By Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times
 
Conservation groups, aiming to end California’s dwindling fur trade, filed a lawsuit Wednesday that would force state wildlife authorities to raise license fees to levels required by law to cover the full costs of regulating the trapping, killing and skinning of wild animals.

That would drive the fees so high it would effectively kill off the trade introduced centuries ago by California’s first explorers and settlers, said Camilla Fox, executive director of Project Coyote, one of the plaintiffs.

The lawsuit, filed against the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the state Fish and Game Commission, alleges that revenue generated from the 200 commercial trapping licenses purchased in 2016 for about $117 covered only a fraction of the state trapping program’s total costs.

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The Incline Village Championship Golf Course has retained its designation as a certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary through the Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program for Golf Courses, an Audubon International program.

Participation is designed to help course personnel plan, organize, implement, and document a comprehensive environmental management program and receive recognition for their efforts.

To reach certification, a course must demonstrate it is maintaining a high degree of environmental quality in a number of areas including: environmental planning, wildlife and habitat management, outreach and education, chemical use reduction and safety, water conservation, and water quality management.

The Championship Golf Course at Incline Village is one of seven courses in Nevada and 911 courses in the world to have this distinction.

Lake Tahoe is going from cool to cold.

While the calendar says fall will arrive next week, the forecast is more like winter.

“Most of next week will be on the cool side, and there is a chance for showers and some mountain snow during the second half of the week,” the National Weather Service in Reno said.

Frost was already reported in some locations of South Lake Tahoe this week. People with outdoor plants might want to protect them.

Overnight lows this week have been in the 30s, and that’s just going to continue into next week.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

Beginning Sept. 18, the El Dorado Beach boat ramp at Lakeview Commons will be closed Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

It will remain open Thursday-Sunday.

The hours will be 8am-6pm, with the last launch at 4:30pm.

The last day of boat ramp operations will be Oct. 1.

The maximum boat length is 23 feet. The boat length is subject to change due to water levels. The boat ramp passes under Lakeview Avenue and there is a bridge with a maximum 12-foot clearance.

By Nick Ward

When it comes to getting big for sports like football, is muscle over movement developing players in the right way? What can we learn for our gym sessions from the science of strength training?

Nick Ward

Another high school sports season is under way around the country. At times, body image seems to be a more desirable goal for young athletes than performance. In the weight room, players focus on energy-zapping, muscle-reforming, and non-functional exercises. But instead of shape and size, the focus should be on athletic performance.

Bodybuilding, or hypertrophy training, is only one method of strength training. It does have a place in an athlete’s development if lack of size or muscle mass is hurting his or her performance. But genetics and maturity also play important roles. Our physique can dictate what sports or positions we play. Making the most of your body’s potential and performance comes down to three things: how well you train, eat, and rest.

Training for speed and strength

Science shows that a bigger muscle fiber will produce more force. Several muscle fibers are capable of producing high force, but at different rates and speeds. How we train can strongly influence whether our muscles can produce faster, higher force movements or slower, high- force movements.

It’s about speed and strength. The equation force = mass x acceleration shows that mass or size isn’t everything. We can train for speed, too. However, this doesn’t mean lifting light weights quickly. It means lifting the heaviest weight and accelerating as quickly as possible. So grinding out a squat or a bench press is inferior to using a load where at the end of the session, you might feel like you’ve still got a couple of reps left in the tank.

Maintaining flexibility

Losing coordination and flexibility is the other problem. High school students aren’t professional bodybuilders who train for symmetry and good mobility to assist in posing. This type of exercise leads to beach muscles and loss of the flexibility needed in sports. Exercises like leg extensions and curls build the muscle into non-athletic forms. Instead, students should use athletic forms of single-leg squatting, cleans and dead lifts, and body-weight or upright-based pushing and pulling.

Training for size can hurt your athletic abilities. The good news? Training for movement, not muscles, can improve athletic performance, and muscle growth still comes as a secondary effect. This training, along with eating well, resting well, and giving your body opportunities to perform well, reduces the risk of injury and allows players to reap the physical benefits.

Nick Ward is the sports performance director at Barton Performance by ALTISTM.

Page Meadow pops out of the forest on the North Shore. Photo/Kathryn Reed

By Kathryn Reed

TAHOE CITY – Something about meadows is mesmerizing. These vast grassy areas seem to appear out of nowhere. Such a contrast to all the conifers that dominate Tahoe hikes.

Page Meadow was not a disappointment; especially considering I had heard so much about this North Shore area that is part of the Tahoe Rim Trail.

A month ago today five of us and the wonder dog AJ explored the area for the first time. For a summer weekend it was surprisingly uncrowded. We ran into a woman who lives nearby; this is her regular route for exercise. And no wonder – it would undoubtedly be one of those locations that would seem to change with the seasons.

In mid-August a few wildflowers still dotted the terrain. The grasses were full of life, some golden, some verdant. They didn’t look dead or even dying. The actual meadow was more like fertile grasslands reminiscent of the Midwest. It was inviting in the sense part of me wanted to run through it. I knew better. It seemed almost sacred. I didn’t want to ruin the beauty for others.

Mountain bikers, too, kept to the trail that skirts around the perimeter of the meadow.

The trail in parts is a road, other sections it is single track. Photo/Kathryn Reed

I would imagine with fall in the air now that the foliage will soon be turning yellow and orange.

Winter must be spectacular in there for snowshoeing and cross country skiing.

Even in late summer water was an issue in one spot. Fortunately someone had laid down what looked like a homemade ladder only it was a foot bridge across the boggy area. This might be the only section anyone would really need/want hiking poles.

We were thankful for the fellow hiker who told us to look to our left for this crossing.

Signage is spotty. Multiple connector trails intersect with the main one. On the one hand this is good because it disperses users, it also means more options for accessing the meadow, as well as being able to lengthen the trek if so desired.

Starting out we were on what seemed like a road – wide enough to walk alongside someone. No aspect of this approximately 5-mile loop is steep. It’s a gentle meander up and down, and around.

Liz, Sue and Rosemary crossing the wet area. Photo/Kathryn Reed

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Getting there:

From South Lake Tahoe, take Highway 89 north. Not too far after Sunnyside, turn left on Pine Street. Go right onto Tahoe Park Heights Drive. Then go right on Big Pine Drive. Go left on Silvertip Drive. The trailhead is at the end of Silvertip.

By Aaron Gulley, Outside

Bikepacking used to be a fringe activity. These days, it’s about as commonplace as sidewall tears in the rocky desert. There are drop-bar and flat-bar bikes built expressly for it, videos about it, and it’s even popping up in the New York Times.

And, unlike a decade ago, when only a few tiny companies sold made-to-order bags, some of the biggest brands in cycling have started building packs to make it easier to get out and camp overnight on a bike.

Those tiny brands, such as Apidura, Nuclear Sunrise, Oveja Negra, and Porcelain Rocket, continue to innovate and create excellent products. Heck, for the most part I still mainly use my 10-year-old packs from Revelate Designs—the stuff is that good. At the same time, the mom-and-pop shops haven’t always kept up with burgeoning demand, which is partly why I love that big companies like Specialized and Blackburn have gotten into this space.

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Diamond Peak and Olympic champion Sage Kotsenburg will be featured in Snowboarder magazine’s “Pepper” movie.

Last spring, a crew of riders were at the Incline Village ski resort to film shoot for  the soon-to-be-released feature-length movie.

With the sun setting over Lake Tahoe in the background, slopestyle Olympic gold medalist Kotsenburg and friends Chris Grenier, Ozzy Henning, Nils Mindnich and Garrett Warnick sessioned a custom built jump on Crystal Ridge.

Footage from the two-day film shoot can be seen in Kotsenburg’s “Who Is Pepper? Ep. 1” teaser on the Snowboarder magazine website.

“Pepper” is scheduled to be released on iTunes on Oct. 18.

Vehicles are being ransacked by bears in Tahoe. Photo/USFS

By Katelyn Stark, KTXL-TV

Bears have been ransacking and ripping apart cars recently at a South Shore trailhead, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

Photographs posted by Desolation Wilderness volunteer ranger Charlie McCarthy show the backseat windows of three cars bent and torn from their frames. One car’s interior appears to have been mauled, large chunks of yellow foam scattered throughout.

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By Tony Berendsen

I’ve been married to a wonderful woman – Jackie — for 45 years this September. She is not the geeky one in the family. I hold that distinction. For our 25th anniversary I booked a Sky and Telescope Astronomy Tour on the Holland America Ryndam to see a total solar eclipse off the coast of Barbados: would you expect anything less from the Star Guide?

On the morning of Feb. 26, 1998, about 1,600 miles from our port of departure Ft. Lauderdale the Ryndam slowed to a halt. The captain announced the eclipse was beginning and invited everyone to the upper deck. At first the only evidence of the moon covering the sun was our view through special glasses, and announcements through the P.A. system by the captain. But soon the bite of the sun by the moon became so big that the warm Caribbean air began to noticeably cool.

The top deck of our ship filled with 1,200 passengers watching as the horizon started to dim sending a shadow lunging across the water toward us; so quietly, but so powerfully. In a whisper, the last bit of sun was hidden and our prize, the beautiful corona, blazed above us as planets and bright stars shown in the darkened sky.

Total eclipse from Wieser, Idaho, in August. Photo/Ryan Berendsen

It was 19 years later on Aug. 21 the experience repeated itself for me on a dusty farm field in Wieser, Idaho. I had traveled from Reno the day before with my son, Ryan, and our friend KC Rodrigue to watch the totality of the Great American Eclipse. We had left early in the morning on Sunday anticipating miles and miles of traffic jams along our path, but instead drove the speed limit through Nevada, Oregon, and Idaho to reach our destination.

We hadn’t anticipated the heat and dust of our eclipse camp in Wieser, so we headed to the local hardware store for a large tarp and gazebo where we met other eclipse travelers, who like us were buying heaps of supplies to the delight of the town merchants. I’m sure it was a banner day for sales in Wieser.

The field where we camped for $50 a night was filling with campers in anticipation of Monday’s eclipse. There were people from all parts of the United States, with a couple campers from Japan and Germany. Sunday night’s sky was filled with clouds along with some really bright street lights that ruined Ryan’s plans for astrophotography. But the forecast for the morning looked good.

Monday morning we awoke to a beautiful clear blue sky. Partial eclipse began at 10:10 MDT that morning as we watched with our special glasses and telescopes fitted with solar filters. Soon, as before in 1998, the bite of the sun by the moon became large enough that the temperature dropped noticeably and the sky began to dim slightly.

I took a picture under a nearby tree of hundreds of projected eclipse images on the ground as the eclipse progressed. Ryan and KC were taking pictures with their cameras getting ready for totality. Then the last bit of sun slid behind the moon and the corona appeared. I didn’t see the shadow coming this time, but it became dark enough for street lights to come on during the day.

So for the second time in my life I was able to look at the sun with my unfiltered eyes and see one of the most beautiful sights in my life. KC told me, “It was so amazing that I instantly looked up when the next one will take place.”

Two minutes and 4 seconds later totality was over and the sun began to return. We watched again with our special glasses until the bite of the moon was completely gone. The experience reminded me of the closing line of an Emily Dickinson poem “Dissolved as utterly, As birds’ far navigation, Discloses just a hue; A plash of oars-a gaiety, Then swallowed up to view.”

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