By Joe Jackson, Outdoor

Purchasing used gear makes learning a new, expensive sport like skiing much less cost prohibitive, but it’s easy to waste money on junk.

To take some of the guesswork out of the process, I interviewed Josh Sims, owner of The Gear Fix, an outdoor gear repair and consignment shop in Bend, Ore. Since he bought the shop in 2008, Sims has seen and made thousands of repairs, including resoling more than 1,000 climbing shoes.

Many of those repairs are the direct result of customers buying used gear that was already past its retirement date.

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Sierra Nevada College skiers brought home a cache of gold and silver from the 37th annual USCSA National Championships at Mount Bachelor in Oregon.

The Incline Village institution has claimed 19 national championships in the last 24years.

More than 178 colleges and 4,700 individual athletes compete in the USCSA’s 200 race events each season. The national event is the showcase event for college ski and snowboard competition in the United States.

In alpine skiing, both the SNC Tahoe women’s and men’s teams won gold overall; the women’s and men’s freeskiing teams each also brought home the overall gold medals. In snowboarding, a newer sport for SNC, the women’s and men’s teams won overall silver medal.

In addition to the overall medals, SNC Tahoe’s 44 snowsport athletes brought home 12 individual bronzes, 13 individual silvers, and 12 individual gold medals from Mt. Bachelor.

The U.S. Forest Service Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit is asking for public input on a proposal to reconstruct the Kingsbury Stinger Trail near Kingsbury Grade.

The Stinger Trail runs approximately 2.75 miles from Genoa Peak Road to Terrace View Drive on lower Kingsbury Grade and is open to all-terrain vehicles, motorcycles and mountain bikes. The trail is steep in places, is prone to erosion, crosses private land for approximately 280 feet on the lower segment and no longer meets current Forest Service standards for safety and sustainability.

The proposed project would reroute excessively steep trail segments, install speed control features, improve sightlines along the full length of the trail, install measures to prevent erosion and improve water quality and reroute the section of the trail that crosses private land.

The intersection with the Tahoe Rim Trail would be relocated to prevent motor vehicles from trespassing onto the TRT.

Project work could begin this summer. Tahoe Area Mountain Biking Association and other interested volunteers will help with construction.

Comments should be received by April 3. For more info, go online or contact Jacob Quinn at 530.543.2609 or jmquinn@fs.fed.us.

By Laura J. Nelson, Los Angeles Times

A proposed law that would make California the first state in the country to require that adult bike riders wear helmets has reignited a decades-long debate between regulators and the bicycling community over safety.

Senate Bill 192, introduced by state Sen. Carol Liu, D-La Cañada Flintridge, would impose a $25 base fine on adults who bike without headgear. The proposal has spurred a backlash from California’s bicycle advocacy groups, which say a mandatory-helmet law would do more harm than good. Helmet laws could make cycling appear more dangerous, they say, at a time when elected officials are working to draw drivers onto alternative forms of transportation.

Liu said she wants to encourage people to try biking and walking and keep them safe while doing so. Requiring helmets for adults isn’t the only way to protect cyclists, she said, but “it certainly protects people more than not wearing anything on their heads.”

Collisions involving cyclists in California rose 18 percent in a five-year period, from 11,814 in 2008 to 14,013 in 2012, according to the most recent California Highway Patrol data available.

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Deteriorating snow conditions at the base of the mountain and no snow in the immediate forecast has forced Sugar Bowl to close earlier than normal.

The ski resort’s last day will be March 22. Through Sunday Mt. Lincoln Express, Christmas Tree Express and Nob Hill chairlifts will offer top-to-bottom skiing and riding on 40 trails.

On closing day, there will be Sugar Bowl Pale Ale drink specials at the Belt Room, live music on the Lodge deck with Chi McClean, and 50 percent off most items at Sugar Bowl Ski & Sports.

South Lake Tahoe skaters, from left, Anett Fenyvesi, Zoe Wanzer, Carly Cox, Kiara Furrer, Maddy Monroe, Dayna Genna, Savannah Purvance, Alyssa Reeves, Olivia Herrera, Summer Furrer, Kristen Oleson, Allana Jones, Grace Zanetti, Olive Hamner-Jillson, Kylie Muskovitz, Sophia Purvance, and Keatyn Louise. (Four team members not pictured.) Photo/Provided

All skaters from the Tahoe Snowflakes placed either first or second last weekend at the Shamrock competition at the Yerba Buena Ice Skating Center in San Francisco.

The team, which skates out of the South Lake Tahoe Ice Rink, placed first in production, second for synchronized junior youth team (ages 5-8), first in synchronized youth team (ages 7-11), and first for senior youth synchronized team (ages 11-14).

The South Tahoe rink earned the third place overall award, which is calculated by adding the points awarded by the placements of each skater and teams from each of the participating rinks.

Keatyn Louise, Olivia Herrera, Kiara Furrer, Olive Hamner-Jillson and Summer Furrer also competed in solo events in the senior youth category. Alyssa Reeves, Kristen Oleson, Hamner-Jillson and Summer Furrer also skated as duos. Reeves, Oleson, Herrera and Summer Furrer, all from the South Tahoe Middle School presented an ensemble to the theme of the musical “Grease” which they choreographed. They placed second after a team from Oakland.

In addition to coaching the Tahoe skaters, Susan Campbell-Howe and Alex Furrer were judges for other events.

The Ice Skating Institute sanctioned the March 14 competition.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

By Nick Zaccardi, NBC

Julia Mancuso‘s impeccable record of competing (and usually making the podium) at major events will blemish this week.

Mancuso, who owns nine Olympic or World Championships medals, was in Maui while the rest of the world’s best Alpine skiers traveled to Meribel, France, for this week’s World Cup Finals.

She called an early end to her season due to pain in her right hip, a problem area throughout her career that intensified after she fell on her right side in a giant slalom in Are, Sweden, on Dec. 12.

“Since I’m planning on continuing to ski, it’s not worth pushing it,” Mancuso said in a phone interview Monday. “I need to look at the problem a little closer.”

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By Case Keefer, Las Vegas Sun

Sports books don’t want to make it easy on gamblers during the biggest betting event of the year — the NCAA Tournament, which begins March 17 with four games.

Bookmakers have plugged in and diligently reviewed the college basketball season to prepare the toughest final exam of point spreads and future odds.

“We’ve been looking at all the teams, getting our thoughts together,” Sunset Station sports book director Chuck Esposito said. “We’re getting everything ready to roll.”

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A team working to bring back the Lahontan cutthroat trout to the area has been honored.

The Rachel Carson Group Award from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was presented to the Lahontan Cutthroat Trout Broodstock and Lake Reintroduction Team. The team is comprised of the Lahontan National Fish Hatchery in Gardnerville, UNR and the Pyramid Lake Paiute tribe.

2012 was the first time the Lahontan cutthroat reproduced naturally in the Lake Tahoe Basin in more than 70 years. This is the largest species of trout in the world.

Now the trout are being reintroduced to water bodies in the Sierra.

By Ryan Canaday, KTVN-TV

The Nature Conservancy in Nevada has partnered with the Nevada Museum of Art to help restore damaged floodplains along the Truckee River.

The project is called the nature of art. Watershed artists, the Nature Conservancy and volunteers are working to create large, living sculptures as a part of the efforts to restore the lower Truckee River.

Daniel McCormick and Mary O’Brien are the artists who help bring the nature of art sculptures to life.

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