest System roads, trails, and areas, as identified on the Tahoe National Forest Motor Vehicle Use Map (including the Prosser Pits Developed Off-Highway Vehicle Area). Motorized cross-country travel between roads, trails, and areas is prohibited.

Complete details regarding 2016 fire restrictions, including the list of designated recreation sites, will be available by July 11 on the Tahoe National Forest website.

Those with a valid 2016 wood cutting permit must obey fire restrictions and cut firewood in compliance with the terms of their permit.

Deanne Larsell, teaching pro at Zephyr Cove Tennis club, shows Lisa Schumacher and Jamie Lowe how to volley. Photo/Carolyn E. Wright

The youth of Lake Tahoe can help break in the newly resurfaced courts at Zephyr Cove Tennis Club by participating in the July-August junior program.

Longtime teaching professional Deanne Larsell plans to keep groups small to provide more individualized instruction.

Beginner and advanced beginner classes are available for those in grades 1-8. Each four-day, one-hour group lesson costs $45 per player. For information on scholarships, email carolyn@zctennis.com.

For specific dates-times and to register, go online.

A limited number of rackets will be available for those who need one. Come dressed to play – which means athletic wear and non-marking shoes. Bring water and wear sunscreen. Arrive 15 minutes before the start time.

Tahoe Area Mountain Biking Association is having a trail building day July 9.

From 9am to 3pm crews will be helping to build the new Kingsbury Stinger Trail. Work will be on a new section of trail about one half mile from the trailhead.

Meet at 9am at the end of North Benjamin/Andria Drive (Tahoe Rim Trail’s Kingsbury North trailhead.

Lunch will be provided by Base Camp Pizza and there will be a post work barbecue.

Wear sturdy shoes, long pants and long sleeves. Helmets will be required; a bike helmet counts. Bring water and a bike to test ride after.

That night a 8 will be a TAMBA fundraising part at  Chimayo Street Grill on Ski Run Boulevard in South Lake Tahoe. Money is being raised for a new trail system at Fallen Leaf Lake and Angora Ridge to be built in the near future.
Chimayó will donate 15 percent of all sales to help build the new trails. And all donations from the night will be matched.

The global cluster M13. Photo/Ryan Berendsen

By Tony Berendsen

Stargazing with the unaided eye provides a spectacular view of the cosmos. The broad vista our eyes give us yields a multitude of stars, the Milky Way’s hazy band, and maybe an occasional meteor. It’s breathtaking, but even though it is a four-dimensional view, the unaided glance seems very two-dimensional; a small telescope or binoculars can add depth.

Gaze through a small aperture telescope or a astronomy binoculars and the moon’s grey tones transform into features of craters and mountains. The planet Jupiter at 500 million miles becomes an “other world”, a strange distant place with the four large Galilean moons locked in eternal dance about the great planet. Saturn at 800 million miles shows its rings, and the star-like point of light we know as the moon Titian stands near.

Those views begin to tell the story of distance and time, but are in close proximity and only in terms of millions of miles and minutes and hours of time.

It is viewing deep space objects beyond the grasp of our sun’s influence that begin to give real depth and perspective to our surroundings. We live in a galaxy thousands of light years across. It’s a big pace populated by billions of stars with an untold number of undiscovered places. The distances to them are immense.

Albireo is a famous double star that marks the beak of Cygnus the Swan. It’s located high in the sky within the summer triangle and easily found using an astronomy app in dark skies. It’s a beautiful color combination with one star sapphire blue and the other amber red, and best viewed with a telescope. Both are located about 380 light years from the Earth, taking the distance and time aspect of our view to a much greater magnitude. Imagine those two beautiful stars are 380 years back in time.

The Cygnus Star Cloud resides in the same area of the sky, but is more distant and incredibly massive. It contains some of the largest molecular gas clouds found in the galaxy. Binoculars will yield the best view, so find a comfortable spot to lay down and scan the sky throughout the constellation of Cygnus and you will be amazed at the number of stars concentrated in this area. The distances vary to the stars in this region because you are looking at the edge of one of the spiral arms of our galaxy, but are in the realm of 1,600 light years.

Last but not least, point your telescope or binoculars to the keystone center of the constellation Hercules to find the great globular cluster M13. Again, an astronomy app such as SkyPortal will help point the way. In the mid-summer this object is straight up so lay down again with the binoculars and look carefully between two of the stars in the keystone for a small fuzzy object. You are seeing a hundred thousand stars in that fuzzy ball off light that is 25,000 light years in the distance and 25,000 years back in time at the fringes of our own galaxy. A small telescope will begin to resolve some individual stars of this massive formation too.

Of course imagination is the ultimate tool to use for appreciation of the distances to objects seen in our galaxy through telescopes and binoculars. Think of the distances in terms of time. It takes light one year to travel 6 trillion miles. A trillion miles is a distance so large its very difficult to imagine, instead imagine that Albireo’s light began its trip to us about the same time Galileo was convicted of heresy for his belief that the Earth revolved around the sun. Imagine what the Earth was like 25,000 years ago.

Tony Berendsen runs Tahoe Star Tours. He may be reached at 775.232.0844 or tony@tahoestartours.com.

By Elaine Glusac, New York Times

Run or fight? That is the question prompted by a series of recent animal attacks on humans, including an alligator that dragged a 2-year-old to his death in an Orlando lake earlier this month. Last weekend, CNN reported that a mountain lion in Colorado attacked a 5-year-old boy, who was saved when his mother pried away the child from the animal.

While both of those incidents were rare events, travelers seeking to watch wildlife or spend time in national parks and preserves should maintain a safe distance from any animals encountered, say experts.

“You’re safer in a national park than you are in any city if you use respect and allow the animal a comfort zone,” said Jack Hanna, the director emeritus of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium who has hosted several television series devoted to wildlife.

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Tahoe Outrigger (Kawai’ulu ‘O Tahoe) Canoe Club is having a canoe blessing ceremony on July 9.

Hawaiian and Native American elders will be in attendance.

Local Hula Halau has prepared a special ceremonial dance, including hula dancers and ukulele players.

Potluck and canoe rides will follow ceremony. The event is at 10am at Lakeview commons in South Lake Tahoe.

By Chris Constantine, California Diver

At 6,300 feet in elevation, Fallen Leaf Lake was carved out of granite by two massive glaciers that traveled northward down the Glen Alpine Valley, leaving behind a lake that is now 3 miles long, just under a mile wide, and 410 feet deep at its deepest point.

Protected from runoff and commercial development, its clear, cold water is home to dozens of ancient trees, many still standing upright. There are 96 trees found so far, standing up to 77 feet tall, with some fallen trees measuring over 100 feet in length. Carbon dating tests have shown that some of these trees lived between the 9th and 12th centuries, and at least three older trees have been dated to between 18 and 35 centuries ago. Like nearby Lake Tahoe, much of the deep lake bed still remains unseen by any humans.

In 1997, some researchers who studied the trees came to the conclusion that the submerged ancient mature conifer trees grew during a medieval megadrought that lasted 150-200 years. Once the drought was over, the lake level quickly rose 150-200 feet, they theorized, quickly submerged the trees and preserved them in the frigid water that hovers just above freezing.

That theory doesn’t seem right according to some, including Tom Loomis, a third-generation resident and avid outdoorsman. Based on evidence seen in the local terrain and found underwater during hundreds of dives on the ancient trees, he believes there’s a completely different answer. Loomis is out to prove what he believes really happened, with the help of citizen scientists and the Undersea Voyager Project, a nonprofit organization located in Napa.

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Thinning of trees for fuels reduction and forest health will resume July 7, on approximately 178 acres of National Forest System lands on the northeast side of Highway 267, north of Lake Vista Road above Kings Beach and Tahoe Vista.

Mechanical whole tree removal will take place off Forest Road 16N52 for the next several months. The area will be closed for public safety from 7am-6pm through Oct. 1.

Mechanical whole tree removal involves cutting the entire tree and moving it to the landing area to remove the limbs and cut it into sections.

Hazards may be present even when operations have ceased for the day and the closure is not in effect.

The forest thinning is part of the Carnelian Hazardous Fuels Reduction and Healthy Forest Restoration Project, which will treat approximately 3,300 acres on the North Shore.

For more information about the project and to view the closure order and map, go online.

By Jason Bittel, National Geographic

You might think that winter is the most dangerous time of the year for a young animal. But for Scandinavian brown bear cubs, these next few weeks may determine whether the animal lives or dies.

That’s because early May to mid-July is breeding season for Sweden’s brown bears. The males, in a desperate attempt to pass on their DNA, try to mate with every female they come across. This is especially dangerous for females with cubs, because a mother bear cannot become pregnant while she’s still nursing last year’s litter. That’s why male bears will sometimes kill the cubs, forcing the female’s body to stop lactating and shift back into reproduction mode.

Over one-third of all brown bear cubs will die during the mating season. And over 90 percent of those fatalities will be at the claws and maws of unrelated males.

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