History will repeat itself Jan. 15 at Ed Z’berg Sugar Pine Point State Park as the Eagle Wings Dance Group, descendants of the Paiute, Shoshone and Washoe tribes, will be offering traditional songs and dances sacred to the tribes represented to the creator-God in thanks as part of the closing ceremonies for Olympic Heritage Celebration week.

An absence of January snow in the Sierra posed similar planning concerns for the organizers of this week’s Olympic Heritage Celebration events as for the organizers of the VIII Winter Olympic Games Nordic events on the West Shore in 1960. The nervous organizers of those original Olympics brought in Great Basin dancers to encourage snowfall.

“No snow coverage has presented problems, but has also opened a door to history,” Heidi Doyle, the volunteer and interpretation program manager for California State Parks in the Lake Tahoe, said in a release. “Sugar Pine Point State Park was the summer home of the Washoe peoples and we are thrilled that their traditions will return to the West Shore of Lake Tahoe this winter.”

Athletes from around the world came to Lake Tahoe to participate in the 1960 Winter Olympic Games. The biathlon and cross country events of the VIII Winter Games were held in what is now Ed Z’Berg Sugar Pine Point State Park. Portions of the marked Nordic trails, found within the state park, follow the route of the biathlon and men’s events. Olympic Heritage Celebration week celebrates the spirit of athleticism and highlights the unique cultural heritage found within the park and our region.

Past Olympians, officials, and dignitaries from the 1960 Nordic events will also be on hand to commemorate the end of a week celebrating our Olympic Heritage. The ceremony will take place at Sugar Pine Point State Park in front of a quarter scale replica of the Tower of Nations that stands at the entrance to Squaw Valley.

The park is located on Highway 89 midpoint on the West Shore of Lake Tahoe, just south of Tahoma. The Closing Ceremonies begin at 2:30pm and there is an $8 per vehicle parking fee.

For more information, call Doyle at (530) 583.3074.

Lack of snow is delaying the learning process for some students in the Lake Tahoe Basin.

The snowshoe trek at Heavenly that is led by the U.S. Forest Service for Lake Tahoe Unified students has been pushed back two weeks.

Several outdoor classes at Lake Tahoe Community College have been delayed for a month.

Those LTCC classes include:

WLD 128B 2: rescheduled dates: Lec: 2/7, 2/9 6-9:50pm and lec/field days 2/11, 2/12

WLD 128B 3: rescheduled dates: Fri-Sun 2/3-2/5

WLD125A: BC Ski: rescheduled dates: Lec: Monday 2/6 6-850, Field: 2/7, 2/14, 2/28

WLD126A: BC Snowboarding: TBD

WLD 128B 1: Travis Feist (scheduled to begin 1/3)

Rescheduled: 2/28, 3/1, 3/3, & 3/4, same hours

WLD 122C: Darla Mazzoni (scheduled to begin 1/4)

Rescheduled: Orientation: 2/1

Field: Fridays 2/3, 2/10, 2/24, 3/2, 3/9, 3/16, same hours

WLD 122D: Darla Mazzoni (scheduled to begin 2/15, but now in conflict with 122C)

Rescheduled: Orientation: 2/8

Field: Sundays 2/12, 2/26, 3/4, 3/11, 3/18 Friday 3/23, same hours

WLD 124A 1,2,3,4: Leslie Ames, et al (scheduled to begin 1/4)

Rescheduled: Orientation: 2/1

Field: Fridays 2/3, 2/10, 2/24 and 3/2, same hours

WLD 121: Snowshoeing: MaryAnn Clark (scheduled to begin 1/5)

Rescheduled: Orientation: Th 2/23 Field: Sat 2/25, 3/3, 3/10, 3/17.

By Sheena McFarland and Michael C. Lewis, Salt Lake Tribune

A pioneer in women’s freestyle skiing has been seriously injured in Park City.

Sarah Burke, a Canadian freestyle skier who’s a four-time gold medalist in ski superpipe at the Winter X Games, sustained “serious” injuries while training in the Eagle Superpipe at Park City Mountain Resort Tuesday, said Andy Miller, communications director for the resort.

The Park City Mountain Resort mountain patrol stabilized her at the scene before transporting her to Base Patrol, where she was airlifted to the University of Utah hospital in Salt Lake City.

Further details were not immediately available.

The U.S. Ski & Snowboard Association is “wishing her a speedy and full recovery,” according to Margo Christiansen, the communications director for USSA.

Read the whole story

The South Tahoe Amateur Hockey Association is in full swing ready to host the 7th annual Lake Tahoe Invitational Hockey Tournament. This youth hockey tournament features 19 teams from all over California playing in three age divisions at the South Lake Tahoe Ice Arena, home of the Tahoe Grizzlies.

Admission to all tournament games is free.

This year the Tahoe Grizzlies are entering four teams for the first time: Mites (ages 8 and below), Squirts (ages 9 and 10), PeeWees (ages 11 and 12) and Bantams (ages 13 and 14).

The action-packed four-day holiday tournament gets under way Jan. 13 at 9am with the last game of the day at 9pm. Games run all day Saturday and Sunday form 6am-9pm. The tournament wraps up Jan. 16 with a division championship game for the Mites, Squirts, PeeWees and Bantams.

Including players and their families, the tournament attracts more than 1,000 people to the area and provides an estimated $200,000 or more in direct economic benefits to the South Lake Tahoe community.

It is the largest fundraiser of the year for Amateur Youth Hockey in the Tahoe basin and surrounding area, and features raffle items and silent auctions to raise much needed funds.

The Tahoe Grizzlies Squirts, PeeWees and Bantam teams are travel hockey teams and resume their regular season schedule the following weekend. In March there are regional playoffs and state playoffs, with league games the weekend following the tournament.

By Susan Voyles, Reno Gazette-Journal

Dave Murray, an avid skier and author of the best-selling book “Plan B,” jokes that he has put his strategies to work in challenging the mountains at Squaw Valley USA, where only man-made snow exists.

He hits the few open slopes early in the morning at the Tahoe resort to take advantage of the best ski conditions. Then, on Thursday, he put on shorts, boots and a backpack to climb its landmark butte near the tram.

Frozen lakes in the Sierra are giving ice skaters a chance to get out. Photo/LTN

Murray and friend Sarah Lindquist made an odd pair as they stood near Squaw’s ski loading stations to size up which side of the butte to climb.

“This is usually what I do in the summer,” said Murray, an Olympic Valley resident of his rock-climbing venture.

A few minutes later, Mary McNally of Sacramento arrived at the same plaza with her three children and Tahoe Adventure Co. guide Kevin Hickey — all on bicycles.

“We were supposed to go on a snowshoeing tour,” McNally said, with a laugh.

With not enough natural snow to scrape together a snowman, people are finding new winter pastimes at Lake Tahoe. And that’s helping fill rooms and breakfast nooks.

Golfers can be seen at the Old Brockway Golf Course. Ice skating on small, frozen alpine lakes has become a new craze. And bicyclists and walkers tread along Lake Tahoe and Truckee River trails as they do in the summer. Paddle boaters and kayakers are even out.

But overall, there are deep worries that a continued dry spell could ruin the ski season.

The ski business over the holidays was down 45 percent to 50 percent, said Rob Roberts, California Ski Industry Association president, saying this has been the driest start since the winter of 1995-96.

But unlike the past, Roberts said, California resorts are in the snow-making business. And he said more than 450,000 season ski lift passes were sold this year to California resorts, and the people who bought them won’t let them go to waste.

California ski resorts drew 7.6 million visits to major resorts last season, the association reports. That’s $700 million in direct visitor spending and a total economic impact estimated at $3 billion.

Read the whole story

By Kathryn Reed

Most people don’t give tips for how not to visit their business. But that’s exactly what doctors Terry Orr and Jonathan Finnoff did.

In a 90-minute presentation last week, the two did a tag-team lecture about Ski and Snowboard Injury Awareness before more than 30 people at Lake Tahoe Community College. Working in the field of orthopedics through Barton Health and both being affiliated with the U.S. Ski Team, these two know how to help people stay out of the operating room as well as what to do if someone needs that level of care.

For every 1,000 skiers on the slopes, one person will hurt her knee. Half of those injuries will be to the MCL or medial collateral ligament, while a third are to the ACL or anterior cruciate ligament.

Jonathan Finnoff with Tahoe Center for Orthopedics talks about knee injuries. Photo/LTN

Of the quarter million ACL injuries each year, most are non-contact.

“Most of the time it’s someone running or landing in a jump,” Finnoff said. “One out of 10 collegiate female athletes will tear their ACL.”

Women are more apt to have an ACL injury than a man. Part of it has to do with women having smaller ACLs, but Finnoff also said research also shows there are “tons of hormone receptors in the ACL.”

Pre-puberty boys and girls tend to jump from a box and land with their knees going in. This is hard on the joint. Post-puberty, guys tend to land with their knees in alignment with the rest of their body. Not so for gals; they are still turning their knees in.

This is another contributing factor to why women have more ACL injuries. However, if they go through proper training, they can learn how to land a jump in a way that will be less impactful to their knees.

Prevention comes via core stability, endurance and strength training. A dynamic warm up is suggested, but static stretches should be avoided before athletic activity.

While everyone laughed when the doctors pointed out the irony of someone saying they got hurt on the last run of the day, the truth is fatigue plays a role.

This is why preseason conditioning is so important. Knees take a beating on the slopes. If the muscles surrounding them aren’t strong, they will be more susceptible to being hurt.

Ligaments, they said, are like ropes. If they exceed their tension limit, they snap. People can hear and feel when a ligament tears.

“One of the busiest times for us with knee injures is April with the variable conditions,” Orr said. “Be aware of what you are skiing on and use caution when we have conditions like we have now.”

It’s days where ice, slush and ideal conditions are all on one run that can pose risks. Skis can jerk or slide, causing knees to twist.

A quick anatomy lesson was given – bone, cartilage, ligaments, muscles and tendons. Pictures of what an intact knee looks like compared to one with torn ligaments were shown.

But it’s not just knees theses docs worry about.

“You need to armor-up,” Orr said. “I’m surprised by how many people don’t wear a helmet. It doesn’t make sense.”

——

The Jan. 5 lecture is one in a series Barton Health is putting on. Details about the free upcoming lectures are online.

By Jane Braxton Little, Sacramento Bee

GREENVILLE – Four years after the Moonlight fire roared through 65,000 acres of forest near this Plumas County town, the damage continues to sear the rural community.

A local logger is challenging the U.S. Forest Service about logs removed from the burned area.

How this dispute is resolved could affect the economic future of this timber-dependent town, and local leaders are waiting on the outcome of a meeting today between the logger and the agency’s regional forester to try to resolve the issue.

Randy Pew, owner of the logging company that bought the charred timber, has criticized the Forest Service for “grossly erroneous estimates” of the quantity and quality of the material he harvested to sell to a local sawmill.

The agency overestimated the volume of marketable logs by as much as 90 percent, Pew said.

In August, he filed a claim with the Forest Service for partial damages totaling $375,725. He plans to file another one claiming damages of an additional $1 million or more, he said.

“Their estimates were off by thousands of truckloads of logs,” said Pew. He was recognized by the Forest Resources Association as national outstanding logger of 2001.

Forest Service officials in California have rejected Pew’s claim, citing loggers’ responsibility to make their own estimates of the material available before submitting bids to buy it.

Read the whole story

The swimming pool at the South Lake Tahoe Recreation Center has been repaired and is open for swimming.

Call (530) 542.6056 for more information.

Alpenglow Sports in Tahoe City has partnered with outdoor industry leader Backcountry Access to provide a free community avalanche awareness event on Jan. 25 at 6:30pm.

The event will help attendees better understand avalanche beacon function and the advancements of these vital backcountry tools over the past few years. The evening will last two-plus hours and will consist of an indoor and outdoor component. The majority of the evening will be educational and field-testing.

Indoor topics will include Tracker beacons, concentric probing, strategic shoveling, and Float Airbag technology. The outdoor component will cover multiple burial scenarios using the Tracker “Special” mode, Micro-Search Strip, and Three Circle searching theories.

Bring your favorite beacon, a headlamp and appropriate clothing for cold weather.

Food and drink provided. Discounts will be available on Backcountry Access beacons.

Call Alpenglow Sports at (530) 583.6917 with questions.

The Heavenly Ski and Snowboard Foundation will kick-off the 12th annual Kinder Kup Race Series at Heavenly Mountain Resort on Jan. 22.

The 8am to 2pm event is open to all skiers and snowboarders age 6 and younger. The Kinder Kup series is designed to introduce young athletes to competition in a friendly environment. No previous race experience necessary and all abilities are welcome.

Entry is $20 and includes a World Cup only competitor lift ticket if needed.

The Kinder Kup is a three event series with races Jan. 22, Feb. 26 and March 25. All races take place at Heavenly Mountain Resort on the World Cup chairlift located at the California base across from the Heavenly Tram.

Registration forms are online. Advance registration is recommended.

On-site registration is available the morning of the event at the Heavenly Foundation building from 8am to 9am. Practice begins at 9am, each competitor is allowed two practice runs; the race starts at 10am.