Incline Village’s community bike park will open Oct. 28.
It is located within Incline Park, on the west side of the entrance for the Incline Village Recreation Center.
A celebration of the first phase completion will begin at 11am with a short ceremony, ribbon cutting, food, and riding.
The park offers a pump track; beginner and intermediate flow lines.
Mt. Rose Ski Tahoe will open Oct. 27-28 for skiing and snowboarding.
It is the first Tahoe area to open for the 2017-18 season.
One beginner ski trail accessed by the Wizard chairlift will run from 8am-noon both days. Lift tickets will be available for $20 for guests ages 16 and older, and $10 for those 15 and younger.
Mother Nature and snowmaking will dictate future days of operation.
By David Caraccio, Sacramento Bee
Two lost hikers, who prepared for a day hike and got stuck on an El Dorado County mountain overnight, were rescued Monday by a California Highway Patrol helicopter crew.
The hikers were located on the east slope of Mount Tallac, a mountain peak southwest of Lake Tahoe, in the early morning hours. Mount Tallac lies in the Desolation Wilderness of the Eldorado National Forest.
The lead this year changed several times on Kingsbury Grade. Photo Copyright 2017 Carolyn E. Wright
By Kathryn Reed
South Lake Tahoe will be an integral spoke in the Amgen Tour of California 2018 cycling event with the women and men coming to town.
Both will be here May 18.
The women’s second stage will begin and finish at Heavenly Mountain Resort as they have done multiple times – this being the fourth consecutive year. The men will finish stage 6 at the resort after leaving from Folsom that morning.
The exact routes, though, will not be announced until after the first of the year.
With the women only being in town for one leg, it’s likely they will not ride around the lake. This year’s route over Luther Pass, through the Carson Valley and up Kingsbury Grade was touted as being one of the best. Tourism officials like that this route showcased what the Sierra has to offer in terms of challenging terrain, elevation gain and scenic aspects.
The lead changed multiple times coming up Kingsbury, making for an exciting race for riders and spectators.
“There were some maneuvers there that changed the whole finish. That was pretty exciting,” Carol Chaplin, executive director of Lake Tahoe Visitors Authority, told Lake Tahoe News. “Some of these women, they are not first-timers. They have learned to deal with the environment.”
The European tour, though, is not about altitude, so starting at more than 6,000 feet in itself is a challenge, let along climbing to more than 8,000 feet.
What the men bring is live coverage, which is great for the location to show off the scenery on television.
The last time the guys were in Tahoe they came over Luther Pass into the South Shore.
The main options from Folsom to South Lake are Luther or Echo Summit. With the race being on a Friday and the locals coming unglued with even the thought of Echo being closed, it’s doubtful that will happen.
“I would much prefer Luther because it is the road less traveled,” Chaplin said.
With the race being mid-month, the threat of nasty weather diminishes. It must be 45 degrees for riders to race. Snow, cold and wind have all been a factor here in the past for this race.
While the crowds have been less in Tahoe than in some locations, it’s not really an event about putting heads in beds.
“We still feel this is a more of a media event. It’s not about attracting overnight stays as much as it is telling the story about our outdoor recreation, cycling and elite events,” Chaplin said.
And for 2018 Reno will be hosting the Interbike event, a massive trade show that will put the region on the map for cycling. Having Amgen a few months earlier will increase the awareness of the Tahoe-Truckee-Reno area being a cycling destination for roadies and mountain bikers.
In total, the Amgen women have three stages – each within the city they are at – Elk Grove, South Lake Tahoe, Sacramento. The men have seven stages – starting in Long Beach on May 13 and ending in Sacramento. From Tahoe they all will drive to Sacramento for their respective final legs on May 19.
By Felicia Fonseca, AP
The National Park Service is considering a steep increase in entrance fees at 17 of its most popular parks, mostly in the U.S. West, to address a backlog of maintenance and infrastructure projects.
Visitors to the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Yellowstone, Zion and other national parks would be charged $70 per vehicle, up from the fee of $30 for a weekly pass. At others, the hike is nearly triple, from $25 to $70.
A 30-day public comment period opened Tuesday.
By Ed Fletcher, Sacramento Bee
The operator of Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows on Wednesday will formally announce plans to link the two North Lake Tahoe area ski resorts with a base-to-base gondola starting with the 2019-20 season, a proposal that faces significant opposition from environmental advocates.
The newly named California Express gondola would allow skiers and snowboarders to take advantage of different terrain and amenities on both mountains without having to drive or take a bus between them. But the project must first survive an environmental review by Placer County and the U.S. Forest Service.
The gondola would shave 10 minutes or more for skiers, creating a 13-16-minute ride from the base of one resort to the other, according to the plan. About 37 lift towers would transport passengers the length of the roughly 13,000-foot line.
By Steven Kurutz, New York Times
There’s a term in the horse world known as “gentling.” It refers to working with a wild horse until it becomes responsive to a trainer’s commands, meaning that it no longer wants to kick you in the face. If handled properly, it even bonds with its trainer.
Gentling happens every day at the Silver State Industries ranch in Carson City, a 1,100-acre property east of the Carson Range in the vast, harsh high desert south of Reno. Up to 2,000 wild horses are corralled there at any time; a good number are trained for adoption.
The ranch is part of the Northern Nevada Correctional Center, a medium-security prison that also houses minimum-security inmates. Twelve to 15 inmates, most of whom have little or no experience with horses, work under the instruction of a cowboy named Hank Curry. It is the inmates who do the gentling.
The Truckee Ranger District on the Tahoe National Forest will conduct prescribed fires this fall and winter to reduce build-up of hazardous fuels and to move towards restoring forest ecosystems.
Planned projects include low to moderate intensity understory burns of vegetation on the forest floor and burning piles of stacked woody material.
The goals of these projects are to re-establish natural ecosystems using fire, reduce the severity of future wildfires, and provide added protection for communities in the wildland urban interface. Prescribed fire helps to promote a diverse and more resilient forest, as well as improve habitat for wildlife.
The Forest Service is also working to reduce fuels by thinning dense stands of trees and brush using mechanical thinning, mastication, and hand removal of vegetation throughout the Tahoe National Forest.
All prescribed fire projects are conducted in accordance with a specific, approved prescribed fire burn plan.
The following is a list of prescribed fire projects currently planned for this fall and winter on the Truckee Ranger District:
· Highway 89 near Prosser Hill Off-Highway Vehicle (OHV) Area – 1,000 acres of understory burning, approximately two miles north of Tahoe Donner and Prosser Lakeview/Prosser Heights and adjacent to Klondike Flats.
· Multiple Piled Material Operations – Sagehen (300 acres); Serene Lakes (2 acres); Henness Pass Road north of Stampede Reservoir (5 acres); Highway 89 (2 acres).
Smoke from prescribed fire operations is normal and may continue for several days after lighting, depending on the project size.
LimeBike this month raised $50 million in Series B funding to expand its reach.
The bike share company was in South Lake Tahoe this summer on a pilot program and expects to return next summer.
The cash infusion will be used to grow operations, support ongoing upgrades to the bike design and the mobile app, and increase the fleet tenfold.
The San Mateo-based company wants to have a million users by the end of the year.
The company is in 12 cities and on eight college campuses.
— Lake Tahoe News staff report
Publisher’s note: This is one of a series of stories about Lake Tahoe area athletes who hope to compete in the 2018 Olympics in South Korea.
By Susan Wood
PARK CITY, Utah – Experience counts in most facets of life.
So at age 33, alpine skier Julia Mancuso is counting on that theory to take her onto the podium in February in South Korea for the Winter Games.
Through the years, the four-time Olympian who hails from the Lake Tahoe area when she’s not in Hawaii has racked up 100 career victories in her sport. At the Games of 2002, 2006, 2010 and 2014, she’s taken home one gold and bronze medal each as well as two silvers in various skiing disciplines. But from first glance at an Olympic media summit in Park City last month, she’s not done.
Her gym in Truckee is thriving. She’s happily married. And she took a bit of a respite coming off a hip injury that forced her to skip the Audi FIS Women’s World Cup she helped her home resort Squaw Valley to host.
But the flame is still within Mancuso.
Julia Mancuso is eager to participate in her fifth Olympics. Photo/Kathryn Reed
When asked at a press conference what it meant to her to win Olympic gold, she beamed.
“I passed those Olympic rings every day on my way to school – to see the flame burning,” she said of her childhood in Truckee where her skiing career started. She knows it’s special to grow up in a town that once hosted the Olympics.
But don’t kid yourself. The thought of whipping down a slippery mountain slope with two planks attached to her feet at speeds some people drive on a highway can be taxing physically and mentally. It’s not easy.
“It’s been difficult coming back with my hip. But I’m training and getting stronger,” she said of her surgically repaired joint. Mancusco has hip dysplasia and has fought off the pain. She remained on crutches for half the year.
Now as she approaches the Games in PyeongChang, it’s a new day. Therein comes a new outlook. She even got to do a test run last year, enjoying both “the course and the culture.”
“Skiing is actually easier than walking,” she told Lake Tahoe News. But for other racers on the conference stage such as superstar Mikaela Shiffrin of Colorado, she warned them not to expect she’d somehow be handicapped.
“Don’t be fooled,” she quipped.
“I love skiing as fast as possible. There’s no judge on how to get there. Just the clock is the judge,” she said.
Her wisdom through adversity has provided a new lease on life. In some respects, it’s therapeutic helping other injured athletes as she does with her support of the High Fives Foundation. The Truckee-area nonprofit was founded by Roy Tuscany in 2009 to help with injury prevention awareness and help for those severely injured.
She knows the anguish of coming off an injury far too well.
Squaw Valley’s Olympic rings from 1960 still inspire Julia Mancuso. Photo/LTN file
“It’s been hard. I just wait for the day when I wake up, and it gets better. Everything has its peaks and valleys,” she told LTN during a roundtable discussion. “But I know anything’s possible. I just want to stay positive. I have the desire to ski fast. I just expect my body to keep up.”
Indeed, this is a racer with five World Cup medals to complement five Olympic versions.
Now as the season approaches, Mancuso has considered improving with baby steps. She hopes to shave off seconds when considering making the team. With a short window, some athletes will discover they qualify within weeks of the Olympics.
And at this Olympics, there are new additions to the repertoire of ski events. In particular, alpine skiing comes up as a team sport. Male and female skiers have an equal role to play. With the event moving away from an individual focus, skiers will be working together and pooling their efforts. The winners of each heat advance to the next round. The two teams left standing slug it out for gold.
Mancuso commended the expansion, but for purist alpine racers, the team skiing event is described as more of a spectacle for viewership.
It will be the first time South Korea has hosted the Winter Olympics – thus launching a spate of Asian Olympic Games. Tokyo will host the 2020 Summer Games. Then, Beijing will bring on the 2022 Winter Games.
Next year’s Games are slated from Feb. 9-25.