As part of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest’s hazardous fuels reduction efforts, the Carson Ranger District, in cooperation with Alpine County, Alpine Fire Safe Council, Alpine Watershed Group, and Sierra Nevada Conservancy, has begun a fuels reduction projects. The mastication project is located in Alpine County, approximately two miles southwest of Markleeville.

Alpine County secured funding for the fuels reduction project through the Sierra Nevada Conservancy.

The project will consist of mastication of brush and ladder fuels on approximately 235 acres adjacent to Forest Service Roads 094 (Pleasant Valley Road) and 071 (Thornburg Canyon Road), and the Shay Creek residential area. Machinery will be operating in these areas for approximately one month, weather depending.

Motorists are asked to follow all warning signs posted in the area. The machinery being used in this project can throw debris up to 300 feet at high rates of speed. In order to reduce the time residents and recreationists are impacted, crews are working to complete work near high use areas first.

Kokanee salmon are filling the channel of Taylor Creek. Photo/Kathryn Reed

By Kathryn Reed

CAMP RICHARDSON — They’re baaaacccckkkk – the Kokanee salmon that is.

With more water in Taylor Creek than in recent falls, the fish are spawning in good numbers this year. While it’s likely the run has not peaked, the die-off is already evident.

A platform separates people from wildlife. Photo/Kathryn Reed

On Friday a crawdad was gnawing away on a submerged carcass, with his friend crawling slowly to join in the feast.

For people, it’s really a feast for the eyes. These non-native fish to Lake Tahoe are a colorful spectacle as they make their way from the lake up Taylor Creek. The whole point is for the females to lay eggs – from 200 to 1,800 per fish — and the males to fertilize them. Both then die. Their offspring are born in the spring and then make their way to the lake.

It is smell that brings them back to Taylor Creek – their birthplace.

A duck on Oct. 6 successfully goes fishing for Kokanee at Taylor Creek. Photo/Kathryn Reed

The female and male’s scales turn red as they spawn. The males’ jaws become hooked.

New this year along the Rainbow Trail at Taylor Creek Visitors Center is a viewing platform that in large part was paid for by the Tahoe Fund. It had to be built after too many people thought it was a good idea to take selfies with bears in the background.

For some reason people treated this wild, natural event like it was some controlled scene at Disneyland. Their behavior was putting their lives as risk and potentially the bear’s.

Under water a crawdad digs at the flesh of a decaying Kokanee. Photo/Kathryn Reed

The wood deck doesn’t take away from seeing this annual ritual. It just means the creek is no longer accessible. In a wet year like this, it actually makes it less muddy and gives a wider area to see things.

What some people were treated to on Oct. 6 were ducks racing up and down a small stretch of the creek, then diving, swimming a ways underwater all in the quest to dine on Kokanee. It was working. A blue heron was also spotted.

This weekend is the annual Fall Fish Festival at the visitors center off Highway 89 on the South Shore. It is from 10am-4pm Saturday and Sunday. The free event gives people a chance to learn about all the fish species in Lake Tahoe.

By Alexander Vershinin and James Ellingworth, AP

ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan — The future of the Olympics may just be in a basement in Turkmenistan.

With leading Olympic figures considering a possible role for competitive computer games — known as esports — at the 2024 Games in Paris, a pan-Asian competition in the ex-Soviet state offers a possible vision of the future.

Including esports could give the Olympics a younger audience and a huge revenue boost from a rapidly growing market, but would be deeply controversial.

Read the whole story

The TAMBA sponsored Corral Night Ride is Oct. 21.

Meet at the Corral parking area at 5:30pm. Expect to start riding about 6, and party until who knows when.

The $25 fee ($20 for members) goes toward Tahoe’s trails. There will be a barbecue supplied by Chimayó afterward. All ages welcome. Costumes encouraged.

The ride will again be a “poker ride,” meaning there will be healthy competition on who can make the best poker hand after receiving cards at each of the stops along the ride. Bonus segment up to Armstrong Connector for extra cards. Jokers wild.

For more info, email info@TAMBA.org.

Fire restrictions in the Eldorado National Forest have been lifted.

This means that people with a valid California campfire permit may have open campfires outside of designated campgrounds according to the terms of their permit. The permit is free from any Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management or CalFire office.

Officials caution that wildfire season is ont over and that the forest is still dry enough for a fire to start.

People interested in camping outside of designated areas should contact the nearest Forest Service office for instructions, updated fire information, campfire permits and current restrictions.

The Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team, which includes local, state and federal fire and land management agencies in the Lake Tahoe Basin, will begin the fall prescribed fire program in early October, weather permitting.

Each prescribed fire operation follows a specialized prescribed fire burn plan, which considers temperature, humidity, wind, moisture of the vegetation, and conditions for the dispersal of smoke.  This information is used to decide when and where to burn. 

Smoke from prescribed fire operations is normal and may continue for several days after an ignition depending on the project size and environmental conditions. Prescribed fire smoke is generally less intense and of much shorter duration than smoke produced by wildland fires.

Keep in mind that residential burning on private property in the Tahoe basin is still suspended.

By Tony Berendsen

Billions of years ago in an outer region of a solar nebula, the one we now call the solar system, gravity formed two large planets of gas, ice, and rock, billions of miles from our star the sun. They were different from the other six planets watched for thousands of years by humans along the ecliptic path of the night sky only in the fact that we didn’t know they existed.

Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were always visible to our eyes with no need to discover them among the starry sky. They were the planets (wandering stars), put there for us to ponder and speculate with stories of creation about their purpose. It was the beginnings of scientific astronomical observation using telescopes that two more planets were discovered — Uranus and Neptune.

Uranus had always been within the light gathering grasp of our eyes, but so close to the limit of visibility, and moving so slowly across the night sky, it wasn’t noticed as a planet. In 1781, William Herschel saw what he thought might be a comet through his small reflecting telescope. Other astronomers examined his find, and it became apparent with its circular orbit and distance, it was a new planet. Two years later the Royal Society deemed it to be the seventh planet giving him credit for the discovery of Uranus.

Voyager II visited Neptune and Uranus. Photo/NASA

Neptune, much more distant from the sun, and too dim to see with the unaided eye was discovered because of Uranus. Scientists studying the seventh planet found irregularities in its orbit and wondered if another object further out could be causing what they were seeing.

Astronomical discovery is a combination of observational and theoretical efforts. At times observations require theorists to explain them, and at times the reverse. In the case of Neptune it was theorists speculating there was an eighth planet because of orbital irregularities of Uranus, and it was the observational astronomers proving its existence by finding it where the theorist predicted it would be found.

On Sept. 23, 1846, Johann Gottfried Galle, using coordinates supplied by Urban Le Verrier, found Neptune in the eyepiece of a telescope.

Uranus is 1.8 billion miles from the sun, and Neptune a billion miles farther. Only one spacecraft has visited either of the two planets: Voyager II. The distance to the outer planets is so great it took nine years traveling at 42,000 mph for the spacecraft to get to Uranus and another three years to pass by Neptune and its largest moon Triton in 1989.

If you would like to try to see the two icy giants, this October is a good time. Uranus will be at opposition on the 19th (opposite the sun from the Earth) and Neptune is just past opposition making both of them about as bright as they get.

Both planets can be seen with binoculars, but the best way to see them is through a telescope. If you don’t have a telescope, the ASN (Astronomical Society of Nevada) holds public viewings in Sparks at the Marina. I’m sure they would be happy to let you take a peek at Uranus and Neptune. Information about the ASN and public viewings can be found online. http://www.astronomynv.org/

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

The Fall Fish Festival will take place at the Taylor Creek Visitor Center on the South Shore on Oct. 7-8. 

Hosted by the U.S. Forest Service Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit in collaboration with the Tahoe Heritage Foundation, the festival is an opportunity to learn about the variety of fish species that live in Lake Tahoe and its streams including the federally threatened Lahontan cutthroat trout.

The festival is from 10am-4pm each day. On Saturday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s giant inflatable fish will serve as the gateway to fun activity stations for kids. Saturday and Sunday festival mascots Lulu the Lahontan Cutthroat Trout and Sandy and Rocky Salmon will make appearances and there will be special appearances by Smokey Bear. 

New this year is an iNaturalist booth and bioblitzes, which are open to anyone and family-friendly.  Bring smartphones with the iNaturalist app already downloaded to help catalog the natural wonders of Taylor Creek. 

Festival events also include children’s activities, food vendors, educational booths, streamside information and Kokanee Trail Runs on Sunday sponsored by the Tahoe Mountain Milers. 

The Forest Service encourages attendees to bike, walk or take public transportation to the event.

For more information, go online.

By Heather Hansman, Ski

Breckenridge ski patroller Hunter Mortensen says it never fails. The instant patrol responds to someone seriously sick or injured on the hill, a doctor skis by. “They want to help but they’re used to perfect light and perfect conditions,” Mortensen says. “Then they see me on my hands and knees managing an airway and they ski away.”

And, luckily for the on-slope patient, Mortensen has what he likes to call “an ambulance in his backpack.” He’s used to starting IVs, stabilizing vitals, and initiating other invasive medical procedures that were formerly restricted to emergency rooms—on the side of a ski run.

Mortensen is part of a bigger movement, mostly invisible to happily oblivious skiers, to raise the level of on-hill medical care.

Read the whole story

Volunteers with the Sugar Pine Foundation this fall will be planting more than 4,000 sugar pine seedlings, progeny of blister rust resistant parent trees.

Help is needed on the following days:

Oct. 15, 11am-1pm — Truckee River Day planting at Waddle Ranch
Oct. 21, 10am-noon — SOS kids and Southwest Gas employee planting in Tahoe Vista
Oct. 28 10am -1pm — Community planting in the Little Valley Burn Scar in Reno
Oct. 29, 10am-noon — Tahoe City Rotary planting at Granlibakken
Nov. 5, 10am-noon — Tahoe Douglas Rotary planting at Glenbrook with a special guest talk from the Tahoe Institute of Natural Science.

Seedlings are $10 for people wanting to plant their own. For more info, go online.