The Truckee-Tahoe watercraft inspection station’s last day will be Sept. 4.

After that date, all watercraft launching on Donner Lake must go to the Alpine Meadows station for inspections. Alpine Meadows will remain open until Sept. 30.

Beginning Oct. 1 watercraft inspections will be available at the Lake Forest launch ramp in Tahoe City.

During the 2017 boating season, Tahoe Resource Conservation District watercraft inspectors performed more than 1,400 inspections for Donner Lake vessels.

By Olga R. Rodriguez and Jonathan J. Cooper, AP

There was no rain, no rumbling, no sign of danger before the blinding flash and deafening bang of a lightning bolt threw Mathias Steinhuber to the ground, tore off his clothes and burned a gaping hole in his shoe.

The 31-year-old Austrian teacher, an avid hiker, had just reached the 9,000-foot summit of a Sierra mountain range ahead of his companions when he raised his arms for a picture and was struck in the back of the head. The electricity shot through his body and exited through his foot, and he was too stunned to know what had happened.

“It was like in a dream,” Steinhuber told the Associated Press Thursday. “I woke up. I had blood everywhere. My clothes were ripped apart. At some distance I heard my girlfriend scream my name. My first conclusion was that I probably fell down the mountain.”

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The Alpine Watershed Group will be hosting the 18th annual Markleeville Creek Day on Sept. 9. 

Each year this event allows for the completion of important watershed restoration work. 

Volunteers are needed to help complete projects throughout the East and West Carson Watersheds including plantings, stream bank stabilization, invasive weed removal, protective tree wrapping, and storm drain stenciling. No experience is necessary.

Meet at the Markleeville Library Park (270 Laramie St.) at 9am for registration and introductions. Groups then carpool to their restoration project locations. 

The Alpine Watershed Group is a non-profit organization whose mission is to protect and enhance Alpine County watersheds. 

For more information on this event and to sign up, contact Sarah Muskin at awg.snap.ed@gmail.com or 530.694.2327.

A golf tournament to raise money for South Tahoe High School’s football team will be Sept. 30 at Lake Tahoe Golf Course in Meyers.

Registration begins at 8am, with a shotgun start at 9am.

Cost is $100 per person. For more information, email stvquarterbackclub@hotmail.com.

Campers at Martis Creek Lake Alpine Meadows Campground near Truckee are being warned to take precautions to avoid contracting plague.

The Army Corps of Engineers put up warning signs this week as well as insecticide treated bait stations. The goal is to kill the fleas that can carry the disease.

Plague is naturally present throughout California.

Tips to avoid contracting the plague:

• Do not feed any wild animal.
• Do not touch sick, injured or dead rodents.
• Do not camp, sleep or rest near animal burrows or areas where dead rodents are observed.
• Wear long pants tucked into boot tops and spray insect repellent with DEET on socks and pant cuffs to reduce flea exposure.
• Don’t allow pets to approach sick or dead rodents or rodent burrows.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

The 20th annual Tahoe Forest Stewardship Day is Sept. 23 from 8am-3pm.

Participants will help restore the Angora burn area by improving trails and thinning brush to protect young trees.

Then all volunteers are invited to South Tahoe Brewing Co. for a celebration.

The work ends at 1pm, with the party from 1-3pm.

The annual event is put on by the League to Save Lake Tahoe.

To get more information and to RSVP, go online.

Whittell’s field is not suitable for any sports this fall. Photo/Kathryn Reed

By Kathryn Reed

Before Whittell High School’s football plays its first game tonight it has already scored in the arena of community cooperation, as has Lake Tahoe Unified School District.

They are showing what it truly means to blur the state line.

Construction equipment is occupying Whittell’s gridiron as it undergoes a major transformation. It’s all dirt, a complete work zone. This means no games there this season.

“I thought about our families who would be attending games. I know it’s easier to be here at the lake than to go down off the mountain,” Principal Crespin Esquivel told Lake Tahoe News.

That’s how LTUSD got involved.

South Tahoe Middle School is going to be Whittell’s home field for this season. Games will be Sept. 8, Sept. 29, Oct. 13, Oct. 26 at 7pm. The Warriors are expected to have a good team this year. Last season they finished 9-2 and made it to the playoffs.

“We got contacted last spring to see what we could figure out and it ended up to be pretty easy. It was an amicable resolution on both sides,” Pat Harnett, STHS athletic director, told Lake Tahoe News. “They wanted to be at a consistent site. That’s why they are at the middle school. The high school site was not always available.

“There is no facility use fee. We are taking care of our neighbors.”

WHS will pay for any LTUSD personnel involved with the game.

The Warriors are able to practice at home. Photo/LTN

If a facility in LTUSD could not have been found, the Warriors would likely have ended up at Douglas High. And while that would have kept them in their same school district, going across town is more like playing at home.

The team is still able to practice at home. That upper field has grass.

What will be different at STMS is that it is artificial turf. The other thing is that the field is wider and will have to be altered. WHS plays eight-man football instead of 11. Tape has been ordered to stripe lines for their games that will be put down and taken up each night.

The goal is for the field in Zephyr Cove to be finished for the start of next season.

WHS soccer games will be played at Zephyr Cove Park this year. The track team has never had home meets.

A donation of $3 million from the Lisa and Robert Maloff Endowment Fund is paying for the football field to be completely renovated as well as the track.

“The drainage was a huge problem. It always looked like a moat out there,” Esquivel said.

Improving the water flow is a big part of the new infrastructure. While the original plan was to put in artificial turf, now sod is going to be laid. An all-weather track is coming, visitor seating and concession stand as well.

Christy Hill’s cottonwood trees from the lake. Photo/Brent Thrams

By Melissa Siig, Moonshine Ink

At 5:45 one morning in early June, Tahoe Vista resident Brent Thrams parked his truck in front of the grove of cottonwood trees near the entrance to Christy Hill restaurant in Tahoe City. Thrams, who was accompanied by two others, was not there to watch the sun rise over Lake Tahoe or take an early morning jog on the bike path. He was there to protest.

A few minutes later, when an Arbor Care crew showed up to cut the dozen 50-foot cottonwood trees down, Thrams refused to move his truck.

“My intention is to not have you cut these trees down today,” he told the Arbor Care foreman. “I’m not moving.”

Arbor Care eventually left, leaving the cottonwood trees standing … for now.

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By Christopher Solomon, Outside

More than 99.2 percent of the people who commented on President Donald Trump’s national-monuments review were in complete agreement: Leave the monuments alone.

That’s the stunning result of a detailed new survey on the comments that the federal government solicited after Trump issued an executive order earlier this year to revisit the status of 27 national monuments.

The evidence of this tidal wave of support comes a day before Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke is scheduled to make a recommendation to Trump on the fate of the monuments. Many expect Zinke to suggest that one, and possibly several, be greatly reduced in size or even removed.

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By Carolyn Wilke, Sacramento Bee

A recent report by UC Davis gave a grim assessment on the health of forests around Lake Tahoe.

The threats facing them include white pine blister rust, an invasive fungus, and bark beetles, an insect that attacks trees. And both of these were exacerbated by the recent drought. From 2015 to 2016, tree mortality more than doubled, from 35,000 to 72,000.

Blister rust has hit sugar pine trees hard. They’re the largest species of pine, with enormous pine cones, and they grow at low elevations.

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