By Taylor Morris, ESPN

Sixteen-year-old phenom Torin Yater-Wallace double-corked his way to a first place finish at Saturday’s Dew Tour men’s ski superpipe finals in Killington, Vt. Yater-Wallace held a comfortable lead through the first set of runs with his first-run score of 90.25, until Wallace himself bested the score, muscling two doubles (a cork 1260 and a double flair), a 900, and a switch 9 en route to a second-run 93.75.

The grey skies cleared and the snow lessened as the day wore on, allowing for higher speeds and huge amplitude from every competitor. Second place Tai arrymore dropped a pair of 9s and a double cork alley-oop 12 on his second run, for a score of 88.50, while Tucker Perkins backed up two 9s with a double cork 12, stomped clean, for a score of 85.75.

Of his win, Yater-Wallace said he set a goal in his head and it “ended up happening.” He went on to commend his competitors, saying, “I don’t think there’s one person that was in the finals today that couldn’t have won.” He hopes to carry his momentum into this week’s Winter X Games. Yater-Wallace’s win makes him the youngest winner in Winter Dew Tour ski pipe history.

Earlier in the day, a video tribute to Sarah Burke christened the start of women’s ski superpipe finals. Burke, the groundbreaking athlete responsible for progressing and popularizing women’s freeskiing, died Thursday from injuries sustained while practicing superpipe in Utah on Jan. 10. Burke’s name was painted and stickered, in memoriam, on the sides of competitors’ helmets.

The women’s ski pipe winner, Maddie Bowman of South Lake Tahoe, said the day was hard for everyone, but that, “Sarah would have wanted us to ski, and that’s what we did — in her honor, of course.”

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The white stuff on the ground and in the trees throughout the Lake Tahoe Basin is snow — just in case people forgot what it looked like.

The sounds and sights of winter finally arrived Jan. 21. Snowmobiles were on city streets, private and public snowplows were doing a brisk business, bus stops had snowboarders waiting for a lift, shovels came out of the garage, and children were being pulled on saucers.

Pedestrians take a chance Jan. 21 crossing Highway 50 in South Lake Tahoe. Photo/Kathryn Reed

Snow is in the forecast for the basin through Tuesday. Highs will be in the mid-30s, with lows in the 20s.

For South Lake Tahoe residents wondering when their street might be plowed – keep wondering. The thousands of dollars spent on the GPS system for the machines were touted at the Jan. 17 City Council meeting as being installed. And they are. It’s just that the technology to allow people to track them online isn’t up and running.

Below are the rain and snow totals from the National Weather Service as of 11:30am Jan. 21:

Snow:

Soda Springs Ski Area — 8-12 inches

Incline Village — 7-12 inches

Sierra-at-Tahoe — 9 inches

Tahoe-Donner — 6-7 inches

Tahoe City — 3 inches

Truckee airport — 3 inches

Rain:

South Lake Tahoe — 4.30 inches

Homewood – 4 inches

Incline Village — 1.50 inches

Alpine Meadows — 1.13 inches.

— Kathryn Reed

By Neela Banerjee, Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — A flash point has emerged in American science education that echoes the battle over evolution, as scientists and educators report mounting resistance to the study of man-made climate change in middle and high schools.

Although scientific evidence increasingly shows that fossil fuel consumption has caused the climate to change rapidly, the issue has grown so politicized that skepticism of the broad scientific consensus has seeped into classrooms.

Texas and Louisiana have introduced education standards that require educators to teach climate change denial as a valid scientific position. South Dakota and Utah passed resolutions denying climate change. Tennessee and Oklahoma also have introduced legislation to give climate change skeptics a place in the classroom.

In May, a school board in Los Alamitos passed a measure, later rescinded, identifying climate science as a controversial topic that required special instructional oversight.

“Any time we have a meeting of 100 teachers, if you ask whether they’re running into pushback on teaching climate change, 50 will raise their hands,” said Frank Niepold, climate education coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who meets with hundreds of teachers annually. “We ask questions about how sizable it is, and they tell us it is [sizable] and pretty persistent, from many places: your administration, parents, students, even your own family.”

Against this backdrop, the National Center for Science Education, an Oakland-based watchdog group that supports the teaching of evolution through advocacy and educational materials, plans to announce on Monday that it will begin an initiative to monitor the teaching of climate science and evaluate the sources of resistance to it.

NCSE, a small, nonpartisan group of scientists, teachers, clergy and concerned individuals, rose to prominence in the last decade defending evolution in the curriculum.

The controversy around “climate change education is where evolution was 20 years ago,” said Eugenie Scott, executive director of NCSE.

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By Martha Bellisle, Reno Gazette-Journal

The civil lawsuit filed by a former Harrah’s Lake Tahoe casino host claiming Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger raped her while he was visiting Lake Tahoe for a celebrity golf tournament in 2008 has been resolved.

But neither side will say whether the Super Bowl star paid Andrea McNulty any money as a settlement.

Ben Roethlisberger

McNulty filed the suit in Washoe District Court in 2009, claiming Roethlisberger lured her into his penthouse suite and forced her to have sex. The suit also named a list of Harrah’s employees, claiming they covered up the alleged sexual assault.

In August 2011, the Nevada Supreme Court ruled against Roethlisberger and the other defendants, who had filed motions to move the case out of Reno. The Supreme Court affirmed a judge’s ruling that the case should stay in Washoe District Court.

In December, all of the parties in the suit signed stipulations to dismiss the case.

McNulty’s lawyer, Cal Dunlap, refused to discuss the terms of the stipulation.

Roethlisberger’s lawyer, David Cornwell, and his agent, Ryan Tollner, did not respond to calls and emails requesting comment.

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California State Park interpretive specialist Lindsay Harbison will be leading a snowshoe through history hike along Lake Tahoe’s West Shore at Ed Z’Berg Sugar Pine Point State Park on Jan. 28.

This easy tour explores the parks’ lakefront and the grounds of the historic Hellman-Ehrman estate. Learn about the natural environment that attracted Tahoe’s earliest settlers and explore the history of this Tahoe landmark.

The snowshoe starts at 11am and begins near the restrooms in the day use side of the park (lake side entrance off Highway 89). The program lasts approximately 1½ hours.

The program is free. There is a parking fee of $8 per vehicle.

Bring water, snacks and snowshoes.

By Kris Terrian

What sounds better after a long powder day: icing your knees or hopping in the hot tub? The majority of skiers and snowboarders would prefer the hot tub. And though this sounds like the perfect place to get warm, meet up with your buds and kick back and relax, the hot water could hinder your next day’s skiing or boarding performance.

Hot tubs are great for warming up muscles before activity. Heat opens your blood vessels, allowing more blood to flow into the muscles. But after a great day on the mountain, your muscles are fatigued and have built up pools of lactic acid – causing soreness over time. Cold therapy vasoconstricts, which means it helps reduce the blood flow into the muscles. This is bene¬ficial to help keep the soreness and aches away, especially if you plan on shredding the pow the next day.

Kris Terrian

To avoid sore muscles, try 10 to 20 minutes of heat therapy before activity and 20 to 30 minutes of cold therapy after.

Cooling down properly gives your body a chance to deal with the lactic acid before it makes you sore. What your legs really need after exercising is a cool-down period where either ice or snow is applied to aching muscles to calm them down and stop the excess blood flow.

Remember, if you’re planning on a great week or weekend of powder shredding, don’t get in the hot tub until after you’ve cooled down. Even better, save it for the next morning.

Kris Terrian is an athletic trainer with Tahoe Center for Orthopedics.

By U.S. Snowboarding News Bureau

VEYSONNAZ, Switzerland — Lindsey Jacobellis of Stratton Mountain, Vt., bumped her “most dominant snowboardcross rider in the world” moniker one more notch Thursday with the 24th World Cup SBX victory of her career.

Teammate and fellow X Games gold medalist Nate Holland of Squaw Valley was second in the men’s event, while Russian Andrey Boldykov snatched the win.

Jacobellis remained unbeaten after her season-opening victory in the USANA Snowboardcross Cup in Telluride earlier in the season.

The second place finish for Holland was his best since winning in Lech, Austria, in December 2010.

“It was one helluva day racing. It was fun. It’s one of the most unique courses on the World Cup tour, just the amount of speed that we have out of the start, which I personally love,” Holland said. “After the start the course kind of tightens down, so it’s nice to be out in front. I saw some carnage today in turn two. It happened in two of my heats. You pick your line and stick to it. It’s kind of no matter what comes.”

Tahoe Cross Country Ski Area and Alpenglow Sports present Viva The Backcountry Film Festival benefiting the Tahoe Cross Country Ski Education Association.

The Winter Wildlands Alliance Backcountry Film Festival made its world premiere 11-11-11. This is a celebration of the winter experience.

The seventh annual world tour of the Winter Wildlands Alliance Backcountry Film Festival highlights the beauty and fun of the winter backcountry experience. Submissions come from renowned filmmakers who travel every corner of the globe to submit their best backcountry work, and from grassroots filmmakers who take a video camera out on their weekend excursions and submit their best film short. The films are juried by a select panel of judges and the top films are assembled into a 90 minute program.

The festival was created to highlight Winter Wildlands Alliance’s efforts to preserve and conserve winter landscapes for quiet users.

This year’s program includes nine films including festival award winners “Solitaire” (festival cut) from Sweetgrass Productions, voted Best of Festival.

The films will be shown Feb. 10 at the Sawtooth Ridge Café, Tahoe City. Film starts at 7pm. Admission is $10 and tickets can be purchased at the door. Sawtooth Ridge Café will serve dinner and drink specials starting at 5:30pm.

By ESPN Action Sports

SALT LAKE CITY — Canadian freestyle skier Sarah Burke died Thursday, nine days after crashing at the bottom of the superpipe during a training run in Utah.

Burke, who lived near Whistler in British Columbia, was 29. She was injured Jan. 11 while training at a personal sponsor event at the Park City Mountain resort.

RoxyCanada’s Sarah Burke, a pioneer in women’s freeskiing, died Thursday from crash-related injuries.

Tests revealed Burke sustained “irreversible damage to her brain due to lack of oxygen and blood after cardiac arrest,” according to a statement released by Burke’s publicist.

A four-time Winter X Games champion, Burke crashed on the same halfpipe where snowboarder Kevin Pearce suffered a traumatic brain injury during a training accident on Dec. 31, 2009.

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By Carlos Alcalá, Sacramento Bee

El Dorado County is adopting Fish Friendly Farming.

The concept has nothing to do with trout farms or other aquaculture.

It’s about growing farm crops and raising cattle in ways that keep surrounding streams and rivers clean.

El Dorado County farmers, the local resource conservation districts and a Napa-based nonprofit have banded together to establish a program in the foothills that – until now – had mostly been used near the wine-growing areas of Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino.

“We saw what they were doing down there,” said Mark Egbert, manager of the El Dorado County and Georgetown Divide Resource Management Districts.

It looked, he said, like a “perfect fit” for El Dorado County.

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