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Hiking With Farmers in Ireland's County Clare
ALONG THE WEST coast of Ireland's County Clare, where swells of the Atlantic Ocean thunder against rocky shores, a large region of limestone called the Burren is home to hundreds of ancient and historical sites built by farmers. Some of the ruins date to pre-Christian activities of the Celts; others are from the Dark Ages when Christians made Ireland a stronghold while the rest of Europe fell into chaos. A few that are more than 5,500 years old indicate that people were doing field work here as far back as the Stone Age. Together, the sites reveal important pieces of information about the world's earliest food-growers.
Recently, farmers have started a Heritage Farm Tours program taking people onto their private lands to see these old ruins, places that before now have only been accessed by family members and friends.
The tours complement efforts by regional governments to promote the roles that farmers have played in the Burren since people first settled here. Many farmers have been working on projects that restore and protect their land's archeology and natural features. In a crafty marriage of tourism and farming, through the tours they now can share their progress with the public.
Last summer, the heritage tours drew attention from Prince Charles, who with his wife, Camilla, walked among the terraced hillsides of Oliver Nagle's land south of Galway. The visit garnered much attention, which pleased Dr. Brendan Dunford, the researcher whose work on the land benefits of the Burren farming practices instigated the current conservation work.
"His visit will hopefully reinforce the message that these wonderful landscapes are also home to people who have shaped, and been shaped, by these places for millennia, and that the future of these people and their places is deeply intertwined," Dunford says. "The Burren is Ireland's greatest repository of natural and cultural heritage, and encapsulates our very essence as a people."
Comprising about 100 squares miles between Galway and Shannon, the Burren (the Gaelic word Boireann, means "place of stone") originated undersea 360 million years ago when calcified marine life and plant debris built up on the ocean floor and hardened over time. The fossil-rich rock was eventually uplifted out of the sea and folded into hills and valleys. Forests came and went, and glaciers scraped and polished the exposed rock into flat surfaces now called pavements.
Since the ice age, rain has been the Burren's primary sculptor. Acidic rainfall slowly dissolves parts of the limestone surface into potholes and cracks that widen with time into deep crevices. The cracks and depressions hold a constant temperature, creating protected moist micro-climates that support ferns, wildflowers, and grasses. Some 600 of Ireland's native plants grow here, including 24 of its 28 species of orchid. Water draining through the cracks has worn a complex system of channels and caves deep in the rock, a playground for spelunkers who travel from all over the world to explore it.
Because the "barren" Burren has not been particularly appealing to development, it is a treasure store of history. There are 2,700 recorded heritage sites belonging to every era from the Stone Age to today, including an estimated 75 wedge tombs (generally dated to between 3000 and 2000 BC), 500 ring forts (fortified pre-Christian homesteads), and hundreds of Bronze Age cooking sites, according to Dunford, who wrote a thorough analysis in his book, "Farming and the Burren." There are also Neolithic burial mounds, ecclesiastical sites and holy wells, as well as remnants of early water troughs, livestock shelters, and field systems. Two significant ruins have been developed for tourism: Caherconnell, a medieval ring fort, and the Poulnabrone, a megalithic portal tomb that was found to contain human bones 5,800 years old along with evidence of an ancient farm economy that included cattle, sheep, and goats.
The farmer-guided walks follow ancient stone walls and paths and meander cross limestone pavement tableaus. Visitors can peer into wedge tombs, and see ring fort ruins. They can climb onto ancient burials mounds and stare into pristine natural springs. Far off, they might see wild goats scurrying up a hillside; close up, they can admire a single fern clinging to a fist-wide limestone crevice.
But the tours are not at all only about ancient sites.
"People are interested in the wedge tombs and the ring forts, but most of them want to talk about what it is like to farm such a place," says Frank O'Grady, who takes people to his property at Caherfadda (a Gaelic term meaning long fort.) "They are interested in the history of the farm, how the Burren as a landscape was farmed, and how we, in particular, came to be farmers."
In a reversal of common practices elsewhere in the country, Burren farmers graze their cattle in the lowlands in summer and on the highlands in winter. The winter lowlands are too wet and muddy for the cattle, and cattle do better grazing there in the warmer months. The Burren's limestone holds a constant temperature through the winter, creating good conditions for grass to grow during the colder months.
Oliver Nagle's 72 acres of winterage pasture are in a spectacular location among terraced limestone hills that resemble spooky settings from "Lord of the Rings." (In fact, an annual Burren Tolkien Festival in Lisdoonvarna postulates that the Burren inspired the great novelist.)
"The cattle go up before they calve in October, then don't come down until the first days of February," Nagle says. The animals remain in the uplands until Christmastime. "As the calves grow inside of them, we start to bring them down the mountain. By the time they are heaviest with calves, they are on the flat." The animals are then hauled 14 miles away to the Nagle's lowland summer pastures near the town of Corofin.
The Irish government and the European Union have been piloting the Burren Life Programme, reimbursing farmers for completing projects that restore and protect the Burren heritage sites and environment. As part of this "farming for conservation" effort, Oliver and his father, Patrick, have repaired two older springs and developed three new ones. They've constructed troughs at the springs, and created barriers that prevent cattle from polluting the water. Their work reducing acres of scrub has opened up more grazing ground, allowing them to boost their herd numbers. In one location, scrub-removal uncovered the new discovery of a very old stone herdsman's hut.
People on the walks get to do things that a more developed tourist site might not allow. For instance, on Nagle's winterage upland, people can squirm through an underground souterrain (pronounced soo-terrain), if they aren't afraid of small spaces. "To think you should have a man-made structure 600 to 1000 feet above sea level in a small corner of land — it's magical," Oliver Nagle says. "The slabs covering the roof weigh 3 to 4 tons apiece. I remember the first day my father showed it to me and my father remembers when his father showed it to him."
Leading groups does not necessarily come naturally to the independent farmers, but the Irish warmth and quick humor sparks connections. "We've had a lot to learn," O'Grady says. "We are not tour guides; we are farmers – talkative farmers. We answer people's questions as best we can. There's the joke about the Kerry farmer — he's out standing in his own field. That's what we do."
And small groups of people from around the world are showing up in person to stand there with him.
All Photos Copyright Laura Read
Poets' Park in Sacramento
In Sacramento's South Natomas neighborhood, six recently completed large-scale steel sculptures lift poetry off the page and into the physical realm. Dubbed Poet Laureate Park, the installation lets visitors walk around, step between, and interact with the rhythmic phrases of the capital city's top bards.
Each sculpture is inspired by a single poem, and each is a distinct experience. The words of Bob Stanley— "Carve the smile in stone, shout the song across canyons"—are cut into weathered sheets and stand up like playing cards from a concrete pedestal.
José Montoya's "This Valley in September" wraps around a cylinder that you can step inside, and Julia Connor's "M(other) Tongue" cascades across metal pages.
"There's a beautiful aesthetic quality in the shapes and patterns of the letters," says the artist, Troy Corliss. More than a dozen of his other public works are on display in California, Nevada, Colorado, and Ohio.
The Secret Isle, Ireland's Inis Meáin - Travel + Leisure
Travel + Leisure
THE PLEASURES OF Meáin are simple: a walk along the coast to the thunder of Atlantic swells; a tableau of fissured limestone that glimmers in the mist; the best potatoes you'll ever taste. At the stone-walled Inis Meáin Restaurant & Suites, owners Marie-Thérèse and Ruairí de Blacam have equipped the five suites with bicycles and fishing rods; oversize beds come with alpaca throws, and 30-foot-wide windows look out onto Galway Bay and Connemara. The real allure is the 30-seat glass-walled restaurant, known for its deceptively basic fish dishes and homegrown vegetables. For dessert, try the seaweed pudding in wild-berry sauce at An Dún.
All Photos Copyright Laura Read
Hanging with Headhunters in Nagaland - San Francisco Chronicle Magazine
San Francisco Chronicle Magazine
THE JEEP BELCHED to a stop in a courtyard flooded with noonday sun. Dominating the space was a thatch-roofed building adorned with bulls-head carvings and decorated with flowers for tomorrow's purification festival. Our guide, Sanjay Thakur, disappeared down a walkway to check us in to our bungalows. We cracked our tired joints and stepped into the cooling breeze. Across a ravine, sod and metal huts cluttered the hillside. Just as I'd read in anthropology books back home, they stood cock-eyed to each other so evil spirits couldn't move easily among doors. Behind them loomed a three-story Baptist church.
Our American tour leader, Bob Phillips, a retired Sacramento State University professor who now runs a small, word-of-mouth travel company, Mekong Tours, had already jumped down the hillside into a nearby yard. "Laura, take a look at this. Have you ever watched a pig being butchered?" Bob grew up on an Oregon farm. For him, pig butchering is nostalgic.
I shuddered. "Never have, Bob." My stomach was already gurgling with an unfortunate mélange of coconut cookies I'd bought earlier at police checkpoint.
But Bob was insistent: "Grab your camera."
I slung my Nikon around my neck and scuffed down the worn path after him. A sudden blinding flash of sunlight off a metal roof briefly forced me keep feel my way on the irregular terrain by foot. After I blinked, I was looking at a chopped off head of a flame-singed pig displayed on a firewood pile.
We were visiting the Angami Tribe of Nagaland, in their village of Touphema deep in the folding mountains of northeast India. Nagaland is named for its hill tribes, the Nagas, or "fierce people". It encompasses the last wrinkles of the eastern Himalayan foothills, north of the Bay of Bengal. It also divides the sultry plains of Assam to the west from the country of Myanmar, (formerly called Burma), to the east. The Nagas had stopped chopping off heads in 1963 but had warred violently with each other over issues of independence from India until a ceasefire in 1997. Because of the state's remote location and the notoriety of its people, it had been closed to foreigners until 2002.
I was here to observe and photograph the mid-February Angami Sekrenyi Festival, a fertility ceremony of dance and song related to the planting season and recalling the headhunting activities that once scored their animist beliefs. I had known I'd see feast-making as part of the event, but had imagined a sauté, not a slaughter.
As we approached the butchering site, the hacking sounds intensified until they seemed to split my own bones. A satellite dish the size of a Volkswagen Bug screened out the Baptist church. Next to it, on a cement slab, five men crouched around a mess of meat and guts. Their muscled arms, shiny with effort, arced through the air, driving hand-forged blades through sinew and bone. As I moved in close with my wide-angled lens, the zinc-like scent of blood filled my nostrils and lungs.
"What an ironic introduction," I murmured.
Before the Nagas converted to Christianity, they believed heads contained a life-force to be gathered in raids and hoarded. Cherished like gold, cleaned skulls were stockpiled in the eaves of houses or in underground burial spots. They influenced many aspects of village life: a boy was not able to marry until he secured his first severed head; a man who boldly "took" many heads was able to wear prestigious clothing and ornaments; and head-related symbols ornamented village gates and public buildings.
But all of that changed after the 1870s when Baptist missionaries thrashed through the jungles into the Naga Hills and delivered their convictions, along with their medicine and education, to the tribes. Disenfranchised tribes throughout the hill regions of northern India were attracted to the Christian promise of equality. In Nagaland, 98 percent of the population ties their fate to the will a single Christian God.
The Nagas are using tourism as a way to boost their economy as well as preserve their culture, artifacts and rituals. The best way to see the state is by visiting its many villages scattered throughout the jungly hills. But overnight facilities in those are rare. Only two villages have developed western-style lodging big enough for the groups. The Touphema bungalows and dining hall resembled traditional buildings, built of thatch and cement by local Angamis, and decorated with typical symbols. Lodge managers were skilled in English and often shared village stories. The food is a mixture of local and central Indian cuisine, usually delicious, occasionally surprising.
That night in the dining room, sautéed pork rested before me in a bowl on the buffet. I spooned the richly seasoned chunks onto my plate next to piles of white rice, nan, and steamed chard, then nudged Bob's elbow. "They've stewed the pork with potatoes."
"That's not potatoes; it's fat."
I quickly shoveled the flabby white chunks back into the bowl.
One engaging manager I met was Khrienno Kense, who three months ago had married a Welsh man and made an unlikely move to Wales. She was now home to help with the festival. After dinner, Khrienno pulled me aside. "If you like, I will lend you one of my meklahs to wear tomorrow during the ceremony."
I said I would be honored to wear the traditional ankle-length wrap skirt, and arranged to pick it up tomorrow.
The next morning, after feast of eggs and fruit outdoors, I looked for Khrienno in the dining room. From the kitchen, rumbling laughter indicated lunch-prep was starting. The giggles were no surprise: The Angami people were considered some of the most warm and friendly in all of Nagaland. Soon Khrienno emerged from the kitchen door, her skin glowing cool as porcelain, and handed me a folded skirt. I was amazed to see it was not the traditional black color bordered in pencil-thin pink and green stripes, but a ripe hue of tangerine.
"It is my favorite skirt, woven on a back loom by a friend," she said. "The locals will appreciate seeing you wear this."
I grinned. "I certainly won't disappear in the crowd."
I couldn't get the ends to tuck firmly at the waist, so Khrienno showed me how to hitch a corner into the top fold and let the tightly-woven cloth fall smoothly to just above my hiking boots. Wrinkles are a sign of the novice wearer, Khrienno said. There were no pins or buttons, so I added extra security by cinching my hip-belt camera bag over the waist folds.
"Promise me you won't remove the camera bag without checking that the skirt will stay up," Khrienno said. We laughed together and I left, feeling wrapped in spun gold and trying hopelessly to conceal my skirt-bound waddle.
Nagas look different from the east Indians we Americans are used to seeing on TV or in travel literature. Their skin is lighter, cheekbones wider, foreheads broader. According to anthropologists, they are related, instead, to the Mongolians, and speak dialects of the Tibeto-Burmese language. I objected to one early recorder's assertion that the men were handsome, the women plain. The women were exceedingly handsome -- gorgeous even, their beauty amplified by broad, natural smiles.
The men's athletic beauty was enhanced by their Sekrenyi uniforms. When I strolled into the festival courtyard, where the dancing was to take place shortly, I spotted performers helping each other into outfits. A couple of men were practicing harmonies. Preparing my camera, I moved close to the group. The whisper of my shutter mingled with the baritones. They welcomed me with smiles. I hopped behind a log where they'd placed their arm bracelets and hair pins. A girl pointed toward my feet. Oh, horror! I'd brushed against a sticker bush and the base of my orange skirt was covered in thorns. I reached down to see if I could pull them off without ripping threads and found they peeled off easily. The dressers continued their work, but one of the men helped me to clean off the horns.
With an hour to kill, I wandered into a building overlooked a plunging canyon. A man crouched barefoot, measuring strands of cane against a 6-inch square he'd drawn on the cement floor with a pencil. He was apparently preparing to make a basket, one of the primary tools of the village. During the drive to Touphema, I'd seen plenty of them filled with wood or green stalks, balanced on women's backs by straps to the forehead.
The entrance to the oldest part of Touphema was marked by a wooden arch decorated with carvings of a warrior holding a blood-drenched severed head – a reminder lest I forget the original natures of my hosts. Roosters crowed, women hung out the wash, and, at a neighborhood faucet, a girl washed her hair. I found an overlook encircled with stone benches and sat down. I had read that this kind of platform was a meeting place for elders and leaders. The view stretched over rooftops into a blue, leafy canyon. At home, this view would be worth a million.
Three men and a toddler joined me, and conversation quickly turned serious.
"Are you Christian?"
"Yes, but not everyone from our country is Christian. We have many religions."
"Mostly Catholic?"
"We have many others, including Buddhism and Muslim."
"Muslim?" They seemed astounded.
"In our culture, we try to be tolerant. It is one of the best aspects of American life." They nodded, uncertainly. I open my arms wide. "We embrace -- we TRY to embrace all religions. But we are not all successful at this. Some people can't tolerate others who are different. But we are one big stew pot -- being stirred over the fire." I laugh and they join me heartily. I gesture toward the tourist bungalows, their thatch roofs just visible over the hill. "Why do you want tourists here?"
The man with the toddler lifted the boy onto his lap. "We learn about your ways of doing things."
"What do you want to learn?"
"You are advanced." He seemed to search for words. "Your homes are not built close together like ours."
"But that doesn't mean we have a better life."
"Your houses are not like this?"
"Not usually. They are in grids with sidewalks and paved streets. People spend most time inside their houses and when they come out, they get in their cars and drive somewhere. They all have cars, generally. But, look. Please keep in mind that just because a society is advanced doesn't mean the people are happier. Maybe we can learn from you. We pass each other in our cars behind metal and glass; you pass each other on foot and wave hello. We talk over the phone, without seeing each other's faces. You sit here on these stone benches. We settle things in court. You settle things in your neighborhood meetings, face to face. We don't have much time to gather together."
Another man says: "We have many opportunities to meet together."
"What does that do for your community?"
"We know each other very well. We share our different ideas. We understand each other."
"Do you have less conflict because of it?"
They give half-hearted nods, and then I remember they have big conflicts -- disagreements that have sparked terrorism against each other for forty years, and before that, clashes relating to chopping off each other's heads.
Time was up. I thanked them deeply for the conversation.
Back at the festival courtyard, the dancing started with chanting and the entrance of 30 Angami dancers wearing heavy bamboo headdresses representing the sun. They danced homage to nature to low, throaty chanting. Next entered a troupe in stunning criss-crossed vests in red, black, and white replicating garb used in headhunting raids. A piercing howl launched their wild circular dance. Some wore horns, and all of them carried small baskets at their waists mimicking those used during headhunting raids to carry sharp sticks that were placed in the ground to thwart pursuers.
Afterward, as I wandered again into the village, a gush of rapid-fire English erupted behind me. "My name is Medo Rio-- would you like me to show you around?"
She had two friends with her, but she did all the talking – at high speed. "It is a very beautiful skirt you are wearing and won't you come to my house I would like you to meet my aunt she will give you some tea." We followed a jeep trail past a kiosk selling soda and batteries, past a pen containing three black mithun, the Naga's favorite water buffalo, and up a short hill. Medo never stopped talking. "I go to school in Kohima (the Nagaland capital) and when I am here in Touphema I stay with my aunt and uncle." As we entered the smoky darkness of her hut, I cinched my meklah under my camera belt, hoping to smooth out un-presentable wrinkles. The interior was illuminated only by the glowing hearth. Dark corners dissolved into nothingness.
Medo's aunt unfolded from a stool where she was cooking by the fire and shook my hand. Her meklah was the rich color of eggplant. A strand of cornelian beads hung against her violet shirt. She had pinned her black hair loosely in a bun.
I bowed. "I am honored to be in your home."
"Oooh, ooh, oooh." She said, grinning and bowing.
"It means yes, yes." Medo answered my querying look. "She doesn't speak English. Her name is Vila Rio."
Vila bent over the hearth and blew the embers to life with a hollow stick of bamboo. Naga houses don't have roof holes for the fire. Smoke filters into clothing and drifts out the door. Soot piles up on all the things stored in the room, including baskets, wooden plates, and vegetables hung to dry near the roof. The flaring fire lit up shelves stacked with a dozen plates, cups and plastic containers. Clean, bulbous aluminum water jugs gleamed from wall hooks.
As Medo chatted, Vila heated water and made me some tea with sugar and milk. Soon my brain felt tingly with the caffeine. "I love the color of Vila's meklah," I said. Medo fetched a folded purple bundle from one of the dark corners.
"Vila wants you to have this meklah," Medo said. "It is almost the same color."
I leaned away in surprise. "Oh, no, no, no. I am honored, but I cannot possibly take such a fine gift." It was not good manners to refuse a gift, but this one was too much for me to accept. However, I also did not want to imply I did not like it. I was socially stuck. "I would like to pay something for it. There is too much work involved in that for you to give it to me." Later I realized a gift exchange is far more meaningful to the Angamis than an economic exchange, but in the moment, I felt embarrassed, and wanted to give them the first thing I could think of – money.
The light outside soon faded. "I will guide you back with a flashlight," Medo said.
She put a match into a shiny soup can, and a candle mounted in wax inside flared. The can hung sideways from a wire handle attached to two holes bored into the curved topside. The flickering light was just enough to guide us. In the moments before my eyes adjusted, I had to feel my way by foot, relying kinesthetically on the uneven sensations of the ground against my boot soles. Through doorways and windows, I glimpsed shapes of people seated around the hearth, their soft voices and "ooh, ooh, oohs" now seeming especially soothing to me in the darkness. After saying goodnight to Medo and closing my bungalow door, I could not bring myself to flip on the electric bedroom light. The shroud of darkness nurtured me somehow. I lay on my bed, my tangerine meklah now wrapped lightly around my legs like a heavy sheet. My mind recalled the aromas of the day. The zinc tang of chopped pig and the nutty smoke of Angami hearths mingled with the real sharpness of my own end-of-day sweat. I drifted to sleep to the hum of voices outside – people rehearsing for the next songs of purification and good fortune, maybe, or else preparing for the next slaughter.
All Photos Copyright Laura Read
Hiking Across the Stone Age, The Burren, County Clare, Ireland - Sierra Magazine
Sierra Magazine
MY GUIDE IS PETER CURTIN, brewmaster, founder of the Burren Tolkien Society, and owner of the Roadside Tavern in the nearby village of Lisdoonvarna. He is helping me with my mission to visit the various habitats of the Burren, a 220-square-mile rolling limestone massif on Ireland's west coast. Today we're going to the top of bare-bones Turlough Hill, where we'll search for traces of the people who lived here 4,000 years ago.
Under a pale mist, we navigate yawning rock fractures, fields of scree, and stone walls that have stood without mortar for 1,000 years. The Burren is one of Europe's largest karst, or continuous limestone, regions. The limestone, which formed undersea 320 million years ago, is laced with fissures through which rainwater seeps, to collect in vast tunnel systems. Ferns, mosses, and wildflowers dwell in the cracks. In places, the limestone has eroded to a calcium-rich soil that nourishes meadows bursting with tiny flowers and thick grasses and more than 700 other plant species. Hundreds of generations of farmers have grazed livestock on the meadows. The Irish government now recognizes local farmers as "Keepers of the Burren" and pays them to preserve the habitat.
Atop Turlough Hill we easily locate the ruins: the remains of a cluster of hut sites inside a large circular barricade of stone. Around us, the slinky mist is replaced by a silvery light mirrored in stone. Fields explode in brilliant green, gray hills roll to a bone-white shoreline, and the Atlantic spreads out in a blue sheet.
Curtin believes that the Burren inspired places in J. R. R. Tolkien's fictitious Middle-earth. In The Fellowship of the Ring, Gandalf says, "The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it….White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise." That conjures up the Burren, and Ireland itself, well enough for me.
All Photos Copyright Laura Read
Golden Gate Nationa Recreation Area, San Francisco - VIA magazine
IN 1846 EXPLORER JOHN C. Frémont christened the entrance to San Francisco Bay "Chrysopylae," or Golden Gate. He compared it to the Golden Horn, a beautiful harbor in ancient Byzantium (Istanbul, Turkey) where land, sea, and the human race had converged for thousands of years. He didn't know how apt that name would become.
Frémont may have noticed the many shades of gold that speckled the region: fields of orange poppies (now the state flower), hillsides of flaxen grass, and long afternoons filled with golden light. But he couldn't have known that two years after the name was recorded, a pioneer would discover gold at Sutter's Mill. The shiny nuggets made San Francisco and the West the land of golden opportunity. Today the Golden Gate Strait, which connects the bay to the Pacific Ocean, is the centerpiece of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, a string of 37 public sites that preserve dozens of miles of spectacular coastline extending to the north and south.
Among the park's many attractions are more than 130 miles of paths, 1,200 historic buildings, and 19 ecosystems. Sites include the renowned Muir Woods, Lands End, and Alcatraz, as well as lesser-known locales such as the Tomales Bay viewpoint at Martinelli Ranch and the paved Sneath Lane Trail at Sweeney Ridge, where Spaniards first spotted San Francisco Bay in 1769. The sheer breadth of the park leaves parts of it overlooked, even by locals.
At the heart of the recreation area are two tips of land bounding the strait: the Marin Headlands and the city of San Francisco, both of them beautiful places where people, land, and sea have come together to make history.
"The coast draws us," says John Martini, who grew up in San Francisco and was a national park ranger for over 25 years. "The headlands of San Francisco and Marin are the ultimate example, especially during the American era, of how people were being drawn west as far as they could go."
Debra Schwartz, founder of Tam Hiking Tours, which offers guided hikes on Mount Tamalpais, has walked the Marin Headlands for three decades and is still entranced by watching local weather patterns. "Depending on the time of year, when there's a blue sky, the clouds will appear from nowhere, then race across the ridges," she says. "It looks as if someone were blowing bubbles."
For Schwartz, the headlands provide both adventure and retreat. "It's quiet, and you get the whole ocean spreading out all around you," she says. "It smells heavenly because of the blend of chaparral and sage." She points out that the surface of the area's Coastal Trail, partly a layered rock called chert, was formed at the bottom of the sea some 100 million years ago. "Think of yourself as walking on the ocean floor," she says.
The Marin Headlands are prized for their views of water and city, and numerous trails lead you to dazzling vistas. The scented chaparral Schwartz promises accompanies hikers to the top of Slacker Hill near the city of Sausalito, for example, where the ocean connects San Francisco's skyline to the Farallon Islands, some 30 miles away. At the center of the view is the 1.7-mile span of the Golden Gate Bridge. Climb Slacker Hill at dawn to see a fantasia of fuchsia and lemon hues play out between the water and the skies. On foggy days, you can watch the mist prowl over the bay like a great gray beast. The thickest fog obscures the bridge, but sometimes a single red tower bursts from the luminous folds, looking oddly out of scale.
Beneath those folds and towers, the span binds the Marin Headlands to their sister cliffs across the strait. There, a Spanish military outpost was established in 1776, built atop San Francisco's ancient sand dunes.
For over 200 years, Spanish, then Mexican, then U.S. soldiers occupied the Presidio, keeping commercial development at bay. In 1994, the 1,490-acre former army base joined the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Today the Presidio Trust, a federal agency created to preserve the area, presides over 24 miles of trails; a 300-acre forest of Monterey cypress, pine, and eucalyptus trees; and hundreds of renovated buildings. Former army lodgings now house numerous amenities and attractions, among them the elegant Inn at the Presidio, one of only two hotels in the recreation area (the other being Cavallo Point Lodge); the innovative entertainment of the Walt Disney Family Museum; and the new restaurant Arguello, helmed by famed chef Traci Des Jardins, inside the restored Officers' Club.
The Presidio's forests are easy to get into, with paths connecting one intriguing place to the next. One standout, the Presidio Promenade, brings walkers to the San Francisco National Cemetery, where interred military veterans include buffalo soldiers, Civil War generals, and a Union spy.
The Presidio Trust also supports art programs all over the park. British artist Andy Goldsworthy has created four permanent installations in the Presidio. To see his work called Tree Fall, for example, duck into a historic powder magazine on the Main Post parade ground. As your eyes adjust to the dim light, shapes that could be mammoth tree roots emerge from the ceiling, giving the illusion of being deep underground.
"I see Tree Fall as a symbol of the Presidio," says Alex Kenin, founder of the trekking tour company Urban Hiker SF. "The work is hidden in the Presidio just as the Presidio is hidden in San Francisco." That metaphor arguably extends to the many quiet riches of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. "In each case," Kenin says, "the curious are rewarded."
World's Toughest Musher, DeeDee Jonrowe - Homestead Magazine
Homestead Magazine
ON THE MORNING of Aug. 1, 2013, Iditarod legend DeeDee Jonrowe peeked into a wooden doghouse fenced off among some trees on her property in Willow, Alaska. Inside was Challon, a husky that Jonrowe had recently bred to an athletic male dog named Jarvi. Nearby, tethered to their own houses, more than three dozen other dogs made a symphony of howls.
A day earlier, Challon had nudged away her kibble, exhibiting a classic sign that she was ready to release her pups. By the time Jonrowe reached the pen, five pups had squiggled out of the womb and onto the hay beside their mother.
Five was a fine litter size, but Challon wasn't done. Another body emerged, and then another, until finally the puppies totaled nine. This was already no ordinary group.
"It's going to be my next race team," Jonrowe said, her voice sparkling.
Five foot three, sixty years old, and a bundle of muscle, Jonrowe is one of the toughest female athletes in the world. She's not an Olympian or part of any celebrated sports team. Instead, she's among an elite group of competitors in one of the world's most grueling races, one that requires marvelous stamina and cunning, and perhaps a little madness: the Iditarod, a sled dog race run every March across 1,000 miles of Alaska's frozen interior from Anchorage to Nome.
If some people in the mainstream don't recognize Jonrowe, millions of Iditarod fans do. In 31 races, she's had 16 top ten finishes and placed second twice. Her pink logo wear is a staple in Iditarod gift shops. Fans know her bright voice from media interviews. "Was that DeeDee?" a hiker asked one day after watching Jonrowe and her two yellow labs charge up the Butte Trail in the Mat-Su Valley. "Tell her that I love her!"
They love her not only for her charm and verve, but also for the way she's endured some difficult battles.
The Iditarod has a ceremonial start in Anchorage, where fans packsidelines and "Iditariders" (who win at auction with a $7,500 starting bid) ride for 11 miles on mushers' sleds. The official start is the next afternoon 70-miles north in Willow.
After traversing snow-covered mountains, riveting gorges, and sections of crunched up sea ice, it finishes on the Seward Peninsula in the town of Nome. It links villages of Alaska's interior that just a few generations ago saw few if any motor vehicles at all during winter. Back then, dogs were critical to survival. Residents raised them for transportation and hunting. Mushers were local heroes, driving dog teams through winter landscapes to deliver medicines, mail, and even preachers. The Iditarod was established in 1973 to honor that tradition.
Only a few Iditarod mushers have become legendary, and Jonrowe is one of them.
Challon is the key.
A mantra among mushers is that the real race athletes are the animals. "It's not about the mushers," they say. "It's about the dogs."
The sled dogs are fed with meat and fish plus high-calorie, high protein kibble containing amino acids, probiotics and minerals. On the Iditarod trail, the dogs can run up to 100 miles a day, burning 7,000calories per day. They can eat 2,400 pounds of food, all of it dragged in bags and fed to them by the musher. They are rested and inspected by veterinarians at mandatory checkpoints every 18 to 85 miles.
To build a winning team, mushers breed their dogs to have competitive traits, including endurance, speed, a smooth gait, an insulating but not-too-heavy coat, and tough paws. Some, like Jonrowe's dogs Fudge and Omnistar, become ultra-intelligent team leaders. Others are middle-of-the-pack pullers. Others, still, are wheel dogs running closest to the sled, which can carry more than 100 pounds of gear. Gouda is a favorite wheel dog. In a race, "she's directing my sled," Jonrowe explained. "She plays the back line like a piano wire. She'll jump over, and have both dogs pulling the sled away from the obstacles."
The performance qualities come only with practice, training and good health. Managing that is much more than a full-time job; it's a lifestyle.
Touring Jonrowe's 17 acre property, it's clear the yard is planned for efficiency: tethers keep dogs from tangling with each other; wide corridors allow for poop cleanup and snow shoveling; and the houses, made by Jonrowe's husband, Mike, slide up and down on poles so they can be raised and lowered with the snow level.
"Any one year we might win or we might have a bad year," she said, "but we're taking care of the dogs 365 days a year. We're living with them and their little idiosyncrasies. We're providing for them."
The bonds that develop between dog and musher make all the difference in the race. The team tries to navigate and avoid many disasters on the trail, from tipping over the sled to getting a dehydrating flu that can spread among participants. One particular day remains strong in Jonrowe's memory, and marked a turning point for her. Near the end of the 2002 race, crossing the sea ice to the town of Golovin, she felt strangely weak.
"Walking the dogs across the bay, I was stumbling and falling," she said. "The dogs would come along up around me. I was sure I was going to die out there that night." At the check point in Golovin, she drank several liters of fluid to stem her dehydration.
A few months later, she learned she had breast cancer, a disease her mother, Peg Stout, had beaten a few years earlier. But cancer couldn't chase the Iditarod out of her. The next year, three weeks after finishing chemotherapy, she raced to Nome in 18th place.
And that's where the second key to Jonrowe's success comes into play: an ability to focus and recover even when things get impossibly bad.
On the Iditarod, quitting the race because you're tired is not an option. "Somebody has to risk their life to come get you if you quit," Jonrowe said. "To just quit takes an extreme situation."
In 1999, she had that extreme, and it was threatening her dogs. "I had bad storms and leadership issues," she said. "I was 90 miles either direction from anything. I couldn't walk in front of the dogs to take them in safely anywhere. I made camp for them, and the storm raged and raged."
Eventually, she signaled for rescue from a bush pilot. "That was one of my lowest points in racing," she said. "I took all those dogs safely off the river, and two years later we made a top ten finish. We regained their confidence and mine. Sometimes the steepest learning curve is in failure."
But her most persistent stronghold is in her spiritual faith.
"I like the adrenaline of the edge," she explained. "People talk about faith being a crutch, but faith is my parachute. I can jump off the edge because I've got faith. Whether that's a good idea or not," she laughed, "that's how I live my life, and it's worked real well."
Jonrowe's kitchen is a few steps from the yard where her top competitors live. Someday some of Challon's pups might be there, too. Like she does most early mornings, the musher watched the dogs through a window, observing them closely for injury as they stretched and took their waking steps.
"Our concept is to know our dogs well," she said. "All year I'm learning about their potentials, their comfort zones and their talents."
When feeding time arrived, some of the keenest four-legged athletes in the world howled, leaping up on hind legs in order to touch their keeper.
Jonrowe called out to them brightly. "Good morning, Merlot! Hello Gouda!"
After the dogs chewed and drank, they settled down with eyes closed. "Look at them," Jonrowe said. "They're so happy, happy, happy. As (Iditarod champion) Martin Buser says, when you provide for everything they need, they're content. They're saying 'We're warm, we're fed, we're watered….'"
"But then," she added, "a sound might wake them, and they perk up. They say, 'There might something happening! There might be something…'."
All Photos Copyright Laura Read
Sleeping with Polar Bears - San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle Magazine
Sometime in the night our bunkhouse shuddered. Then something roared. I looked out the barred window, which separated the inky night into disjunctive frames. Earlier, eight bears had been milling around outside. Now I was just able to discern their milky forms moving about like Martha Graham dancers on a ghostly set.
I was in Canada, peering out from a mobile lodge on wheels parked 20 miles east of Churchill, Manitoba, on the western shore of Hudson Bay. The tundra buggy bunkhouse shook again, and I heard a familiar howl. Fine. It was the wind (an 100-mile-an-hour wind, I later learned). I gathered my quilt and snuggled in.
The north wind signaled the arrival of winter, when the Hudson Bay waters freeze and polar bears go out on the ice to hunt their most nutritious food, ringed seals. When the ice melts in June or July, the bears come ashore to pass the next four months in "walking hibernation" -- fasting and resting.
It is because of the Hudson Bay bears' unique sea/land life cycle that an interesting event occurs near Churchill every fall. In October, the normally solitary bears gather together -- as many as 1,000 of them -- to await the coastal freeze-up. A fascinating convergence of species takes place as travelers arrive by the thousands to observe.
I was not one of those bear-crazed types. If it hadn't been for my mom, I wouldn't have come. When she'd described "living among the polar bears in the tundra buggy lodge," the thrill in her voice reminded me that Mom rarely closes windows on possibilities. She's always game. I would be, too.
The next morning over wild-blueberry pancakes, I cupped strong coffee in both hands, calculating when to ask the lodge managers if the wind had ever capsized one of these tundra buggy bunkhouses. Before I could speak, Mom whispered, "There's Dancer!"
Yesterday we'd seen the 1,300-pound bear standing 12 feet tall on his hind legs, poking his nose through an open lodge window. Now, in the early light, Dancer was doing polar aerobics, pawing the air, rolling in the snow, stretching his massive neck and anvil head.
Dancer is often the biggest bear around camp. Looking at him up close and remembering what I'd read in biologist Ian Stirling's book "Polar Bears," I felt percolations of wonder. Coating Dancer's massive shoulders and flanks were two layers of insulating fur that kept him warm in temperatures below minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Although polar bears appear white, their fur is transparent, each strand a hollow core. When Dancer and the other bears move about, they lumber as if their bones are made of concrete. Part of that slowness is intentional. They are conserving energy, waiting to eat the food that fuels them best, the ringed seal, which has plenty of tasty fat rich with omega-3 fatty acids, something I prefer to get from walnuts. Part of the bears' sluggish behavior comes also from their massive weight, as much as 1,800 pounds for the most formidable males. They have some amazing powers, too. Our guide, wildlife photographer Jenny Ross, marvels at how sea bears navigate home on constantly drifting ice with no landmarks. They had also had a rather accelerated evolution, over 2,000 years, from ancestors that were dramatically different, the brown bear. Dancer's distant cousin is the grizzly.
Watching Dancer stretch, I couldn't wait to get next to him in the roving tundra buggy we used for bear-watching. Most days the sun was stingy, but on this morning it streamed under thick clouds. Our driver, Saskatchewan native Chris Hendrickson, stocked the vehicle with lunch, snacks and warm drinks, then handed one travelmate a broom. "I need to check something from the ground," he said. "If a polar bear gets close, whack him."
A tundra buggy isn't cute like a VW Bug, as its name implies. Instead, it looks like an ice box made for the jolly green giant -- dropped on its side, punched with windows and hoisted eight feet off the ground on giant tires made for farm tractors. On the horizon it resembles a spooky creature from "Star Wars."
Tundra buggies are equipped with propane heaters, double seats and big windows. "No arms or hands hanging out the windows please," Hendrickson warned. Years ago, when an excited photographer rested his elbow on a sill, a bear made a snack of his arm.
Tundra buggy lodges like the one we were staying in are made of individual buggies converted into kitchen, dining and bunk rooms and linked together, Amtrak-style. Bands of windows give constant visual access to the bears. Only two companies have permits to run tundra buggy lodges in the Cape Churchill Wildlife Management Area. Our tour operator, Tundra Buggy Adventures, was the first buggy concessionaire and still had its No. 1 tundra buggy in operation, not for tours but to carry a mounted video camera that streams images to www.polarbearcam.com.
Every day it took awhile to organize our cold-weather gear and camera equipment. We were all amateur photographers, some with professional lenses big enough to spot bruises at a Super Bowl. When the bears moved, the whir-click of camera shutters followed. The only other sounds were our own giggles. Despite being a cliche, the wild white teddies were just too cute.
Jenny Ross, who lives in Truckee, has photographed every bear species in the world. She recently spent two years on assignment capturing photos for her traveling exhibition, "Bears! Icons of the Wild." Ross, a former Harvard-trained attorney who chucked the legal life for a more creative pursuit, didn't conceal her childlike affection for the bears. She said things like, "This magnificent animal is an evolutionary masterpiece," and she talked easily about why some people love the bears so much. "We tend to think they are like us," she said. "They inspire emotion, they're playful, they appear to be affectionate toward one another, and they are good mothers." They also survive by their wits, contemplate challenges, sleep eight hours and break ice in frustration when they miss a meal.
Our group didn't have to travel far from the lodge for action; bears were everywhere. Polar bears congregate near Cape Churchill because ice usually forms there first along the 30-mile coastline extending eastward from the town of Churchill to the cape. While the bears wait for the freeze-up, the 780 Churchill inhabitants adjust their habits. Rule No. 1 is, don't leave town on foot. A "polar-bear promenade" nearby is a death walk for humans. At night, "polar bear police" scare interloping bears with rubber bullets and flares. In the mornings, patrol members ensure children get safely onto school buses, and on Halloween they circulate with the little devils and goblins. Bears have more trouble adjusting. Those addicted to the town dump either end up confined in a holding cell, affectionately called the polar bear jail, or tranquilized and transported away by helicopter.
Remarkably, in recent decades, deaths by bears in Churchill have been few. The last was in 1983. One night a man scavenged meat from the refrigerator of a burned-down hotel, stuffed the food in his pockets, then rounded the corner smack into a bear.
However, close calls continue. Bears normally run from helicopters, but last year one didn't. It hid in a depression, and when a researcher jumped out of the helicopter, the bear knocked her down. Other people were able to scare the animal away. The woman suffered minor injuries.
One night last year two Italians broke down in a rental car. They walked the five miles to town with all senses alert, no doubt appreciating each breath. They saw amazing Northern Lights and made it to bed without trouble.
Inside the buggies I didn't worry; the vehicles were like rolling fortresses. Our only occasional discomfort was the cold. With windows open, I sometimes shivered in my knee-length coat. On the open-air viewing balcony, my nose froze. Mom warmed hers with a thumb-sized fur cap.
Mom also made me put warming packs in my boots and mittens, even though I didn't want them. Soon everyone was wearing them. The days living among the bears were luxuriously timeless. We saw three young adults having a standoff, mothers trailed by twins, bears curled under crusts of snow, bears spread-eagled on their bellies to cool down, two young bears rolling together in a shallow snow pit. We never wanted to move away from any scene.
We spotted almost every activity bear lovers yearn for, including a ritualized sparring between males called play fighting. Why expend the extra energy when they need to conserve it, I asked Ross. She explained that play fighting most likely develops the motor and coordination skills bears need on the ice. Then she added with a mischievous grin, "Scientists try to avoid anthropomorphizing, but the play-fighting polar bears in the western Hudson Bay do seem to be enjoying themselves immensely."
Bears mate in April and May. Instead of returning to ice in the fall, pregnant females enter dens where they typically have two cubs. Newborns weigh less than 1.5 pounds, according to Ross, who once crawled into a den to photograph tiny twins. Mothers nurse them with milk that contains 35 percent fat. When the new families emerge in the summer, the mother hasn't eaten for eight months. Mothers and cubs are fun to watch and hard to spot, but we located several groups.
I was beginning to feel especially small. How physically humble we humans are when stripped of weapons, man-made tools, energy resources and speedy transportation. Around Churchill, our monolithic vehicles gave us tremendous advantages. Looking beyond that, however, I found a new sense of myself as a player of equal, rather than dominant, status in the natural world. Not only the polar bears reminded me of this, but also the three other species that, with the sea bear, make up the subarctic Big Four, including the arctic fox, the arctic hare and the ptarmigan. Also impressive was the complex landscape, rigid with permafrost yet supporting a food chain that began with the lemming and ended with the largest carnivore on Earth. And then there was the climate, which made its stormiest presence known to me that unforgettable bunkhouse night when the north winds bore the promise of winter.
Ironically, the climate may be the bear's final predator. Their ice-bound habitat is disappearing as a result of global warming. Scientific modeling predicts that if the warming trend continues, polar bears may be trying to survive in a nearly ice-free Arctic by the summer of 2080.
Last June, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature announced the Hudson Bay population has declined recently from 1,200 to 1,000. The decline is related to an early break-up and later freeze-up of the ice, the group said. Also this year, the Center for Biological Diversity has asked the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. It's a sad day when one realizes that for all of the pleasure and knowledge the bears give us, we are poisoning their world in return.
As the tour ended, I admitted the bear cuteness factor was acceptable. I even bought my own National Geographic video. In the Churchill airport, however, I lamented that the Northern Lights, usually easy to see at this latitude, had eluded us. Thirty minutes later, on the Calm Air flight to Winnipeg, we had a surprise: All across the blackened sky ethereal green lights leaped and shimmered in their own boundless dance. I offered my window seat to a woman on the aisle so she could see them. As I stood waiting, head bowed awkwardly under the airplane's low ceiling, I noticed Mom patting her lap. "Sit here, honey," she said. I paused, but only briefly.
Marine Biologist Meagan Jones & Whales - VIA Magazine
MARINE BIOLOGIST MEAGAN Jones cofounded Whale Trust Maui, a nonprofit that studies the creatures' behavior and communication patterns, in 2001. The group celebrates the 10th anniversary of its free, annual Whale Tales event this Feb. 12–15 in Kapalua, on the island's northwestern tip.
Q What draws you to whales?
A As a kid, I felt a kinship with them. Later, when I spent time in their natural environment—observed their interactions, witnessed their curiosity and complex communication patterns—I was inspired to learn more and protect them. I love introducing people to the world underneath the sea. One of my favorite things to do is drop a hydrophone into the water and put the headphones on someone who has never heard whale songs before. I have a camera ready to capture the awe on the person's face.
Q Why should we care about whales?
A With oceans covering more than 70 percent of Earth's surface and containing 97 percent of all the planet's water, humans depend on the health of this ecosystem for our food, water, and air. I remember the first time my dad experienced a whale. It rolled over and, looking at us, slapped its pectoral fin on the water. To this day, my dad believes that the whale was communicating with him. Whales remind us that we're not alone on this planet.
Q What's the most interesting research the trust is doing?
A For the past 45 years, scientists have been trying to understand the song of humpbacks. What does the song mean? Why does it change from year to year and span entire ocean basins? How do whales communicate over such long distances? Our research probes these questions by looking at the function of the song from different perspectives.
Q Best spots on Maui for watching humpback whales?
A On the southwest side of the island, protected waters coupled with a high density of whales provide the perfect conditions for spotting whales during winter. Make sure you look for the blow [spout] or the splashes that erupt when a humpback leaps from the water.
Q Can you recommend a great place outside Hawaii to see humpbacks?
A Southeast Alaska is one of my favorites. In one feeding technique, a group uses bubbles to coalesce prey—usually a group of herring—into a tight ball. The whales burst from the water all at once with their mouths open. The sounds they make during these feedings create a haunting cacophony.
Photography courtesy of Meagan Jones
Cycling California's Gold Rush Highway 49 - San Francisco Chronicle
Adventure Sports Journal
SEMI-TRUCKS THUNDER past; perspiration stings my neck; overheated thoughts spiral into chaos. What am I doing? Bicycling through California Gold Country – yes. Grinding over one of America's tallest mountain ranges – yes. Suffering a mother lode of curses inside my helmet-shackled brain – like a drunken prospector, yes.
I am bone-tired and glum. "It's time to stop this adventure and go home," I whine to my sinking ambition. But right now I really have no other option than to keep cranking up the road.
Seizing a whim, I'd begun this solo bike tour five days earlier on the northern end of State Route 49, which is named for the waves of fortune seekers who swarmed into California during the 1848-1855 Gold Rush.
Like their journey west 160 years before me, this would be no breezy jaunt. The northern end of Highway 49 starts in the Sierra Valley at 5,000 feet, about 40 miles north of my home in Lake Tahoe. My plan was to ride a counter-clockwise route west over Yuba Pass, south through Gold Country, east up State Route 88 over 8,500-foot Carson Pass, down into Hope Valley and then north over Luther Pass to Lake Tahoe.
It would be about 220 miles and a lot of up and down, all in six days.
So far, with the trip about two-thirds complete, I've pedaled down densely forested mountainsides, across rolling oak-covered foothills, and through a half dozen canyons. Now I'm angling for home on a 40-mile, 6,000-foot undulating ascent up the Sierra's west slope. I hope to reach my lodge at Silver Lake before nightfall, but I've been riding, resting, or eating — mostly riding — in heat for seven hours, and my will power is fading.
Another rattling truck leaves me choking on diesel fumes. I groan. From inside of me, something whispers back — a raspy male voice.
"Little lady," it says, "you wanted this challenge. You need to face this down."
It's my inner gold miner telling me to buck up.
I've always wished I could have whacked about as a 19th century Gold Rush miner with a pick and shovel. I'd have liked, romantically speaking, to swill whisky, roast rattlesnake meat on a stick, and recollect stories by the campfire.
Though I couldn't really be one of those hardy guys, I realized that I could test my grit against the Gold Country in another way.
I'd dreamed of doing multi-day bicycle rides in California. I figured doing a ride alone would push me to rely on my ownresources. Mapping my route, overcoming fatigue, fixing my own flats — I'd be 21st century tough.
Opportunity arrived when I had an unexpected gap in my schedule in September. I wasn't in good enough shape, but the window was open. I could make excuses, or just go. What would a frontier miner do? He'd go.Highway 49 skirts the Sierra Nevada in a wavy hem from Sierra Valley to Oakhurst near Yosemite. It crosses many of the greatest rivers draining the Sierra; in the northern section, where I'd be riding, these would include forks of the Yuba, the American and the Cosumnes. Highway 49, of course, is also the rope that connects the Gold Country's most colorful mining towns. Downieville, Nevada City, Auburn, and Placerville would be way posts on my path.
My plan was to sleep in hotels to keep my load light. Comfy beds aren't exactly miner material, but it was a concession I made knowing I'd be a shriveled violet without good sleep.
It's mid-September when I tie a rucksack to my Bianchi and pedal off.
In the 19th century, people plodded through the region on foot, mule, horse, and barrel-stave snowshoes. With the benefit of pavement, good wheels and fresh legs, I cruise over 6,700-foot Yuba pass in less than two hours.
Stopping in a Sierra City café for lunch, I take the last table among a pack of motorcyclists and gobble a chicken sandwich and fries. Next to bikers wearing black leather and big boots, I feel self- conscious in my favorite cycling shirt — a bright orange affair emblazoned with a giant yellow butterfly good for alerting motorists on mountain roads. My mint- green Bianchi next to their Harleys looks wimpish; but my muscle power isn't at all milquetoast.
The ride to Downieville (elev. 2,925) is easy. I check in at the Carriage House Inn and jump into the Yuba River for a swim.
The next day's route drops into three river canyons — the three forks of the Yuba — on the way to Nevada City and Auburn. This is sublime country, for sure. The terrain-cutting rivers roil below, and forested slopes stretch to the sky. Pickup drivers are insanely polite, shifting into oncoming lanes so as not to bump me off the road. The flies are not so. The hovering vermin bite at my neck and knees like obsessed miners who have just struck gold.
In North San Juan a motorcyclist on a beastly Harley toys with me. I've had my share of run-ins with bullies. Once a trucker chucked a beer bottle at me; another time a biker gunned his engine so loud that I careened off the road;and once a car passenger screeched, "Environmentalist!" Now there's a dirty label.
"I saw what you ate yesterday," the biker snarls. "I was wondering what you people eat."
What kind of thug would fix his unsavory nature on a woman riding a 21-pound Bianchi? Huffing back, I gun my own engine and pedal away into the leaf-flecked countryside, seeking friendlier encounters.
The heat of late summer is bearing down. When I reach the South Fork of the Yuba River, I jump in and don't want to get out.
The next morning south of Auburn, torture takes a new form: traffic. Cargo vans nudge me off hairpin turns; tourists bleep their horns. To get away I peel off Highway 49 onto backroads to Placerville, where I flop into a musty bed at a cheap motel.
It's time to leave this narrow road, I decide; the streaming traffic is a hammer to my spirit. The next day I chart backroads between Placerville and FairPlay. My journey begins in a cool tunnel of overhanging cedar on Cedar Ravine Road, and takes me into the winery and rancho estates of El Dorado County on Mt. Aukum Road.
The backroads deliver me to a good- as-gold lunch of black truffle fettuccini at Bocconato Trattoria in Fair Play (elev. 2,320) and a blissful all-afternoon wine tasting at Winery by the Creek. That night at the Barkley Homestead B&B, the proprietors serve me up some homemade fried chicken from their kitchen. We stay up late telling stories in the flickering beam of their big screen TV, sadly a 21st century replacement for the campfire.
The next day, my fifth, starts out great as I climb up the forested and lonely Omo Ranch Road to its juncture with Highway 88, where I find more sustenance worthy of a hungry miner: three flapjacks fried in butter at a greasy spoon inside Cook's Station (elev. 5,000), an old roadside stop built in 1863.
This route over the Sierra connecting the Central Valley with Nevada's Carson Valley was blazed in 1848 by Mormons traveling east to Salt Lake City. Despite admiring their pluck, I stick with prospector legends for my inspiration. The rasp of my inner gold miner has got me through one hurdle, after all.
An hour later though, I'm struggling with a stubborn flat, and my resolve is tested. The doldrums hit again. A trucker roars too close. "I'm over it!" I scream in fatigue and frustration. I consider thumbing a ride.
Suddenly, a roadside apparition appears, too unexpected to be even a hallucination. I cut off my whiney complaints the way a miner might use a shovel to sever a rattlesnake's head.
At first it's just a bright moving speck on the roadside. Then, I make it out to be a runner in shorts and a tank top … a man jogging along the highway … out here?
His name is Charlie Engle, age 45, who I would later learn is a well-known adventure runner who's made two documentaries about long excursion runs.
He's on another one now. In fact, he's attempting a 3,000-mile run across America with ultra-marathoner Marshall Ulrich, who's somewhere down the road still.
Sounds like slow torture to me; but he's thrilled, if tired from today's climb.
We begin to puff and pound together into the Sierra high country and have a real campfire-style chat, diving right to the heart of things.
Do we do these hard endeavors because they're mostly fun? Easy answer, yes.
Because they make a difference to anybody else or the world? Not necessarily, but maybe.
Is there something else this effort is good for?
"To see what I can do, I guess," I say. "To see if I've got it in me."
"Got what?" he asks.
"I'll tell you that when I'm done."
"That's just it," he says, adding that you can't always know what to expect when you start, but whatever comes your way, your body can adapt marvelously. It adapts and improves. So does your mind. That's when you achieve things you never imagined you could.
Now I'm feeling like I've just discovered my guardian angel and spiritual guru.
The truth is, when I started this odyssey I wasn't at all sure I could finish this Highway 88 leg. But here I am, churningaway, displaying way more physical and mental strength than I knew I had. It begs the question: If I can do this, what else can I do?
As I pedal away, I feel calmly focused. What kinds of reserves might I discover? If I give up now, I'll never know what I have. Into my thoughts enters the phrase: quiet mind, quiet mind.
Up the road a ways I pass a support crew parked in the shade waiting for Engle.*
An hour later Silver Lake appears, cradled in granite. On the eastern end, I roll up to the rustic and elegant Kit Carson Lodge, a copacetic alpine oasis for a road-weary cyclist.
Below my cabin the lake glimmers in moonlight. Above me, a ghostly ridge elbows the sky. I scramble downhill and follow the shore to a cove. My legs buzz from the day's effort. It's the biggest, baddest ride I've ever done.
My Gold Rush-sized feat is no longer the stuff of unrealized dreams, but now a nugget of satisfaction.
The next day, rejuvenated, crossing the summit of Carson Pass feels relatively easy. The rest of the ride is froth on the brew — a breezy coast down the pass into the aspens and meadows of Hope Valley, a tiny grind up Luther Pass, and finally, a return to Lake Tahoe. I'm plumb tuckered out, yet stronger and wiser for making the journey.
*Author's note: When I checked Engle's blog, charlieengle.com, for this story, I was shocked to learn he is serving a 21-month sentence for mortgage fraud arising from an attempt to raise funds for a 4,300–mile run he did across the Sahara in 2007, chronicled in the documentary "Running the Sahara," narrated by Matt Damon. Regardless, that doesn't in any way diminish the impact his advice had during my ride, which came from experiences well earned — physically speaking — and had nothing to do with how he funded them. Indeed, for others, his words may have even more power from prison. Engle has titled his blog, "Running in Place: A Blog About Surviving Adversity."
All Photos Copyright Laura Read
Winnemucca to the Sea Road Trip - VIA Magazine
VIA Magazine
In the 1950s, ranchers in northern Nevada dreamed of having a straight-shot drive to the California redwoods, where trees soar to the clouds and the ocean mists cool the air. But they were thwarted because the direct route west wasn't completely paved; it took way too long to reach their paradise.
Hopeful minds went to work, and many handshakes later the fully paved Winnemucca to the Sea Highway was born. The 494-mile-long motorway never gained the acclaim its originators imagined, but today it is finding a niche among people looking for unusual ways to access the West. On two-lane roads, the route joins a handful of colorful towns to link Nevada's Great Basin vistas to the small wineries and mountain resorts of Oregon and the rugged California coast. Traveling the full length of it can take two days or two weeks, depending on your curiosity and time.
The journey begins at a bend in the Humboldt River, where the town of Winnemucca, Nevada has bloomed on the site of an early wagon train camp. A hundred years ago, Basque sheepherders migrated here to work in the nearby hills. In wintertime they took lodging at the 1898 Martin Hotel, gathering in the big dining room for meals. Today, the Martin's menu remains the same, from starters of soup and vinegary salad, to plates of sweetbread, lamb, and rib eye — all washed down with generous carafes of wine.
The Winnemucca to the Sea Highway's eastern segment was labeled Highway 140, and that's where, north of Winnemucca you turn west from U.S. 95, and the hum of traffic fades as you cruise into the Quinn River Valley and its framing mountain vistas. It is land suitable for Zane Gray and the Lone Ranger — vast and silent beneath eggshell skies.
Before long, the Denio Junction Café appears in a cottonwood tree oasis. Stop for a burger and some shoestring fries, because it will be a while before you see a restaurant again. Soon, Highway 140 enters the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge and climbs a rise near a deep crack in the earth called Thousand Creek Gorge. Follow jeep roads to the gorge's rim, and you can stomach-crawl onto the sun-warmed rock and peer down at the stringy creek below.
Nearby is Duffurrena Ponds, where sandhill cranes and other migrating birds feed, and fishermen catch largemouth bass. This area produces fire opals; at the Royal Peacock Mine, you can sift through tailings for your own sparkling cache.
"Sagebrush is a very fair fuel," wrote Mark Twain in his memorable chronicle, "Roughing It," "but as a vegetable it is a distinguished failure." The Sheldon Refuge pronghorn antelope would disagree. They find plenty of sagebrush to eat on the 900-square-mile refuge. From a distance, the tawny ungulate resembles a white-tailed deer — until it runs. Springing across the plains on slender legs, it can sprint to 60 miles per hour. Having ultra-keen eyesight, it can spot a moving critter — or your car — three miles away, so look sharp.
Pronghorn share their terrain with wild mustangs, wild burro, and bighorn sheep, whose hoofmarks pock the refuge's dusty side roads. Lucky visitors might see a herd of bighorn sheep scrambling across the highway near Adel, Oregon. Wait a minute as they go by, and they might actually stop once they're off the pavement and turn to stare at you.
Adel is smaller than Denio, but has a combination store, saloon, and café that is large in atmosphere. Duck inside to see vintage saddles dangling from the ceiling like chandeliers, and get a close look at taxidermy restorations of animals that wander the region.
As Highway 140 meanders through southern Oregon, big animals give way to big mountains. West of pretty Upper Klamath Lake, the volcanic summit of Mount McLoughlin lords over the southern Cascade Range. Here you can disappear among fir trees on the 9.3-mile High Lakes Trail, which is wide enough for wheelchairs. Both the High Lakes Trail and Highway 140 pass the rustic Lake of the Woods Resort, where anyone can rent a boat or, better yet, sag into a log cabin chair with a book. (instead of the book, this could say something about the bacon and eggs you get there at the lakeside greasy spoon)
Farther west, the road drops into the Rogue River Valley, where the city of Medford anchors a landscape of rolling hills and tabletop bluffs. Visit the Rogue Creamery and the Harry and David fruit store, or sip some Gold Medal Syrah or Claret at the locals' hotspot, RoxyAnn Winery, tucked into historic Hillcrest Orchard. (http://www.roxyann.com)
The Winnemucca to the Sea Highway then joins Interstate 5, where it climbs into the sporty village of Grants Pass, a home base for whitewater kayak trips on the Rogue River (http://www.orangetorpedo.com/rogue-river-rafting), geocache excursions, or watching the hand-blown vases created by the artisans at The Glass Forge (www.glassforge.com).
When the route veers south onto Highway 199, you're approaching the ranchers' redwood heaven. But don't hurry on just yet. At Cave Junction, take a detour to Oregon Caves National Monument. While prowling the twisting tunnels, you'll likely spy a miniscule life form as fascinating as Nevada's leaping pronghorn — the white springtail, no bigger than a snip of grass. In a feat as marvelous as the antelope's spectacular sprint, the insect catapults itself a distance several times its body length simply by vaulting off of its tiny, folded tail.
Finally…the redwoods. Highway 199's passage through Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park intersects paths that wind deep into the muscular beauty of these sky-bound conifers. Stout Grove is a particular gem.
Grab a strawberry milkshake at She She's Drive-In, and then travel just a few miles more to where the road arrives at Crescent City and its endless beach. Here the Pacific unrolls its silvery waves onto the amber sand.
But the journey's not over until you've had a good meal. At the Seascape Restaurant, that Winnemucca steaming plate of lamb is rivaled by heaps of sautéed scallops, oysters, and shrimp — a mouthwatering catch from the sea.
All Photos Laura Read
Old Times Lake Tahoe - National Geographic Traveler
National Geographic Traveler
When an old-timer talks about having visited Lake Tahoe's North Shore four or five decades ago, memories often include nights spent in a lakefront cottage and days lazed away on a sandy beach. Ask this person's grandchildren about their recent North Shore getaway, and their stories just might be the same.
While some Lake Tahoe Resorts have ballooned, man in Carnelian Bay, Kings Beach, and Tahoe Vista have not. A few are simply stuck in the past; others might just like things simple.
A classic day hereabouts begins before first light on the water. At 6 a.m., fishing charter captian Mickey Daniels meets customers in Carnelian Bay, as he has for almost 40 years. The motor surges, and Daniels' 43-foot Big Mack II pushes out across the mirrored lake. "I enjoy watching people form new bonds out here, he says. His customers, in turn, enjoy their catches, which they may ask Gar Woods Gril to prepare later for supper.
The clarity of the water, "freakishly blue" according to one visiting teen, is what makes Tahoe so appealing – that and the lake's 22-mile length. Formed by glacial scouring, earthquake faults, and volcanic flows, 1,645-foot-deep :ake Tahoe is the largest mountain lake in North America. Most people flock to the big beaches; few glean the pleasure of the littlest aercs of sand. Moon Dunes Beach (one of the lake's only intact sand dunes) and Buck's Beach are two of the most inviting. Another way to enjoy the big blue is from the deck of"The Saga," a 38-foot 1930 wooden boat available for tours through North Shore Marina.
The day winds up with your personal catch of the day prepared by Gar Woods Grill, or old family-recipe Italian dishes at Lanza's Restaurant, whose pine walls are hung with vintage photos of a place happily stuck in yesterday.
All Photos Copyright Laura Read
Good as Gold in Downieville - National Geographic Traveler
National Geographic Traveler
In a High cleft of the Northern Sierra, straddling two rivers that once lured gold miners, Downieville, California is enjoying a 21st-century treasure boom in the form of extreme sports. Cashing in is easy. Rent a mountain bike for the epic "Downieville Downhill," a 4,080-foot descent through gullies and meadows. Paddle Class III, IV, and V rapids. Climb through gnarly forests up the Chimney Rock Trail and glimpse the golden Sierra Buttes. Or linger at river's edge on your Riverside Inn balcony before crossing a one-lane bridge to Main Street for some North Fork Coffee Company brew or $5.99 all-you-can-eat pancakes at the Gallows Café & Pizzaria.
In the rippling waters around Downieville, there's still gold to be found. "Even when findings are meager, it's exciting to see gold in the black sediment at the bottom of the pan," says Don McIntosh, a Downieville Museum docent.
Chow down on deli fare at the Pick 'N Shovel Eatery or have a 24-ounce rib eye at the Grubstake Saloon before catching a show at the 1940s-era Yuba Theatre.
Mining for Inner Strength - Adventure Sports Journal
Adventure Sports Journal
Semi-trucks thunder past; perspiration stings my neck; overheated thoughts spiral into chaos. What am I doing? Bicycling through California Gold Country – yes. Grinding over one of America's tallest mountain ranges – yes. Suffering a mother lode of curses inside my helmet-shackled brain – like a drunken prospector, yes.
I am bone-tired and glum. "It's time to stop this adventure and go home," I whine to my sinking ambition. But right now I really have no other option than to keep cranking up the road.
Seizing a whim, I'd begun this solo bike tour five days earlier on the northern end of State Route 49, which is named for the waves of fortune seekers who swarmed into California during the 1848-1855 Gold Rush.
Like their journey west 160 years before me, this would be no breezy jaunt. The northern end of Highway 49 starts in the Sierra Valley at 5,000 feet, about 40 miles north of my home in Lake Tahoe. My plan was to ride a counter-clockwise route west over Yuba Pass, south through Gold Country, east up State Route 88 over 8,500-foot Carson Pass, down into Hope Valley and then north over Luther Pass to Lake Tahoe.
It would be about 220 miles and a lot of up and down, all in six days.
So far, with the trip about two-thirds complete, I've pedaled down densely forested mountainsides, across rolling oak-covered foothills, and through a half dozen canyons. Now I'm angling for home on a 40-mile, 6,000-foot undulating ascent up the Sierra's west slope. I hope to reach my lodge at Silver Lake before nightfall, but I've been riding, resting, or eating — mostly riding — in heat for seven hours, and my will power is fading.
Another rattling truck leaves me choking on diesel fumes. I groan. From inside of me, something whispers back — a raspy male voice.
"Little lady," it says, "you wanted this challenge. You need to face this down."
It's my inner gold miner telling me to buck up.
I've always wished I could have whacked about as a 19th century Gold Rush miner with a pick and shovel. I'd have liked, romantically speaking, to swill whisky, roast rattlesnake meat on a stick, and recollect stories by the campfire.
Though I couldn't really be one of those hardy guys, I realized that I could test my grit against the Gold Country in another way.
I'd dreamed of doing multi-day bicycle rides in California. I figured doing a ride alone would push me to rely on my ownresources. Mapping my route, overcoming fatigue, fixing my own flats — I'd be 21st century tough.
Opportunity arrived when I had an unexpected gap in my schedule in September. I wasn't in good enough shape, but the window was open. I could make excuses, or just go. What would a frontier miner do? He'd go.Highway 49 skirts the Sierra Nevada in a wavy hem from Sierra Valley to Oakhurst near Yosemite. It crosses many of the greatest rivers draining the Sierra; in the northern section, where I'd be riding, these would include forks of the Yuba, the American and the Cosumnes. Highway 49, of course, is also the rope that connects the Gold Country's most colorful mining towns. Downieville, Nevada City, Auburn, and Placerville would be way posts on my path.
My plan was to sleep in hotels to keep my load light. Comfy beds aren't exactly miner material, but it was a concession I made knowing I'd be a shriveled violet without good sleep.
It's mid-September when I tie a rucksack to my Bianchi and pedal off.
In the 19th century, people plodded through the region on foot, mule, horse, and barrel-stave snowshoes. With the benefit of pavement, good wheels and fresh legs, I cruise over 6,700-foot Yuba pass in less than two hours.
Stopping in a Sierra City café for lunch, I take the last table among a pack of motorcyclists and gobble a chicken sandwich and fries. Next to bikers wearing black leather and big boots, I feel self- conscious in my favorite cycling shirt — a bright orange affair emblazoned with a giant yellow butterfly good for alerting motorists on mountain roads. My mint- green Bianchi next to their Harleys looks wimpish; but my muscle power isn't at all milquetoast.
The ride to Downieville (elev. 2,925) is easy. I check in at the Carriage House Inn and jump into the Yuba River for a swim.
The next day's route drops into three river canyons — the three forks of the Yuba — on the way to Nevada City and Auburn. This is sublime country, for sure. The terrain-cutting rivers roil below, and forested slopes stretch to the sky. Pickup drivers are insanely polite, shifting into oncoming lanes so as not to bump me off the road. The flies are not so. The hovering vermin bite at my neck and knees like obsessed miners who have just struck gold.
In North San Juan a motorcyclist on a beastly Harley toys with me. I've had my share of run-ins with bullies. Once a trucker chucked a beer bottle at me; another time a biker gunned his engine so loud that I careened off the road;and once a car passenger screeched, "Environmentalist!" Now there's a dirty label.
"I saw what you ate yesterday," the biker snarls. "I was wondering what you people eat."
What kind of thug would fix his unsavory nature on a woman riding a 21-pound Bianchi? Huffing back, I gun my own engine and pedal away into the leaf-flecked countryside, seeking friendlier encounters.
The heat of late summer is bearing down. When I reach the South Fork of the Yuba River, I jump in and don't want to get out.
The next morning south of Auburn, torture takes a new form: traffic. Cargo vans nudge me off hairpin turns; tourists bleep their horns. To get away I peel off Highway 49 onto backroads to Placerville, where I flop into a musty bed at a cheap motel.
It's time to leave this narrow road, I decide; the streaming traffic is a hammer to my spirit. The next day I chart backroads between Placerville and FairPlay. My journey begins in a cool tunnel of overhanging cedar on Cedar Ravine Road, and takes me into the winery and rancho estates of El Dorado County on Mt. Aukum Road.
The backroads deliver me to a good- as-gold lunch of black truffle fettuccini at Bocconato Trattoria in Fair Play (elev. 2,320) and a blissful all-afternoon wine tasting at Winery by the Creek. That night at the Barkley Homestead B&B, the proprietors serve me up some homemade fried chicken from their kitchen. We stay up late telling stories in the flickering beam of their big screen TV, sadly a 21st century replacement for the campfire.
The next day, my fifth, starts out great as I climb up the forested and lonely Omo Ranch Road to its juncture with Highway 88, where I find more sustenance worthy of a hungry miner: three flapjacks fried in butter at a greasy spoon inside Cook's Station (elev. 5,000), an old roadside stop built in 1863.
This route over the Sierra connecting the Central Valley with Nevada's Carson Valley was blazed in 1848 by Mormons traveling east to Salt Lake City. Despite admiring their pluck, I stick with prospector legends for my inspiration. The rasp of my inner gold miner has got me through one hurdle, after all.
An hour later though, I'm struggling with a stubborn flat, and my resolve is tested. The doldrums hit again. A trucker roars too close. "I'm over it!" I scream in fatigue and frustration. I consider thumbing a ride.
Suddenly, a roadside apparition appears, too unexpected to be even a hallucination. I cut off my whiney complaints the way a miner might use a shovel to sever a rattlesnake's head.
At first it's just a bright moving speck on the roadside. Then, I make it out to be a runner in shorts and a tank top … a man jogging along the highway … out here?
His name is Charlie Engle, age 45, who I would later learn is a well-known adventure runner who's made two documentaries about long excursion runs.
He's on another one now. In fact, he's attempting a 3,000-mile run across America with ultra-marathoner Marshall Ulrich, who's somewhere down the road still.
Sounds like slow torture to me; but he's thrilled, if tired from today's climb.
We begin to puff and pound together into the Sierra high country and have a real campfire-style chat, diving right to the heart of things.
Do we do these hard endeavors because they're mostly fun? Easy answer, yes.
Because they make a difference to anybody else or the world? Not necessarily, but maybe.
Is there something else this effort is good for?
"To see what I can do, I guess," I say. "To see if I've got it in me."
"Got what?" he asks.
"I'll tell you that when I'm done."
"That's just it," he says, adding that you can't always know what to expect when you start, but whatever comes your way, your body can adapt marvelously. It adapts and improves. So does your mind. That's when you achieve things you never imagined you could.
Now I'm feeling like I've just discovered my guardian angel and spiritual guru.
The truth is, when I started this odyssey I wasn't at all sure I could finish this Highway 88 leg. But here I am, churningaway, displaying way more physical and mental strength than I knew I had. It begs the question: If I can do this, what else can I do?
As I pedal away, I feel calmly focused. What kinds of reserves might I discover? If I give up now, I'll never know what I have. Into my thoughts enters the phrase: quiet mind, quiet mind.
Up the road a ways I pass a support crew parked in the shade waiting for Engle.*
An hour later Silver Lake appears, cradled in granite. On the eastern end, I roll up to the rustic and elegant Kit Carson Lodge, a copacetic alpine oasis for a road-weary cyclist.
Below my cabin the lake glimmers in moonlight. Above me, a ghostly ridge elbows the sky. I scramble downhill and follow the shore to a cove. My legs buzz from the day's effort. It's the biggest, baddest ride I've ever done.
My Gold Rush-sized feat is no longer the stuff of unrealized dreams, but now a nugget of satisfaction.
The next day, rejuvenated, crossing the summit of Carson Pass feels relatively easy. The rest of the ride is froth on the brew — a breezy coast down the pass into the aspens and meadows of Hope Valley, a tiny grind up Luther Pass, and finally, a return to Lake Tahoe. I'm plumb tuckered out, yet stronger and wiser for making the journey.
*Author's note: When I checked Engle's blog, charlieengle.com, for this story, I was shocked to learn he is serving a 21-month sentence for mortgage fraud arising from an attempt to raise funds for a 4,300–mile run he did across the Sahara in 2007, chronicled in the documentary "Running the Sahara," narrated by Matt Damon. Regardless, that doesn't in any way diminish the impact his advice had during my ride, which came from experiences well earned — physically speaking — and had nothing to do with how he funded them. Indeed, for others, his words may have even more power from prison. Engle has titled his blog, "Running in Place: A Blog About Surviving Adversity."
Denali National Park - VIA Magazine
IN THIS 6-MILLION-ACRE park, you can spot grizzly cubs beside their mothers, Dall sheep climbing across hillsides, and lanky moose plucking willows—all in one day. Area code is 907 except as noted.
To Do and See
Denali Visitor Center At the park entrance, nature exhibits reveal some weird truths: Did you know that wood frogs freeze and thaw during winter and that blood siphoned by biting mosquitoes aids the survival of plants? 683-2294, nps.gov/dena. Shuttle buses Step off the hop-on, hop-off shuttles at scheduled stops to hike on paths such as the Eielson Alpine Trail, which zigzags up to panoramic views of Mount McKinley. Mt. McKinley Glacier Landing On this "flightseeing" tour, you'll soar in a fixed-wing plane among stonefaced peaks. 683-2359, flydenali.com. Canyon Run Plunge through icy rapids on a two-hour rafting tour along the forested Nenana River. AAA discount. (888) 683-2234, denaliraft.com.
Denali Arts & Glass Studio This funky store in Glitter Gulch—the boardwalk of stores near the park entrance—is packed with sparkling glass assemblages and hand-crocheted scarves. 683-4527. Denali General Store Take home some essence of Alaska: packets of fresh smoked salmon and zesty wild game sausages. 683-2920. Three Bears Gallery Check out spooky Native Alaskan spirit masks and Aaron Barrett's fantastical carved whalebone totems. 683-3343.
Black Bear Coffee House The Glitter Gulch hangout is the place to pick up a box lunch for the bus ride into the park. 683-1656, blackbeardenali.com. 229 Parks Restaurant and Tavern This hot spot in a wood-timbered house serves dishes made with ultrafresh local produce, such as chilled wild blueberry soup and roasted fruit tart. 683-2567, 229parks.com. Tonglen Lake Lodge The café at this upscale new lodge features scones with bacon and dates or apricots and ginger. 683-2570, tonglenlake.com.
This article was first published in July 2014. Some facts my have aged gracelessly. Please call ahead to verify information.
Squaw Valley's '82 Avalanche in Close Detail - San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
IT TOOK BAY Area writer Jennifer Woodlief more than two years to reconstruct one of the Sierra Nevada's worst tragedies, the 1982 avalanche at Alpine Meadows ski resort. In interviews reviving memories that most people would rather forget, Woodlief uncovered fine details about how the mountains of Bear Creek Canyon, 5 miles north of Tahoe City, defied expectations and roared on March 31. Her book, "A Wall of White: The True Story of Heroism and Survival in the Face of a Deadly Avalanche," was released last week by Atria, a division of Simon and Schuster.
At 3:30 p.m. on March 31, 1982, a storm had layered the region with more than 8 feet of snow over four and a half days. "It was the storm of the century in that it was so unusual, a unique confluence of events," Woodlief says from her home in Tiburon. By that afternoon, most resort employees had gone home, and most vacationers were snug in their cabins. Only a few people bustled around the resort, including a handful of employees clearing new snow off the roads and buildings. Inside the Summit Terminal Building, a few remaining ski patrol members monitored the storm. As the clock ticked toward 3:45, the workers pitted their need to finish tasks against their instinct to go home.
The next few minutes would challenge a prevalent local tenet of the time, the certainty that human beings can control nature's deadliest forces. Several of their names are now forever linked with resort history: Bernie Kingery, beloved rough-spoken mountain manager, often seen wearing a favorite leather and sheepskin hat; Beth Morrow, the reliable, friendly scribe who recorded radio traffic at Kingery's side; college student Frank Yeatman and his girlfriend, Anna Conrad; and the affable Jake Smith. Not far away, trudging through parking-lot snow, were Bud Nelson and his young daughter, Laura, and Dave Hahn, who'd left their cozy condos for some fresh air.
"It's fascinating to see how events played out, and who was where, when," says Woodlief, who conducted more than 100 interviews. "How someone called someone else in for a coffee break, and that saved the person's life, or how the life (of one of the patrollers) potentially was saved when at the last minute he went to Squaw Valley for avalanche control." The incidents that influenced the progress of various people put everyone into place at 3:45 to live or die. The three walkers paused to watch a snowplow, an action that put them directly into the avalanche's path. When Conrad dropped by the Summit building to greet Kingery, he lectured her for entering the resort in such a storm. She went into the second-floor locker room, a move that sealed her fate - but also saved her life.
At 3:45 the mountain let go. "The mountain unzipped itself all the way around," Woodlief writes. Kingery and others had worried about a slide in Beaver Bowl, but they hadn't imagined that three adjoining slide paths would release together, hurling down enough snow to consume the building where they worked. The slides hit the Summit building, the main ski lodge, several small buildings and two chairlifts, filling the parking lot with 20 feet of snow. Miraculously, workers near a maintenance building survived, but the snow buried eight others, including Kingery, Morrow, Smith, the Nelsons, Hahn, Yeatman and Conrad.
To this day, at any large local gathering, it's easy to find at least one person who scrambled into the canyon with shovels and snow probes to locate those lost. Tragically, at first all they found were broken and frozen bodies. After two days, when a new snowstorm moved in, enhancing treacherous conditions on the slopes above, the search was suspended. Three days later, searchers doggedly returned. Spirits soared when they found one person alive: Conrad, near death from dehydration and frostbite and trapped in a cocoon of debris. Miraculously, the wall of lockers had fallen over and created an air space for her beneath the snow. Nearby, they soon located the body of Kingery.
That avalanche not only extinguished lives but also devastated nearby communities - Tahoe City, Homewood, Truckee, Squaw Valley, Kings Beach - places where residents today still recall the odd squeaking sound the snow made that day in March, and the way the oversize snow-banks sloughed ominously onto the roads.
Avalanche-control procedures have progressed over the years, and now Alpine Meadows has an additional option for handling hazards - Plan E for evacuation. That plan has never been used, according to Larry Heywood, who became Alpine Meadows' ski patrol director in December 1982 and stayed with the resort for the rest of his career. When the tragedy occurred earlier that year, Heywood was a 32-year-old ski patroller. He says the March storm presented conditions that were extremely difficult to assess, a never before seen pattern of wind and snowfall.
"I always wonder if, were that same sequence to occur again, I would have recognized the danger," he says. "I don't know the answer to that. The sequence hasn't occurred since then."
Occasionally, in some houses around Lake Tahoe, you'll find a faded 1980s photo of Kingery, his favorite hat hugging his ears. No one who was around in 1982 has forgotten the Alpine Meadows avalanche.
Jennifer Woodlief: Discusses "A Wall of White." 7 tonight. Book Passage Bookstore, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera. (800) 999-7909. www.bookpassage.com.
Excerpt from 'A Wall of White'
"In the biggest avalanches, the snow is preceded by a massive air blast, a shock wave caused by the force of the avalanche slamming faster and faster against nothing more than the air in front of it. The buffeting effect is analogous to, but much more powerful than, riding in a convertible on the highway when an 18-wheeler whizzes by in the opposite direction. Displacing enormous quantities of air, creating winds of hurricane force around it, the air blast can be destructive beyond its boundaries. Anything in its way - buildings, vehicles, trees - is blown apart rather than crushed.
"The air blast is immediately followed by the screeching of the wind - wind vicious enough to toss trucks, implode buildings, and obliterate anything in its path. Then there is the sound of the snow mass itself, a noise that, as described by the few people who have been that close to an avalanche and survived to talk about it, sounds like a freight train passing inches away from their ears. The train sound is indeed the sound of snow moving, but it is also the noise of whatever that snow has destroyed and carried along with it as it travels down the mountain - trees and rocks, certainly, but in some cases, also buildings, power lines, and people.
"And that movement down the mountain is fast, faster than anyone expects, faster than any human could outrun, or, except in the rarest of instances, even out-ski. That movement, in a massive slab avalanche, can reach speeds of more than 200 mph. At high enough speeds, the snow is basically sucked ahead into a powerful vacuum, and the resulting pressure imbalance can actually cause the snow to accelerate more quickly than gravity is moving it." - Jennifer Woodlief
Feting the Dead in Mexico - San Francisco Chronicle Magazine
IN THE BLACK OF NIGHT on Nov. 1, the cemeteries of Michoacán hum with life. Women in woven shawls bow their heads over lumpy graves; men in cowboy hats flash gold-toothed grins in the dark; children dart through shadows, giggling between bites of sweets. Tourists do their part snapping photos, sidestepping unmarked graves, kneeling at marked ones to admire offerings meant to please the dead. And the dead? They're lurking, for this is their chance to greet family and feast on foods they love. I'm here at Lake Pátzcuaro not only to learn from this ritual, but also to better get to know my 15-year-old nephew, Spenser.
This part of central Mexico, the volcanic highlands around Lake Pátzcuaro, is home to indigenous people who speak the Purépecha language. After the Spanish arrived in 1522, the willful Purépecha resisted attempts to alter their lives, and now their traditions, although firmly Catholic, are grounded in their pre-Hispanic past. Our home base for the week is a Spanish colonial hotel on Plaza Vasco de Quiroga, the main square of Pátzcuaro, a mid-size town right off the shores of the lake. Our balcony overlooks a patchwork of red roofs and bright adobe walls. Rooster calls echo every morning. It's hard to leave the plaza, for vendors from dozens of crafts villages have set up for the week to sell pottery, figurines, wooden sculptures, weavings, guitars and more. One block is devoted to sweets shaped like skeletons, skulls and coffins, bought by families to decorate graves. Although the cultural extravaganza here is alluring, on Nov. 1 we head into the country to see the goings-on in Michoacán's scattered cemeteries.
Above the lakeside village of Tzintzuntzan lie giant foundations of a ceremonial site that was central to Purépecha life before the Spanish conquest. From afar, it looks like a blocky bunker. Up close, we see slim petroglyphs tapped centuries ago into the massive stones. On Nov. 1, Tzintzuntzan becomes festival central as Mexicans arrive from all over to see the candlelit offerings the townspeople construct over gravesites in order to welcome back their dead. This is our first of three cemetery visits in one night. Crowds clog the path connecting the ruins to the Catholic church plaza below. They buy food and crafts. I buy a shot of tequila at a roadside stand, while Spenser drinks lemonade. Teenagers swat a ball of fire with sticks in an ancient game that, according to some interpreters, pits the powers of darkness (the players) against the sun (a cluster of burning twigs). Inside the church, a priest gives blessings for a small fee.
At dusk, we venture into the cemetery, where families are picnicking around headstones decorated with food, candy, drinks and flowers. Some offerings are elaborate, their candles cuffed with luminous paper wings. Others are spare, a sprinkle of flower petals in the shape of a cross. In the twilight, I snap dozens of images with my camera flash respectfully turned off. Spenser, a keen photographer, uncharacteristically quits after taking just a few pictures. Is he bored, I wonder, or queasy about intruding? I watch for clues he's having fun, but gather little.
Our guide, Henry Wilds, discourages us from tasting the street food we see here, but some in our tour group ignore him, and gorge on smoked almonds and a steamy stew of rice and chicken. Tzintzuntzan will have a late night of dancing and feasting, but we leave it behind for the quieter doings of Cucuchuchu. The Day of the Dead is practiced in a million ways in Mexico, from "Discos for the Dead" in cities, to single-night Thanksgiving-like feasts at home, to the quieter cemetery vigils around Pátzcuaro. Wilds, a Day of the Dead junkie who has attended more than 30 festivals here, prefers the quiet ones. "There will be a lot of people here in Cucuchuchu, soon," he whispers as we tiptoed through an archway into the stone-walled cemetery. Grave offerings here are simple - arched or squared-off frames clad with marigolds and other flowers and footed with food baskets topped with hand-embroidered linens. Knee-high candles warm the cemetery with winking light.
When a family welcomes Spenser and me into their circle, I plug away at conversation, relying on budding Spanish and facial expressions to convey my sentiments. Spenser doesn't want to practice his Spanish yet and wanders off. He's more an observer than a talker anyway. I've learned to connect with him in other ways - a glance, a shrug - and settle into silence.
In many parts of rural Mexico, villagers illuminate roads and paths with kerosene lamps to make sure their hallowed kin return safely to the graves, for lost souls can cause trouble on Earth. At our final stop, the village of Arocutín, lanterns extend for blocks, as do tour buses bearing visitors to an eerie midnight bell ceremony. Tourists - mostly Mexican, but also North Americans and Europeans - cling to the lighted church, which sags with age, but I abandon the light to wander among the graves, where I find families huddled around campfires, laughing, telling stories, scolding children - as if it's market day. I think that if we could see their ancestors' faces, we'd find them chuckling, too. That's how scores of Mexicans imagine their departed - laughing, playing jokes, as if content with where they are.
Alone in the far corner of the graveyard, I face a problem: how to start a conversation when no one has invited me to speak? Should I ask, "Who's buried here?" What if a mother answers: "My son, who died last week," and starts to cry. The woman I ask in fact responds with, "This is my husband. He died 10 years ago." I do not look away from the yellowing photograph of that once puffy, earnest face, as I might have done before coming here. Instead, I soak it in. I have never been comfortable talking about the people I know who've died - friends, family - even distant acquaintances.
On the Pátzcuaro square, vendors may be suggesting a sweeter way to handle death. They sell sugar or chocolate skulls and upon request will squeeze your name in loops of frosting onto the skull's forehead. By nibbling the skull labeled with your name, you metaphorically eat your own death, incorporating death into life. "Mexicans are better friends with death than we are," Wilds likes to say. I hope I'm absorbing some ability to sit someday more comfortably with death.
Where is Spenser? He is on his own. After the bell song, we find each other in front of the church, where an old woman beckons us into a courtyard. Over a steaming cauldron, she extends two cups of brown ponche, a mixed fruit and alcohol drink I've read about, and waits for us to taste it. Spenser and I lock eyes. Floating raisins look like bloated bugs. We want to receive her gifts, yet don't want to get sick. Spenser takes the first gulp. I wash mine down, too, joining the two of us in fate. Rather than churning my gut, though, the liquid comforts me, like a mellow apple cider.
The next evening, Wilds takes us to a "secret" cemetery (whose name no amount of bribery would release), where friends of his are in vigil. Right away, Spenser darts away. This time I don't stalk. A seated woman motions me to kneel beside her. Soft as dough, great arms billowing over an apron of lace, she queens over baskets of fruit and the Frisbee-like loaves called "bread of the dead." To my surprise, she tries to give me a banana. "I can't take food from the dead," I say. She meets my refusal with a resolute face. In the end, I'm given loads of fruit, candy and bread. When Spenser reappears, his cheeks are riding high. "They gave me so much food," he says with a laugh. He unzips his backpack to reveal a bounty, breaking off hunks of bread and passing them around to the rest of us. We savor the bread's sweetness, praise his kindness. I realize that while my intention with the trip was to introduce Spenser to indigenous culture, instead, he's given me a gift - his trust and friendship, and the memory of his generosity, which mirrors the selfless sharing demonstrated by our Purépecha hosts.
Back home, like Wilds, I've become a Day of the Dead junkie. As for Spenser, his mom reported he grew an inch during his week in Mexico. My mom, who lives near them, said when she asked Spenser about the trip, he talked a blue streak.--
If You Go
WHEN: It's best to arrive in Pátzcuaro for the Day of the Dead a few days early in order to enjoy the town while the crafts booths are up, and to see any parades, arts shows or public performances offered. It's easy to book day trips from your hotel or the Tourism Department office on the Plaza Vasco de Quiroga, or plan your trip in advance with a tour company like Adventure Travel Institute, www.adventuretravelinstitute.com. For more information, visit www.michoacan-travel. com and www.visitmexico.com.
It's important when traveling in countries involved in the drug trade to be aware and cautious at all times. Don't travel alone in the dark; use a guide in remote regions. Don't accept suspicious rides, and be aware of your surroundings and who's around you. There has been drug activity and violence in Michoacán, but shortly after being sworn into office in December 2006, Mexico's President Felipe Calderón sent troops into the state to clamp down on gangsters and drug dealers.
HOW: The closest major airport to Pátzcuaro is the Morelia International Airport in the state capital 30 miles away. Cab trips, about $20, take about 45 minutes along the fast toll road to Pátzcuaro. Regular local buses leave from the Morelia bus station about a mile and a half away from the airport.
WHAT: Pátzcuaro is full of shops and great restaurants, so it's easy to get anything you need. Be sure to see the dramatic Juan O'Gorman mural of the Spanish Conquest inside the Biblioteca Publica on the Plaza Gertrudis Bocanegra, and visit the Museo de Jose Maria Artes Populares on Arciga street. Try Argentine fare at hip Mistongo a block up Dr. Coss street from Plaza Vasco de Quiroga, or enjoy regional cuisine at El Patio, where there's upstairs dining on balconies overlooking the plaza. For day trips, boat across Lake Pátzcuaro to the island of Janitzio and climb the interior spiral staircase of the José Maria Morelos statue for views of the whole lake and its islands. Take a cab or bus to the nearby village of Santa Clara del Cobre to see the region's famous coppersmiths at work.
All Photos Copyright Laura Read
Will You Survive? When Things Go Wrong, Who Lives and Who Dies? - San Francisco Chronicle Magazine
San Francisco Chronicle Magazine
ON DEC.. 20, 1996, Bay Area teenager Harley Augustino and his dad, James, a 48-year-old developer and political activist, lost their way on cross-country skis in a brutal Sierra snowstorm. When darkness fell, they carved out a snow cave and huddled in it. Every half hour they stomped around outside the cave to warm up. Snowflakes soaked their hoods and faces; the bloated sky hung so low it seemed as if they could almost touch it. If they could just sit out the night, Harley thought, the storm would clear and they'd ski to safety.
Two and a half years later, on May 31, just after midnight, Portland resident Amy Horne began hiking up Mount Hood's West Crater Rim route. The excursion came after weeks of education and training. Clad in layers of new fleece and storm-proof outerwear, the 44-year-old research director felt a mix of excitement and dread: Yes, her guide was one of the best in the area, but this ambitious climb would test her physical skills beyond anything she'd ever done, and she was nervous. Ten hours later, as she crossed a snowy slope, the mountain roared and an avalanche crashed down on her.
On March 23, 2003, Nicole Chupka, 38, a French and math teacher from Carmel Valley, and her friend Judy Rowe skied up a ridge near Donner Summit's Castle Peak above a Sierra Club hut where they planned to bunk for the night with friends. At 4 p.m. she reached the top of her desination ridge and prepared to crank some turns, but the snow that had looked so alluring from afar was instead stiff as glue. On her fourth arc, Chupka's body veered left while her right ski zoomed straight ahead. Her right hip twisted weirdly and collapsed, tumbling her into the snow.
Incidents like these are all too familiar to people who study mountain accidents. "You could write a textbook on each one about what not to do with your winter vacation," said Laurence Gonzales, an author who for 35 years has explored the origins of sports accidents. In his recent book "Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies and Why," Gonzales probes both the causes of accidents and the strains of human nature binding their survivors. While bad weather triggers many winter accidents, something more fundamental often puts people in the path of disaster: "We tend to act on auto-pilot," Gonzales said recently from his home in Illinois. "The more hazard you are exposed to without getting hurt, the stronger the auto-pilot. We do what we're rewarded for doing; we avoid what we're punished for doing. All mammals behave that way."
When you pair that auto-response with variable conditions present in the backcountry, where unfamiliar features and threatening storms can easily disorient weekend warriors, the risk factors soar. Simple mistakes that in milder weather cause nuisances are now the currency of death. Here, three very different incidents share themes that help us understand how to survive, or better yet avoid, tempting fate in the winter backcountry.
"We shouldn't have been there"
That Friday afternoon 11 years ago, the Augustinos thought their three-hour tromp would be a cinch. "The weather was fine," said Harley, now 29. "Usually when there's a big storm, it hits San Francisco several hours before Tahoe, but there was no rain in San Francisco that morning." Forecasters had predicted bad weather. But the two had hoped to finish their tour before it hit. That didn't happen. "We were on a ridge when the storm rolled in," Harley recalled. "It was just snowing. My dad and I were used to that: It's nice to ski in the snow." But when they about-faced to return to the car, they descended the wrong way into unfamiliar terrain.
Amy Horne and her group were on a section of Mount Hood that was very familiar to their veteran guide, but loads of fresh snow and unseasonably warm May weather put the group on a dangerous slope a little later in the morning than they had planned, and this spurred disaster. When Horne had joined a Mazamas club mountaineering class two months earlier, she'd figured she was in safe hands. The mountaineer who would guide her graduation ascent had climbed the West Crater Rim route 14 times. But disaster needs only one wrong decision. Unstable snow conditions and a few judgment lapses formed a fatal collision. Investigators later said plenty of avalanche hazard warnings and clues existed that day, according to a report published in the American Alpine Club's 1999 volume of "Accidents in North American Mountaineering." The weeklong cycle of storms had mantled the mountain with new snow, a U.S. Forest Service sign warned of avalanche hazard; and the team's slow pace put them on an exposed slope after the day's heat had transformed an underlayer of snow into a stream of slippery granules. Why didn't Horne's leaders order a retreat? The accident reports didn't clarify the details of the guide's decisions, but Gonzales suggests that the answer lies in human instinct. "People do not believe they can get hurt themselves," he said. "They don't believe in their own deaths."
Risk takers are wired to seek the positive results they've had before, despite the dangers. If trouble hasn't found them in the past, they believe it won't again. There were 100 climbers on Mount Hood that weekend day, according to investigators. Many later admitted choosing to leave their avalanche beacons (devices that send and receive locator signals through snow) in their cars. A few reported they thought an avalanche couldn't occur on such a nice day. From her home in Truckee, where she moved a few months after the avalanche for a new job, Horne reflected recently: "We shouldn't have been there."
Nicole Chupka, too, shouldn't have been on Donner Summit slope on that afternoon in late March. A few hours earlier, when she and Judy Rowe had announced to their companions that they planned to make just a few quick turns before supper, one friend had warned that he'd noticed blustery winds outside, indicating an impending storm. The storm would have been only a minor nuisance had Chupka not made another mistake: She forgot that on warm spring afternoons in the Sierra, melting snow coalesces into heavy slop. When the friend tossed them a two-way radio, Chupka joked: "This will be fun to have."
"It's telling that when he gave her the radio, she concluded unconsciously that nothing bad could happen," Gonzales said. "It's what psychologists call the 'confirmation bias.' It's a deep part of our neurological system. All of the behaviors flow to that one conclusion. We are all suffering from this. It takes an intellectual effort to not do it."
Later, lying awkwardly in the snow, Chupka imagined that her injury was only slight, despite the pain in her right leg. "As soon as I moved my leg, I felt the pain," she said recently. "It felt like I was being electrocuted." Rowe used the radio to call the hut. It was Chupka's good fortune that two friends there were medically trained, one a doctor, the other a physical therapist. Thinking she might have dislocated her hip, Chupka hoped that with help she could just pop it back in and return on her own to the hut. "I had major denial," she recalled.
Outfitted for survival
Once the weather plays its cards, the knowledge and tools people carry, and the actions they take in the first hours of trouble, are critical. Cotton clothes do not contribute to survival. Horne and Chupka wore storm-proof outerwear on top of moisture-wicking synthetic fabrics such as fleece. James Augustino was similarly dressed, but Harley wore cotton jeans, a school letterman's jacket and a hooded sweatshirt. Wet cotton conducts cold and fails to insulate, according to survival experts. After thrashing about in the snow for several hours, Harley was soaked. "We found a tree well, and my dad got some branches to cover us a little bit," he recalled. "We wrapped around each other to stay as warm as we could." Their outside exercises warmed them only temporarily. One of Harley's socks got wet and froze, encasing his foot in an icy cocoon. "It was the longest night I can remember," he said, "except that the next two nights were even longer."
The snowstorm churned over the Sierra Crest all night. "In the first morning, the powder was up to my hip," Harley said. "We plowed through it. Then our equipment started to fail. My left ski kept falling off. My pole broke that second day, and my dad's boot was coming undone. Luckily we had some duct tape. It's something I usually carried in my pack." When the second night arrived, they made a cave in another tree well. "Snow was getting heavy on the branches," Harley recalled. "We would be huddled together, and a huge clump of snow would fall on top of us."
James Augustino had studied backcountry survival and knew about snow caves and hypothermia, a deadly condition in which low body temperatures impair mental abilities and shut down the body's organs. Similarly, Rowe and Chupka had learned about the mountains from past experiences, and Horne had studied mountain survival during her hours of class. The knowledge helped them make important decision in the early stages of their ordeals. "We tend to remember what we practice the most," Gonzales explained. "We tend not to invent new strategies on the spot. Although that's not true of everyone; some people just freeze."
Horne's mind did not freeze. While the avalanche spun her through a dangerous boulder field called Hot Rocks, she remembered her lessons. Finding herself being hurled downward feet first, she released her ice ax, as teachers had instructed. She also kept snow away from her nose and mouth by punching into the snow that was tumbling in front of her face, so when the avalanche stopped, the snow wouldn't block her airway.
Chupka's friend Rowe was prepared with a lightweight snow shovel she used to dig a shelter in the slope. The cave's protection became increasingly critical as time passed and night descended. The doctor and PT at first couldn't locate Rowe and Chupka. They returned to the hut for extra sleeping bags, food and clothing, and asked two others there to ski out for help. Four hours after the fall, the two medical experts finally reached the women. Confirming that Chupka probably had a broken femur, they carefully wrapped her in a sleeping bag, slid her onto an insulating foam pad and propped her against a backpack. She refused to get into the cave because any big movement caused shooting pain. Everyone hunkered down to wait. They hoped rescuers would come quickly. What arrived first, however, was a snowstorm.
Thinking forward
Tools and resources are critical to survival, but what often makes the biggest difference in the end is attitude, researchers say. In all three of these survival cases, the victims reported unusual optimism or clarity. These are manifestations of two habits of the mind, according to Gonzales. Some minds are able to focus on the positive; others cannot. Those that do are more likely to survive (as long as they are not entertaining delusions of safety). Another factor is the tendency for perceptions to warp under stress. During the long wait in the chilly cave, the Augustinos maintained good spirits. They joked about football and yearned for Mexican food and beer. "There wasn't any talk about not surviving," Harley said. Being optimistic wasn't so much a conscious choice, he said; "we just did it."
Horne's experience was different. While tons of snow tossed her 1,250 feet down the mountainside, she experienced a mental acuity that even now intrigues her. "My thoughts were like banners in Times Square. I thought things like, 'All I can do is the best I can in the moment, and I'll see how this turns out.' There was no point in panicking. I could easily have thought, 'I'm going to die,' but I didn't. My sense of it is that the organism, my self, was so focused on surviving that emotion was a luxury I couldn't afford. So I was completely calm and analytical."
Horne's experiences fit a known pattern, Gonzales said. "There's a fairly large body of work on perceptual distortion under stress," he said. Much of it was done with police officers involved in shooting incidents. "Nearly 100 percent of them reported extreme perceptual distortions, including time slowing down, tunnel vision, and odd perceptual points of view. A whole complex of perceptual distortions goes along with tense situations."
Chupka's thoughts, too, remained optimistic. "I wasn't going hysterical or crying," she said. "I had no fear. My mind was completely present. I've gotten into Buddhism since then, and I can say it was the most present I've been. I didn't think I was going to die." Like the Augustinos, she focused on the business of getting home.
Twins: luck and fate
Amy Horne's battle with the mountain ended within minutes. "I stopped. I went, 'Oh, phew.' " Then there was a powerful jolt. "I opened my eyes. I could see sunlight coming through the snow, which meant I was near the surface. I dug myself out to the chest. I was going to stand up, but an ache started and I realized I was hurt. I had no idea if I was the only one alive or if I was alone." In five minutes, a Portland Mountain Rescue team member reached her. One of her climbing partners was alive nearby, but partly buried. The other lay somewhere invisible beneath the snow. An hour later, searchers using probes recovered his body.
Horne was lucky. During the slide, she missed hitting massive boulders; once she stopped, she didn't suffocate. Terribly injured, however, she was flown to a Portland hospital. Later she learned that the taut rope connecting her to the two other climbers had crushed her pelvis.
The Chupka rescue was trickier. Blinded by fog and snow, neither Chupka's group nor Tahoe Nordic Search and Rescue Team skiers dispatched by the local sheriff's office to find her could see each other's lights. Finally Chupka and her friends spotted a flare. "We were excited," Chupka said. "They were with us in minutes." It was after midnight, and Chupka and the others shivered uncontrollably in the early stages of hypothermia. The rescuers transferred Chupka to an emergency sled and guided her down the slope to a waiting snowcat.
When someone reports a person lost in Lake Tahoe's backcountry, the sheriff's office dispatches searchers on skis and snowmobiles as quickly as possible. Because lost people usually aren't discovered missing until late in the day after someone doesn't return home, rescuers are accustomed to overnight missions in bad weather. However, the Augustinos' storm was worse than most. It hammered 8 feet of snow into the Sierra. Avalanche hazards prevented an immediate search. On Dec. 23, Harley left the tree-well cave to gather pine boughs in order to spell a "Help" sign on the snow. He felt OK, but he'd noticed that his dad's speech was slurring, indicating advancing hypothermia. "I don't remember a panic; it was like I knew what was happening; it was going to happen. I held him and tried to keep him as warm as possible." His dad's clothing was better insulated than Harley's, his feet weren't freezing in wet socks like Harley's were, yet he was dying. When James stopped breathing, Harley tried CPR, "but I knew there wasn't a whole lot I could do."
Harley eventually emerged from the shelter. "Right when he died, the snow stopped, the sky opened up, and I could ski on top of the snow for the first time." He crested a ridge and spotted Interstate 80, a snake of gray about 3 miles away in the cottony landscape. He skied downhill toward it, and promptly fell. Now it was 3 p.m. and he realized that if he weren't smart, he'd spend yet another night out. "I remember wondering if my father had lived a full life. Obviously, he died before his time. But I had a lot more I needed to do and be in my life." He climbed to a clear knoll. A half hour later, a rescue helicopter zoomed in and picked him up.
Horne spent four months in a wheel-chair and two years in physical therapy. She used the recovery time to process the accident's trauma. In a quest to examine every detail, she interviewed people involved, scoured incident reports and wrote and rewrote her recollections in diaries. "It's a story like too many others," she reflected. "An accumulation of little mistakes that at other times didn't matter, but this time did." Today, she said, she has finished that process. "I don't want Mount Hood to be my life," she explained. A senior writer now for UC Davis, she reports having little pain related to the injury. Outside of her busy job, she skies, rides bikes and hikes.
A weakened hip has kept Chupka from skiing since her injury. She does get outside for snowshoe and backpack trips; however, Buddhism is her new focus.
Augustino, too, has experienced a renewal. "Losing my father really opened me up emotionally," he wrote last year in a letter to Tahoe Nordic Search and Rescue Team members. "I cried a lot of tears that following year, and I learned to trust and accept my emotions." Augustino finished college, and in the spirit of his dad's activism, became executive director of a Santa Barbara group that helps low-income residents organize for political action.
"I read on the Tahoe Nordic Search and Rescue Team Web site that most, if not all, of these accidents are preventable," he said. "Unexpected things happen, but there are a lot of things we could have done. We had a cell phone, but left it in the car. Maybe we couldn't have gotten coverage, but maybe we could have. Now I always tell people where I'm going, and when I'm coming back. Even on summer day hikes, I bring two days of food and more water than I need."
Why would people who know better err when the stakes are highest? Gonzales believes the tendency is reinforced by messages of American culture. "We're sold these complex ideas that make us drop our guard," he said. "The first is we have the right not just to live but also to be comfortable and have fun experiences." It's a recent idea, in the grand scheme of things, he said. "The other idea is that everything is safe. You take these attitudes into the wilderness where you're given a false sense that it is Disney World or something, and it's not. Your cell phone, your avalanche beacon, your GPS can give you an idea that you are in control: You're not."
The good news is that people can change, he said; it just takes practice. Everything people do involves a calculation of risk for some amount of reward. "There's a scale: Watching a DVD at home is at one end; risking your life in an avalanche is at the other. You have to ask yourself what are you trying to get and how much risk are you willing to pay for that kind of reward." If life is the ultimate cost, he said, people taking such risks might rethink their choices.
The wilderness trials of Horne, Chupka and Augustino changed their lives. "In many ways my life started on Dec. 23, 1996," Augustino said. "Ten years later, I at least know that I have given this life of mine a good shot. In many ways, I have had it easier than most, and I've tried to do the best with what I have. I am thankful that I was given another chance."
Freelance writer Laura Read lives in North Lake Tahoe. Her husband, Doug Read, helped found the Tahoe Nordic Search and Rescue Team 32 years ago. She has been involved in the team's education and search dispatch operations for 12 years.
All Photos Copyright Laura Read
Six Reasons to back country XC in Spring - Adventure Sports Journal
Adventure Sports Journal
In the early spring, when warm days melt snow crystals into a fine paste and frigid nights freeze them to a crust, Mother Nature extends an invite to skate skiers to stray from the confines of machine-packed trails onto an open canvas of boundless gliding and backcountry exploration — no groomed tracks, no trail passes, no limitations.
When the freeze-thaw cycle persists and the snowpack settles into a dense and supportive surface resembling frozen cheesecake, skate skiing provides the swiftest means of traversing a snowy landscape under one's own power, allowing for speedy forays deep into Sierra canyons and across open meadows and frozen high-country lakes.
Though best suited to flat and rolling terrain, the gliding efficiency of a capable skier on lightweight skate gear can make a backcountry skier shuffling along on skins look like a gear-laden tortoise next to Apolo Ohno. Most backcountry skate skiers don't seek out high-angle terrain, but when conditions are just right — a firm base with a sun-warmed top of buttery corn — moderately steep slopes are not beyond limits of fearless skinny-ski descenders.
Some adventurous skate skiers have been known to knock out multi-day backcountry tours of 30, 40, even 50 miles in a day; trans-Sierra tours like Mammoth to Yosemite and crest traverses such as Donner Summit to Echo Summit.
Neophytes, of course, are urged to start with something a little less ambitious and closer to civilization — for as I found out, there are lessons to learn.
The first time I tried skate skiing on a glossy crust of frozen snow, my husband, Doug, and I were in the Martis Valley next to Truckee. Before dawn he'd nudged me awake saying, "Let's go skate on a meadow. Conditions are perfect."
Perfect? The outdoor thermometer read 25 degrees F.; sunrise was an hour away. Nevertheless, into the car we went, wrapped in thick hats, gloves and extra sweaters.
At Martis Meadows, located between the Truckee airport and Northstar-at-Tahoe, the snow was a pre-dawn shade of cool blue, and beneath the plastic grooves of my cross-country boots it crunched slightly.Quite different from classic cross-country skiing, which employs a scissors-like kick-and-glide movement, skate skiing has a side-to-side momentum that mimics ice skating or in-line skating. The ultra-light skating skis are treated with glide wax from tip to tail, which makes them ultra fast. My first push off onto the smooth snow sent me into a whizzing glide that felt incredibly light and free.
However, my enjoyment was diminished by the icy chill of the air, because even though I had lots of warm clothes with me, I didn't have exactly the right clothes.
Lesson #1: A wind jacket isn't enough for these early morning jaunts. Wind pants are key so your legs don't go numb.
Despite the frigid dawns, I became a meadow skiing junkie. One spring when we heard Lake Almanor was having warm days and freezing nights, Doug booked a motel room in Chester. Chester! I exclaimed. Couldn't we go somewhere more dramatic — down the Sierra's Eastside, for instance? But Doug had an inkling that Chester would be good, and so we went.
As we got started the next morning a cloak of fog snuffed out all the scenic features — the fluffy green trees, the big lake, the mountains — so we stayed close to the lakeshore. Slowly, the fog shriveled into curly threads that hugged the streams. We cruised up one creek into a nearby meadow. Sunshine lit up the sky, revealing a landscape awash in snow crystals. But the best reward was the long vista once everything cleared: In the distance, snow-domed Mt. Lassen boomed up from the forest like a kingdom from the Lord of the Rings.
Lesson #2: Don't let the fog deter you.
One night a friend called to say she'd heard Anton Meadows above Tahoe City had a frozen crust. To reach Anton the next morning, we used the groomed trails of Tahoe Cross Country ski area, where we had season passes. Most cross-country centers contain a couple of flat open places that freeze and thaw in the springtime: Tahoe Donner has the Euer Valley, Kirkwood has Kirkwood Meadow, and the Tamarack Cross-Country Ski Center in Mammoth has snow-covered lakes.
On this particular morning, the slender shards of hoar frost sparkled across the surface as if someone had sprinkled a million diamonds there. Once we left the trails, we could ski wherever we wanted to go. I swooped between willows, scampered up hillsides, circled creek holes, and inspected rabbit tracks.
Lesson #3: Check out the meadows next to groomed ski center trails.
Doug and I bought a small camper, and now we travel often on Highway 395 to where the glacier-scooped valleys of the Eastern Sierra provide endless meadows for long days of skate skiing. On one early excursion into a canyon below Mt. Emma near Sonora Pass, Doug asked if I wanted to take a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in my fanny pack. I said no. I had plenty of Gu's, those 100-calorie packets of gooey carbs laced with caffeine.It was a spectacular tour. We skated up the canyon, following an open creek, dodging willow bushes and peering at transparent ice lips growing out of the snow banks above the rushing creek. We climbed a glacial moraine and scooted through an aspen grove. A couple of hours passed and I swallowed one Gu after another. We crested a knoll to see another irresistible glistening valley ahead of us. We flew into it, hooting with excitement and feeling free as eagles. Then, bonk. My energy drained away as if someone had pulled a plug. I had eaten all my Gu's. I found Doug ahead sitting on a stump, nibbling his sandwich. He kindly shared it. Refueled, I zoomed back to the camper, where I took a nap.
Lesson #4: Always take the PB&J.Backcountry skate skiing can test all of your limits. Sun comes from all sides, so wear a good sunscreen, big hat and a long-sleeve lightweight wind-shirt. Carry extra water and don't wear dark-colored, heat-absorbing clothes.
And then there are the survival issues: Travel with a friend, know your terrain, and leave a note on your car describing your route and when you'll be back.
Lesson #5: Be prepared for anything.
The sweetest aspect of spring skate skiing is that it can be done anywhere. The snowpack simply needs to be gathering lots of sunshiny warmth during the day, and freezing hard at night. My favorite finds include a couple of meadows on Highway 89 between Truckee and Sierra Valley, any snow-covered alkali flat in Nevada, anyplace at all in magical Hope Valley off Carson Pass, and meadows around Tioga Pass and Crowley Lake, near Mammoth.
Lesson #6: Skate skiing is a great way to get deep into the backcountry quickly and with ease.
Hiking Lake Tahoe's Rubicon Trail - Sunset Magazine
Sunset Magazine
In the 1880s, a Sacramento newsman compared Lake Tahoe's sapphire depths to bluing solution, so astonishing was the color. Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) said Lake Tahoe's air was pure enough for angels. Clear sky and water still startle the senses here, especially when you spend the day close to shore on the 6 1/2-mile Rubicon Trail.
The footpath connects rocky points and sandy coves along an untamed shoreline that once intimidated mountain men. Today, the paths have been cleared and the steeper sections shored up. The most popular trailheads are at D.L. Bliss State Park and Emerald Bay State Park. It's 4 1/2 miles between those points; also, you can take the new 2-mile extension past Vikingsholm.
The Bliss trailhead approach is particularly sweet. Its crushed-granite path leads, after about 1/8 mile, to Rubicon Point, where the trail turns south. About 1/5 mile past Rubicon Point, you'll reach a place where dramatic granite cliffs descend 600 feet to a watery mosaic of blues – they continue another 1,400 feet below water.
A few steps around the corner juts a strange crowd of natural rock figures. Use your imagination to identify local favorites such as Frog Rock, Sleeping Lady, Gladiator, and Old King Cole. Across a ravine behind the formations is an osprey nest that's been there for years. A separate trail departs here for the remains of a small wood lighthouse.
About 1/2 mile farther south, the trail leaves sunny terrain for cooler slopes shaded by sugar and Jeffrey pines, Douglas fir, and incense cedar trees. You'll pass another rocky viewpoint before switch-backing downhill to the sandy coves of Emerald Point. Views encompass glacier-carved mountain peaks and the lumpy profile of Fannette Island – legends of ghosts and turn-of-the-century tea parties here enthrall visitors.
Continuing around the bay, you'll come to Vikingsholm, a 38-room mansion built in 1929 for a woman who wanted to replicate the stonework, turrets, and sod roofing of medieval Scandinavian architecture.
Save time for a 30-minute guided tour – they're available between 10 and 4 every half hour daily through the end of September.
About 8 miles north of the park, Tahoma Meadows B&B (530/525-1553) is a good place to spend the night – which you may well want to do once this region has cast its spell on you.
Lake Tahoe XC Ski & Snowshoe - San Francisco Chronicle
AT NORTH TAHOE'S NORDIC centers there are no boutique stores, no crowds, no chairlifts. Cross-country skiers cruise along groomed trails into places such as Anton Meadows above Tahoe City, where frost-rimed willows reach from the snow like wizard fingers, or to Tahoe Donner's Euer Valley, where the meadow sparkles weirdly, as though a million stars just fell from the sky.
Between the West Shore and Donner Summit there are seven track systems where skinny skis reign. Trails are machine groomed for three kinds of action: classic cross country, in which legs move scissors-like in a kick-and-glide motion as the skis slide in parallel groves or "tracks"; skate-skiing, which mimics in-line skating using Apolo Ohno - style strides to zoom along trails groomed 6 feet wide and velvety smooth; and snowshoeing, a sport so quickly catching fire that the Nordic centers have rebranded themselves "cross-country and snowshoe centers" to promote their new rental equipment and snowshoe-specific trails.
The Nordic centers have been expanding family and group activities in response to rising ticket sales. They offer new biathlon ranges, ski-and-read storytelling loops, moonlight and stargazing tours, easy citizen races, gourmet ski tours and trailside chef services.
While the centers' day lodges aren't glamorous, the sporty clothing trends defiantly un-couture, those aren't the Nordic skier's concern. Catching an adrenaline lift deep in Tahoe's forested terrain is.
Why now? The skiing is cheap. At North Tahoe's cross-country centers you can ski three days or more for the price of a downhill ticket. Day passes are $20-$30 for adults, some beginning lessons are free, Tahoe XC has $12 Tuesdays, and Northstar's cross-country season pass is only $99. Olympic trails at Sugar Pine Point State Park are free.
Backstory: The 1960 Olympics developed groomed trails in Sugar Pine Point State Park. A 1970s craze sparked no less than five new North Shore track systems. Tahoe XC trails evolved at that time, followed by Tahoe Donner (founded by Olympian Glenn Jobe) and Northstar-at-Tahoe.
Checking in: Granite fireplaces, knotty pine paneling, and cozy quilts give the private cabins at Tahoe City's Cottage Inn an Old Tahoe charm. The inn is 15 minutes from Tahoe XC, the Resort at Squaw Creek and Sugar Pine Point State Park.
Dining: Kick-start the morning at Fire Sign Cafe with homemade chocolate chip sour cream coffeecake, huevos rancheros or a smoked salmon omelet. The salsa, chorizo and pastries are homemade; salmon is smoked on site. For lunch, try Tahoe Donner's chunky veggie chili, Tahoe XC's Nordic-themed panini sandwiches, or a bowl of wild boar stew at the Northstar Ritz Carlton's Mountain Blue Market.
Spend your day: Take a free class where offered, or join a clinic with Olympians Marcus Nash, Katarina Nash or Jobe.
Have a private lunch cooked by a chef trailside on a snowmobile-pulled BBQ sled at Tahoe XC, try new biathlon ranges at Northstar and Tahoe XC, or join the kids on Tahoe Donner's new ski and read storybook loop.
Don't bother: Skiing the bike trail along the Truckee River between Tahoe City and Squaw Valley. Road grime tossed there by snowplows from SR 89 makes a sticky muck.
Don't miss: At Tahoe Donner, check out the "High Noon" trail aspen groves and the lookout on "Crabtree," or ski any other route in the Alps-like Euer Valley. At Northstar, glean lake views from "Tahoe Trail" and from the Swiss Hut warming hut on "Lumberjack Trail." At Tahoe XC, glide on out to "Red" and "Silver" trails to loop Anton Meadows and get a sunny panorama of Lake Tahoe.
Word to the wise: Wear synthetic clothing (not cotton!) that wicks moisture away from the skin and can be removed in layers when you heat up on the go.
XC Olympic Team's Youngest, Matt Gelso - San Francisco Chroncle
LAST YEAR'S FALL IN North Tahoe produced a few weeks of blazing foliage followed by intense bouts of rain. During the downpours most people finished puzzles or played Clue or Scrabble. Not 17-year-old Matt Gelso. Bad weather rarely shuts him in. Through the gray days and heavy skies, the flame-haired teen continued to bicycle, rock climb and roller ski. He wasn't overdoing his sports, just preparing in his own serious fashion for the 2006 cross-country ski season. He had big dreams.
By the time spring arrived, in the midst of class camp-outs and other pre-graduation antics, Gelso was nominated to the 2007 U.S. Cross Country development team. He had worked hard in the past four years, to be sure, but now the most difficult training of his life was about to begin. Nomination is a first step toward joining the team. Nominees attend summer training camps. In early fall they sign a personal responsibility code. With those tests behind him, Gelso learned his nomination was official. He was now the youngest member of the team.
Back home, North Tahoe/Truckee locals cheered. Plenty of homegrown kids have joined the U.S. Alpine Ski Team over the years. But this was the first time a Tahoe-raised athlete had made the cross country team. To most who knew Gelso, it was not a surprise. In 2005, he won the Junior National Championship freestyle sprint. At the 2006 Junior Olympics, he won all three individual events: the freestyle (skating) sprint, the 10K skate race and the 15K classic race. In the 2006 World Junior Championships in Kranj, Slovenia, he placed 16th overall.
"His 16th place result at the World Junior Championships last year was one of the best Junior results that the U.S. has celebrated," said Pat Casey, Gelso's new Continental Cup Team coach. "The ranks of Junior skiing can be volatile. From season to season we see different names on the top of the results list. Matt's name has been on the top of the results list for more than one season, and of late he has been the overwhelming favorite heading into domestic Junior championships."
Gelso is simply faster and smarter than most cross-country skiers his age, according to Glenn Jobe, a North Tahoe Olympian who competed in the 1980 Lake Placid Biathlon 20K event, and who has coached Gelso at race events and during training camps. "Matt is the top junior skier in the U.S. right now," Jobe said. "I have no doubt he will go as far as he wants to go."
How far can that be? The U.S. Cross Country Ski Team isn't known for its champions. But true believers think that reputation is about to change. "The U.S. is now knocking on the door for a medal," Jobe speculated. But has the word "medal" ever shared headlines with "U.S. Cross Country skiing" in world competition results? Only once, and not in Gelso's lifetime. In 1976, Vermont skier Bill Koch won an Olympic silver. There was a bit of a heyday in the early '80s with skiers getting top spots internationally, but not since then has an American cross country skier been on the Olympic podium. As recently as 2002, U.S. Cross Country Ski Team press releases from Europe wilted under such headings as "U.S. Skiers Blanked on Sprints."
"In the early 1980s, the sport started being televised, and Europeans poured money into their teams," explained U.S. Nordic Program Director Luke Bodensteiner. But we didn't match that. Soon, American cross-country skiers were finishing in the 40th places, then in the 70s. "Some dead last," Bodensteiner said. It looked as if anyone who hankered to win for the United States, like Gelso, would have to schuss instead of stride. "That's when we decided we were putting our focus in the wrong spot," Bodensteiner said.
Cross-country skiers usually peak around age 30. Before the late 1990s, the U.S. Cross Country Ski Team was waiting until athletes matured into their mid-20s before tapping them. In 1998, the United States switched gears with a new program providing a longer training arc for skiers by starting their World Cup development earlier in their careers. "In the past eight years we've taken a lot of steps to get a handful of athletes up to the point where they are now, close to the World Cup podium," Bodensteiner said. Results were good. Last winter, U.S. sprinters produced the best international results in history for the women and in two decades for the men. And, for the first time since the classification was established in the 1980s, U.S. skiers made the "Red Group," a pool of the top 30 competitors in sprint and long distance. In February, the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association announced it would expand its support of cross-country skiing to impact the program for the 2010 and 2014 Olympic Winter Games. There will be better World Cup support, additional coaches' education and a renewed development program. It is this wave that pulled Gelso onto the Team, this wave he'll be riding, perhaps eventually propelling.
Can he hang in there for the four to eight years it could take to win a podium? With composure beyond his age, he doesn't boast. "For an endurance sport, it's necessary to give yourself time," he said. "You can't get world-class 50K endurance in even two years, unless you're extremely naturally gifted. ... It takes self-motivation."
He is used to long athletic trails. He's been drumming for success since he was 6 when he competed in his first swim meet. "He swam 100-meters four times back and forth," his dad, Matt Gelso Sr. recalled. "It was the longest race he'd ever done, and he was going to finish last, but he was killing himself in the race." That sort of drive very likely came from a high-performing mom, Kathy Gelso, who once was a competitive figure skater.
Swimming was good for "building his motor," according to Jeff Schloss, Gelso's primary coach in Truckee, but Gelso was even better on snow. "When he was 13 we took him to the Junior Olympics thinking this would be a good learning experience, but that he would finish toward the back," Schloss said. It's possible Gelso remembered what it felt like to swim in last place, because the back of the pack was no longer for him. In his first races, he surprised everyone by skiing in the middle of the pack. In the last individual race, he outperformed the rest of his own team, all of them older than him, and finished an astounding 11th. "That week I saw this young 13-year-old who was not intimidated by other kids," Schloss said. "On every race day, he learned from the day before." The red-headed kid had the makings of a champion. "To be the very best, it takes four things," Schloss said. "No. 1 is genetics. You have to have a big motor. The sport is so aerobically demanding." No. 2 is technique. "Matt has some of the best technique of any Junior in the country." Motivation is third. "It's not like football and basketball, where everybody's watching you. In cross country you are out in the woods by yourself for hours. If you don't have the inner drive, you're not going to make it. Matt will work out for hours without a coach watching him." Fourth is inquisitiveness: "The athlete has to be willing to learn. Matt will spend hours skiing past a coach and asking, 'Have I brought my arms in closer on the double pole? Is my skate push directed down the track?' He has a great, curious mind."
Jobe adds that Gelso's ability to think strategically also puts him out front. "Matt is a smart skier; he has strategy," he said. "When he goes out, he might be in 20th place, then 10th. Then he ends up winning the race. Other racers will go out hell-bent for leather the first lap, and then they can't maintain the speed. Matt gets faster as the race goes on, and that takes tremendous mental maturity. You have to be your own person."
Maturity, according to many who know him, is perhaps Gelso's crowning trait. "I am very proud of him as a person, even more than as a skier," his dad said. "That's what I admire about him most -- the quality of person he is."
As for Gelso, the new freshman at the University of Colorado is feeling the nip of challenge, one that few of his classmates can share. This winter Gelso will compete with the university ski team in the American and Canadian Continental Cup circuit, and he'll probably travel abroad for select international races. "When you are put up on a level like this, you want to promote the sport, and you want to do well for your country," he said. "Even on days when I don't want to train, when I wake up and it's raining and I'm tired, I could close my eyes and go back to sleep, but I don't, because it's what I need to do. It's what I do."
In the next few years during holidays Gelso may be seen training along the hundreds of miles of groomed nordic ski trails looping the mountains around Lake Tahoe. If his red top frizz doesn't distinguish him on the snow, his powerful technique will. "You don't see a lot of exaggerated movement," Schloss reflected. "Instead, it's powerful, close to the body, and directing him down the track." What a thrilling track that might be.
Survival Classes Thriving in Hard Times - San Francisco Chronicle
IT'S A SCHOOL WITH NO computers, televisions, cell phones — no light switches or toilets. If you want food or water, you're pretty much on your own. The classroom is the great outdoors - and the course is survival.
In today's tough economic times, when people are contemplating living with less, survival classes are attracting plenty of students who believe the primitive world offers an embarrassment of natural riches that not only can make the difference between life and death but also can expand personal growth.
"Five years ago, I founded Adventure Out. It was just me with a few friends helping to give surf lessons and survival workshops," says Cliff Hodges of Santa Cruz. "The company grew to 20 employees, and now we run programs all over the state. Now every class fills up with a pretty long waiting list."
Wilderness survival schools have been around since the 1960s, but interest began swelling during the Y2K scare. These days, people have access to plenty of survival material. They're watching survival television shows. They're reading survival books, such as "Survive! Essential Skills and Tactics to Get You Out of Anywhere - Alive" by Les Stroud, host of the Discovery Channel show "Survivorman." They're checking out survival schools online and through word of mouth.
What neophytes are quickly discovering is that survival schools are not just for Rambo anymore; they're for Bambi, too.
Most good schools teach that wilderness survival is not only about making a fire, capturing food and building a shelter, though those skills are important. It also requires an intimacy with natural systems. Students learn how things work in the environment around them, and how they themselves fit into that environment.
"We'll track the animals, but we'll also relate them to the ecological context," says Josh Lane, the creative mentoring specialist at the Shikari Tracking Guild in Santa Cruz. "There are so many mysteries at play on the landscape. If we see coyote tracks, we ask, 'What is it about the landscape that causes them to move in that way?' It seems to make a real tangible difference for people who are looking for that connection and wanting to feel it. They get immersed into nature, and they see quickly how alive that connection can be in their lives."
Sensitivity trumps toughness
The paradox is that the most powerful ingredient of toughness is not muscle power, but sensitivity. "Wilderness training always builds character," says Jon Young, Shikari's founder. "You have to face your fears. Learning to pay attention to the birds and animals around you brings you right to your edge. If you're used to a temperature of 68 degrees Fahrenheit, then a constant temperature of 62 degrees is going to feel intense, uncomfortable.
"And there's the edge. Your sense of touch, the humidity, the cold wind will take you outside your comfort zone. You slow down, pay attention with your eyes and your ears. You have to be a participant with much more consciousness. Being in touch with nature directly on a consistent basis is going to build the character needed for survival."
The lessons taught in survival schools can give students the kind of shakeup that might save their lives in any situation, not just the kind of trouble that occurs alone in the wilderness.
"We live in a fishbowl culture," said Laurence Gonzales, survival columnist for National Geographic Adventure. "Every morning we get a reward: The coffee goes on, and there's the croissant; it's lunchtime, and there's the sandwich. We get rewarded no matter the stupid things we do. That's great, until things go wrong." If all you do is watch "Dancing With the Stars," he says, you're not taking advantage of human intelligence. "It's not what's in your pack that makes the difference in survival; it's what's in your heart."
"Survivorman's" Les Stroud agrees. Since college, he's taken numerous survival courses, even lived a primitive lifestyle for a year in a remote part of Canada. "Most of what you need to survive is mental," he says. "When it's 3 a.m. and that cold chill is rippling down the spine, it takes more than a fire to get you through the night."
Wilderness survival schools vary wildly. Some teach what to do when things go wrong, and how to use available equipment to stay alive. Some teach only primitive techniques culled from indigenous cultures. Some incorporate natural history lessons and mental awareness skills. Some go further to forge self-discovery or build interpersonal skills, recognizing that people facing hardships are not always alone.
The schools generally help students shed what they know about 21st century living and plunge them into the unknown, where they must match themselves with nature.
Starting a fire took days
"They drop you into the middle of the wilderness with nothing," says Gonzales, who took two survival courses while researching his book "Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why."
"The first thing we did was make fire. We broke a couple of rocks against each other and got an edge that was sharp enough so that we could strip bark off a tree branch." Gonzales then worked the bark into fibers and made a cord. With another branch and the cord, he constructed a bow drill, which he spun against a wood board with a notch in it until the friction produced a hot ember. "You put the ember into some dry material and blow on it, and you get fire," he says. Simple as the procedure sounds, it wasn't easy - it took him two days.
While the course taught Gonzales to build a shelter, navigate without map and compass and other useful skills, the most important lessons, he says, came from the practice itself. "Survival is not so much about technique; it's about the opening of your mind to possibilities."
Most of the American schools draw from indigenous approaches to primitive living. In Colorado, for example, the Boulder Outdoor Survival School presents seven-, 14- and 28-day survival skills and field courses in southern Utah based on lifestyles of the Pueblo culture. The school got some buzz several years ago when its instructors were consulted for the 2000 movie "Castaway."
Closer to home, in Santa Cruz, Adventure Out offers a one-day survival clinic as well as weekend and weeklong workshops in flint-knapping, bow-making, hide-tanning, tracking and other skills. A new program this year teaches about sea-foraging and edible plants during a backpack trip into remote parts of the Lost Coast. Shikari Tracking Guild presents a Saturday series in nature awareness and animal tracking as well as a weeklong course in bird language and a nine-month nature and survival skills program called Native Eyes.
Part of society too
Sometimes, individuals arrive at a wilderness training school and discover that it's not so hard for them to handle the wilderness alone; what's difficult is getting along when they return to society.
"We want people to realize that they are part of nature, and nature is their home - that they can trust nature, but they also can trust each other," says John Chilkotowsky, program director of Wilderness Awareness School, an outdoor school teaching survival, natural history and other courses in Duvall, Wash. "It's the opposite of what we call the 'sociopathic naturalist' syndrome, in which people think nature is good and people are bad.
"In our courses, students are learning difficult skills. When we put them out for wilderness tests, time and time again they discover that the way they survive and flourish is through their ability to function well in a community."
Many schools claim that students leave with a much greater understanding of themselves. "We're not a therapy camp," Chilkotowsky says. "But this experience is completely transformative. Part of that is that you have a bunch of people around you who are jazzed up about the natural world: They celebrate that nature is fully alive, the flowers are blooming, the birds are singing. That is an immense contrast to our usual experience of some folks who are habitually depressed, expecting nothing to bloom or sing in their day. There's something elemental in nature that invites you to be who you truly are."
A person can't survive a grueling challenge without clarity and connection, according to Stroud. A panicked person will never coax that ember to flame. "Maintain the will to live," Stroud says. "What's the first thing you do out there in any situation? You have to refrain from panic. Once you've been able to do that, the rest becomes the technical application of your knowledge and skills."
Nurturing will to live
A lost person can become calm simply by taking the first steps taught by most survival courses and in most books: "You assess your own situation," Stroud says. First, by determining which aspects of the situation are working in favor of survival, and which are working against it. Are you injured? Is nightfall approaching? Then, assess the external environment and the tools and options for survival existing in your surroundings - tree limbs, grass, loose dirt, fire-starting tools, etc.
The most important tool for survival is an internal one, Stroud stresses. If you can manage your mind, by keeping calm and nurturing your will to live, the odds of survival increase dramatically. "The will to live is in most of us - sometimes it's hidden away," Stroud says. "None of us wants to die." --
Adventure Out
(800) 509-3954
Shikari Tracking Guild
(no phone available)
Boulder Outdoor Survival School (BOSS)
Tom Brown Jr.'s Tracker School
(609) 242-0350
Wilderness Awareness School
(425) 788-1301
Tahoe's Champion League Turns 50
Tahoe Quarterly
Since its inception, the League To Save Lake Tahoe has grown to some 4,500 members, acquired considerable political clout and produced a bumper sticker that's been slapped on nearly every SUV in the Basin. The nonprofit conservation organization has also engendered more than a few detractors who say that the group has strayed from its mission, and helped create yet more bureaucratic roadblocks to reviving the region's economic health. A look back at some of the watershed moments in the League's history helps answer the question: Have they helped keep Tahoe blue?
The League's Evolution
The League started in 1957 under the name Tahoe Improvement and Conservation Association. Eight years later, directors changed the moniker to one that stuck: the League to Save Lake Tahoe. In the beginning, the members fought casino high rises, four-lane roads and unplanned growth. Nearly three decades later, noting that existing regulations weren't strong enough, the League sued the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) to halt a plan that would accelerate development. The resulting building moratorium ignited a war zone in which individuals with economic interests battled those who wanted to limit construction.
"Without the continued efforts of the League in terms of news and legal actions, we would have lost the battle to save Lake Tahoe back in the 1960s and '70s," says Dr. Charles Goldman, a University of California, Davis, limnologist who has documented a decline in The Lake's clarity since the late 1950s. Recently, Tahoe Basin politics have mellowed, and so has the League, which now works largely in concert with groups it once fought.
Today, the League operates with a $1.2 million budget used to keep an eye on development and support environmental restoration, public education and outreach activities. The League lobbies for state, local and federal funding to restore lands damaged by development and other activities, and it negotiates for the environment in planning processes. Outreach programs include Tahoe Forest Stewardship Day, educational programs for schoolchildren and storm-drain stenciling ("No Dumping—Drains to Lake").
Not Everyone Loves the League
Although the League has touched nearly anyone with an interest in The Lake, the organization has not always made everyone happy. Through the decades, League actions have contributed to polarization: little guy versus big guy, haves versus have-nots, locals versus out-of-towners, California versus Nevada and local government and planning agencies versus state and federal interests.
"They worked to get systems for carrying effl uent out of the Basin, and closed down efforts to develop a highway up the West Shore, a bridge across the mouth of Emerald Bay and a casino on top of Round Hill," says Steve Teshara, executive director of the North Lake Tahoe Resort Association. "Development like that was clearly not appropriate. They were courageous to stand up when it was not popular and say, 'There are some values that need to be protected.'"
The League's harshest critics charge the group with elitism and selfish singlemindedness. When the League formed, it needed money and clout; that came from wealthy lakefront homeowners, many of whom lived full time in the Bay Area. The organization couldn't have been successful without them. But, sitting across the ideological chasm were often the little people, the moms and pops, the average guys who wanted to build their dream cabins next to fragile streams, who saw the League's positions dash their own goals.
South Shore's Mike Bradford, who owns Lakeside Inn and Casino, says the League's goals are in plain opposition to the needs and desires of locals and visitors. "The Lake is here to be enjoyed by as many people as possible," he says. "From that point of view, it's important that we provide access, so that it is experienced by as many people as we can get here without impairing the environment. The way that the League focuses on the issues has a lot to do with keeping people out of here."
Bradford cites the long-standing debate over potential expansion of the South Lake Tahoe airport. The League is resisting, claiming that further build-out of the facility will add to air pollution and affect the integrity of the Upper Truckee River—the number one source of runoff into The Lake—because of upstream damage from development. "The League's position is tied to old ways of thinking," Bradford says. "It's bogged in the dogma of 20 years ago. Their positions are designed to bolster their membership."
Like Bradford, Carl Ribaudo, president of Strategic Marketing Group, believes the South Shore needs economic boosts from a new airport and other redevelopment projects in order to survive and facilitate environmental improvements. He says the communities around The Lake are in economic decline, a condition linked to development regulations promoted by conservation groups.
"Tourism is a tough industry in a lot of ways," Ribaudo says. "There are low-paying jobs and so on—all the more need to diversify. But diversification and attraction become difficult under regulation that adds significant costs to doing business. You ask business owners about capital investment, and they say it's too time consuming and costly to do.
"In my opinion," he adds, "the environment doesn't deserve more consideration than social and economic issues. And environmental regulations shouldn't be based on ideology or emotion, but on science and reason. What is the real environmental benefit of restoring clarity, and is it worth the hundreds of millions it will cost? So far, I think there has been a lot of wasted effort, because it has not been based on great science. Only now with the advent of the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) model are we getting the research and development tools we need to address lake clarity issues and hopefully focus on engineering solutions."
Watershed Moments in the League's History
Passions regarding the organization run hot partly because scars are deep. A review of watershed moments in the League's history reveals the challenges in not only preserving The Lake's health but also in gaining consensus among players.
Overdevelopment spurs activism
Between 1956 and 1960, Lake Tahoe's resident population surged from 2,850 to 12,000. One Nevada planner worried the area would become a "fast-growing city with a big hole in the middle of it." In 1959, El Dorado County planners approved 5,000 new lots in South Lake Tahoe, according to Douglas H. Strong, whose book, Tahoe: From Timber Barons to Ecologists, chronicles The Lake's conservation politics. South Tahoe's population was projected to reach 50,000 by 1984. There were no controls on signage, roads and lights. The Tahoe Keys development at the mouth of the Upper Truckee River was underway. Members of the new Tahoe Improvement and Conservation Association jumped in feet first to keep The Lake from becoming a runaway train ready to jump the track.
Failed regional plan leads to new League
In 1964, a new commission issued the first strategy for lake-wide planning. Called the 1980 Regional Plan, the proposal included three highways circling The Lake: one along the lakeshore for locals, a four-lane, mid-mountain express route and a scenic byway near the current location of the Tahoe Rim Trail. A bridge would span Emerald Bay and a manmade island along South Shore. The plan projected a total population of 300,000 by 1980.
"There were a lot of projects that were disturbing to the people who saw Lake Tahoe's best use for natural recreation," says Rochelle Nason, the League's executive director. "It raised the consciousness that Tahoe was in trouble and needed protection." In response, the Conservation Association ramped up its objectives and changed its name to the League to Save Lake Tahoe. New League goals included promoting The Lake as a national treasure, not just a local one, and spreading the message about Lake Tahoe nationwide. All levels of government should be involved in lake planning, the group declared, and a regional governing agency was essential.
"All around The Lake are small homeowners' associations, improvement organizations, business groups and dedicated individuals striving to do their part in dealing with the problems in their area," the League's first newsletter read. "But as hardworking as these groups are, they are unable to cope with the total problems of the Tahoe Basin: lake pollution, hillside scarring, highway intrusions, large-scale developments, et cetera."
The League's harshest critics charge the organization with elitism and selfish single-mindedness.
Without a regional agency though, there was no way to implement the proposed 1980 Regional Plan. After much debate, it faded.
TRPA fails to slow growth
Between 1960 and 1970, Tahoe's resident population doubled, assessed value tripled and market value quadrupled, according to a chronology compiled by the late Dwight Steele, a former League board member. In 1969, the California and Nevada state legislatures agreed to a bistate Tahoe Regional Planning Compact determining the structure and objectives of a regional planning group. Together with the U.S. Congress, they established the TRPA.
The agency faced hurdles from the get-go, for Tahoe was already growing at an alarming pace. In 1970, casinos reported annual revenues in the tens of millions. The South Lake Tahoe Chamber of Commerce advertised that Tahoe offered urban amenities such as an airport, department stores, banks and radio stations, according to Strong. The new TRPA governing board approved 13,500 additional housing units during its first 15 months—99 percent of requests.
"The governing board was dominated by locally elected officials," Nason says. "At that time, the powers in the community were pro-growth, so we had a TRPA board that was progrowth." The board's voting structure allowed projects to be automatically approved if they were not acted on within 60 days. An editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle called the TRPA an "impotent pygmy," according to Steele. From the League's point of view, all hell was breaking loose. "In the 1970s, people thought Tahoe was the last frontier where they could make their fortunes, and they simply did not understand the limits," recalls Laurel Ames, a resident since the 1940s and one-time League executive director.
The League opposed all new, big developments and proposed a Basin-wide transit system. It suggested a moratorium on new projects in areas where runoff to The Lake could occur and pushed for programs to limit storm water runoff from urban areas such as parking lots and streets. Meanwhile, an opinion poll conducted with 8,000 residents in 1970 found that 45 percent thought scenic destruction was a major concern, 77 percent favored restriction on more casinos and 96 percent wanted architectural controls on commercial buildings.
In 1979, with the League's help, the Forest Service purchased 1,700 acres in Ward Valley for public use. That year, the federal government under Jimmy Carter produced its own study of Lake Tahoe issues and found that, during the TRPA's first eight years, concentrations of algae in The Lake actually increased by 150 percent and urban land development increased by 78 percent.
Rules revised
Continued rapid development and pressures from the League, the State of California and the federal government, along with growing environmental concerns in Nevada, prompted the revision of the original bistate compact in 1980. The amended agreement directed the TRPA to ban new subdivisions, new casinos and casino expansions; to create a transportation district for a transit system; to require environmental impact statements for every project that might significantly affect the environment; and to change governing board voting procedures to give states greater influence over projects proposed within their borders. And, the 60-day default approval requirement was eliminated.
The next two decades will determine whether we can continue in a positive direction or see a breakdown in what's been achieved.
That year, Congress passed the Santini-Burton Act, allocating the use of income from land sales near Las Vegas to the purchase of sensitive lands at Lake Tahoe. Additionally, in 1981, the League began its own land acquisition program. "With the adoption of the compact amendments and the adoption of the Santini-Burton Act, for the first time, tools were available to protect Lake Tahoe through both regulation and public investment," says Nason.
TRPA establishes standards
In 1982, with input from the League and other stakeholders, the TRPA unanimously adopted environmental threshold carrying capacity standards, addressing scenic, recreational, water quality, air quality, noise, wildlife, soil conservation, fishery and vegetation issues. "It was a huge moment in Lake Tahoe history," Nason says. "Passions were still really high, and people were polarized. Yet they were still able to say, 'Here's what matters to us, here's what we'll protect and we'll require solid scientific backing before any of this is changed.'" Meanwhile, that year Goldman reported a 25 percent decline in water clarity, a loss of 23 feet in 14 years, according to Dwight Steele.
League blocks development
In 1984, the California legislature established the California Tahoe Conservancy (CTC) to acquire land for conservation and public use. The League played a part in persuading California voters to pass the $85 million state-wide bond needed to fund the CTC, according to Larry Sevison, a North Tahoe contractor and CTC board member. Since then, the CTC has spent more than $150 million acquiring more than 5,400 acres of California residential and commercial property located within stream zones or on erosion-prone steep hillsides as well as containing meadows or ponds that affect The Lake's clarity if polluted. Private property owners with sensitive lands were suing the TRPA for imposing building restrictions on their property, so the CTC came up with funding to purchase those lands and put them into public ownership, which helped both the property owners, who were able to realize some value from their land, and the environment.
That year, the TRPA finished and adopted a new regional plan, but the League and the California attorney general argued that it did not comply with the 1980 bistate compact. They sued the agency, and a federal district court imposed a temporary building moratorium. Tempers boiled. Property owners and developers lobbied for development rights, and environmentalists wanted tighter restrictions. According to then–League executive director Tom Martens, League members were repeatedly threatened. They hired a security officer to check on the South Shore offices at night. Someone slashed Martens's tires at a Carson City meeting. Nevada threatened to withdraw from the bistate compact altogether.
In 1985, a new TRPA executive director, Bill Morgan, convened major stakeholders, including the League, for consensus building. Compromises during the two-year process produced an acceptable TRPA regional plan in 1987. "The plan contained two new concepts invented from scratch," says Teshara. "One was the individual parcel evaluation system (IPES), a new way to rate the buildability of residential property. The other was the requirement for community plans." The IPES score helped planners analyze a building site's propensity for erosion and other forms of lake pollution. The plan also prohibited new subdivisions and limited commercial development for ten years.
Era of collaboration
In 1985, public purchase of private land continued when the California Tahoe Conservancy bought a single $1.3 million lakefront parcel in King's Beach—today the town's large public beach facility. The same year, the League raised $60,000 to contribute to Nevada land acquisitions programs.
By now, Tahoe had been in a planning gridlock for a decade. In 1989, in exasperation, the League, the Tahoe Sierra Preservation Council (a property rights organization), the gaming and ski industries, the chambers of commerce and redevelopment partners joined other groups to explore solutions.
"We asked, 'Is there any issue that these disparate groups can agree on so we can move something forward?'" says Teshara, who was executive director for the Tahoe Sierra Preservation Council at the time. "After a full day, we concluded that we could agree that transportation was a strategic issue on which we could make progress. It had environmental, community and business benefits."
They formed the Tahoe Transportation Coalition (now called the Lake Tahoe Transportation and Water Quality Coalition). One observer called the unlikely union of former opponents "a pact with devils." The media dubbed it an "unholy alliance." "When you have a lot of different problems to address, the strengths of personal relationships adds to the strengths of professional relationships and the ability to work things out," Teshara says.
The U.S. President visits The Lake
In 1993, a TRPA hydrologist reported that algae growth was up 22 percent in two years. In 1994, the League sued the TRPA over its approval of the expansion of commercial areas onto conservation and recreation lands outlined in community plans for Kingsbury, Stateline and Round Hill. The resulting settlement set important limits on urban boundaries, according to Nason.
A new TRPA executive director, Jim Baetge, proposed the idea of a comprehensive restoration plan. "We would get a big picture of all the needs at Tahoe and knit them together into one cohesive program that appropriately allocated responsibilities," Nason says. "This was the genesis of the Environmental Improvement Program, which is a piece of the TRPA regional plan. Even people opposed to the regulatory portions of the plan were enthusiastic about people working collaboratively on restoration issues."
A boon for all parties involved occurred in 1997 when President Clinton, Vice President Gore and a cast of political dignitaries visited Lake Tahoe. "Part of the reason President Clinton and Vice President Gore wanted to come to Tahoe was that Nevada senator Harry Reid was able to show them that this was not only an extraordinary resource, but that an extraordinary consensus had developed among this broad spectrum of interests, and that people of all political viewpoints could come together," Nason says. "Perhaps there were lessons from the Lake Tahoe consensus that could be applied elsewhere." Clinton signed an executive order creating necessary momentum for the ten-year, $908 million Environmental Improvement Program. The federal government's commitment at the program's outset was $300 million, as authorized in the Lake Tahoe Restoration Act. Now, ten years later, all program targets have been met. The TRPA is currently engaged in chartering a second phase of the program, which will be key in implementing their new regional plan, slated for adoption in 2008.
Looking Ahead
The League is at a turning point now as the TRPA considers a new 20-year plan to manage regulation and restoration. "All the key issues—development, land use, transportation, shore zone—are at play," Nason says. "From 1980 to 2007, there have been ups and downs, but overall, we have moved in the right direction. The regulation has become stronger and clearer, and, at the same time, in many ways fairer and less onerous to property owners as defects have been corrected. The consensus around restoration and investment in the future has moved forward. Now as we look at the next 23 years—because it will take another 3 years to get the new plan into place—those years will determine whether or not we can continue and accelerate movement in a positive direction or see a breakdown in what's been achieved."
Meanwhile, science shows it is possible to keep Lake Tahoe blue. Reducing pollution in the Basin by 30 percent over the next several years would dramatically reverse lake degradation, say scientists from the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center, who have created a new lake clarity model. That requires big improvements, according to Goldman, like restoring Cove East of Pope Meadow in the Upper Truckee River watershed, which provides the biggest infl ow into The Lake, or dramatically cutting air pollution.
"It takes about 5 years of data to tell whether there's been a change in the trend," Goldman says. "Climactic conditions make a huge difference. The Lake has warmed a whole degree in the last 30 years. Until we have 4 to 5 years of data, we won't know if we have reversed it.
"Spending the money to restore The Lake to 1960s levels will mean we've stopped the decline that, if allowed to continue, will give us only 12 feet of clarity by 2030," he says. "If you're only going to live five or ten years, it may not make any difference to you, but we have future generations to think about. The value of clean water alone in the future of both states makes the cost-benefit of repairing the Basin definitely worthwhile."
Without the League—and all the other area groups committed to preserving Lake Tahoe's enduring beauty—the Basin would certainly have more high rises, larger urban areas, wider roads, more traffic congestion, greater air pollution and murkier water. While alternative transportation systems are still in their infancy and plenty of silt still pours into The Lake from damaged streams and urban runoff, many stakeholders believe a turnaround is possible in the next several years because of the new scientific models and the continuing political partnerships.
To many people involved, those partnerships are the key to progress at the Lake. Other players note that the League yielded its greatest power during the sometimes painful decades when it used the might of litigation and political influence to force landmark protective measures. Which path will the League follow in the twenty-first century? Time—and clarity levels—will tell.
Cliff Hodges, Going Primitive - MIT Technology Review
MIT Technology Review
In the bare-bones warehouse space of CrossFit West Santa Cruz, rock and rap music thrums over the clamor of some very fit people lifting big weights. Cliff Hodges, the 30-year-old MIT grad who co-owns the new gym, starts his day here around 8 a.m. But a few hours later in the parking lot outside, he'll meet up with customers seeking a different kind of experience from the workout junkies inside. Dressed for the outdoors, these folks are more interested in reconnecting with nature in the nearby forest. After loading into a company van, they'll wind upward into the Santa Cruz Mountains above the Pacific Ocean, park, and enter a stand of redwoods and oak on foot. There, the hum of traffic disappears; the aromas of evergreen boughs and dry grass fill the air.
Having grown up two miles away, Hodges understands these woods the way most people know their hometowns: this bush or tree shelters this type of bird or rodent; that animal uses the main trails, while others tread a fainter path. Rounding a corner, he kneels by the hoof prints of a deer, observing that the animal darted off the trail here onto a barely noticeable path that vanishes into the trees. He grins. "In class we'll spend a lot of time staring at the ground," he says. "It's what we call dirt time."
When he left MIT in 2004, Hodges thought he might spend much of the rest of his life working inside shiny-clean rooms as an electrical engineer, confining his dirt time to weekends and evenings. Equipped with bachelor's and master of engineering degrees in electrical engineering and computer science, he joined a company that developed flash memory for computers. But within three months, he decided the job wasn't for him. He missed the outdoors and realized that a college hobby--teaching wilderness survival--was something he wanted to do full time. By the end of the year, he'd left the engineering world and launched an outdoor school and guide service he called Adventure Out. "I was working on the business end and attempting to secure funding for about a month before I quit the job so I could hit the ground running," he says. The company was offering programs by the spring of 2005.
The leap from electrical engineering to launching a business didn't seem like much of a stretch to Hodges. "My business sense comes from the analytical education that I received as a student of engineering," he says. "MIT produces the best problem solvers in the world. Applying those scientific and methodical approaches to small business is easy in comparison to something as complex as device physics."
Hodges approaches wilderness training a bit differently from many established survival schools. While they may require students to abandon their normal routines for months, he offers shorter workshops, making the outdoors more accessible and less intimidating to deskbound city dwellers. Introducing a broad audience to primitive ways is one of Hodges's goals. "We need more people who understand that there is more to the world than cars and televisions," he says. "In the wilderness, our bodies get into a different pace. The body moves in sync with the wilderness. It's no longer about instant gratification; it's about ebb and flow."
In a five-hour introductory course, students learn how to build shelters, start fires, purify water, identify edible plants, and build animal traps. Advanced two- and three-day workshops cover tanning hides, tracking animals, and making arrowheads using a stone-against-stone technique called flint knapping. One-week courses in desert and winter survival give students a chance to delve deeper. Adventure Out also offers classes in surfing, mountain biking, backpacking, and rock climbing. Hodges's gym, which he opened last spring, is a natural extension for him; CrossFit, a high-intensity strength and conditioning program pioneered in Santa Cruz, aims to prepare the body for unpredictable real-life situations. "We do functional fitness--sprinting, rowing, weight lifting, moving the body through three-dimensional space--so people are better fit for their outdoor activities and outdoor sports," he says.
Adventure Out programs have been featured in print media such as Fortune Small Business, the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, and San Diego Magazine, as well as on regional TV stations. Hodges estimates that 10,000 students have passed through his classes in five years--and more than a few claim he's changed their lives. "He's an incredibly talented individual," says George Cagle, a technical program manager at Microsoft who's taken three Adventure Out classes. "He teaches you how to become involved in the environment, to realize that you're part of the wilderness."
To people who know Hodges well, the switch from high tech to primitive tech is no surprise. Back in college, "he was capturing squirrels in the middle of the city, and taking roadkill and turning it into hide," says his MIT roommate, Kai McDonald '03, SM '05, now a managing principal at a Southern California investment company. "I remember going into the freezer one day and seeing a strange item wrapped in plastic. It was a deer brain, which he was using to tan animal hides."
As an undergrad, Hodges learned the tanning technique (rubbing hides with brain matter to preserve and soften them) on weekends at a survival school in New Jersey. By his senior year, he was eager to teach the skills himself. He had his chance during IAP. "It was the coldest cold snap that Boston had seen in a decade," he recalls, "and we had to import all of our materials to our class location, which was right in front of the dome. We built a debris shelter from sticks and leaves we gathered near Walden Pond. We also created fire by friction and practiced water collection. We purified the water by dropping in rocks we'd heated over an open fire."
Even today, some of the technological advances that excite him most are those that occurred more than 10,000 years ago. Take the bow drill, for instance. "It uses human power to generate a greater force than humans can generate on their own," Hodges says. "When you look at two sticks rubbing together, it's not that exciting; but these inventions laid the foundations for civilization." The drill is made by securing a natural fiber to the two ends of a simple bow, then wrapping the fiber around a spindle. Moving the bow back and forth to rotate the spindle rapidly against another piece of wood creates friction, which generates heat and ignites the wood. The resulting ember is then wrapped in dried grass and blown into flame. Hodges can ignite a flame in 30 to 45 seconds; beginners usually practice for days before producing an ember.
Hodges also employs traditional techniques to hunt deer, wild pigs, and other animals that he uses for food and hides. "For me there are huge elements of sacredness and history to using these skills," he says. "The thrill and pride I take in harvesting my own food is immense, and wholly incomparable to anything else. It is cultural preservation--maintaining skills that are vanishing." He spends about 100 hours making the tools needed for one hunt--the bow, arrows, and stone arrowheads. In November 2007 he captured his first black bear, a 450-pound record-breaker. California Fish and Game wardens told him it is the only bear on record caught using a stone point.
Though he has no plans to go after any more bears, Hodges has no regrets about the path he's on. "People ask me, 'How do you feel about tossing away your engineering degree?' I don't feel that I've done that at all," he says. "MIT taught me the sky is the limit. Everyone there is trying to create something that's going to have a positive effect in the world.
"There are a lot of people fighting for the environment by preserving open space or working on clean energy. My way is to connect people with the outdoors one individual at a time."
Mountain Lions, Silent Neighbors at Lake Tahoe - Tahoe Quarterly
Tahoe Quarterly
You're five miles into a solo mountain bike ride in the woods near South Lake Tahoe's Kingsbury Grade, tooling up a long slope, when suddenly you feel a buzz in your gut. It's a sensation that someone—or something—is watching you. The feeling defies logic because you don't hear anything strange. If something were there, a hiker or a black bear perhaps, wouldn't you at least hear a grunt or a twig crack? Not if it is a mountain lion.
Most of us have been led to believe that mountain lions inhabit the transitional zones of the mountain foothills, where they hide in the brush and capture deer, their preferred prey. While that is true, they also like porcupines, beaver and even skunks—all of which, along with deer, populate the Tahoe Basin.
Field observations indicate more lions live around Lake Tahoe than many people think. And they are not just making fair-weather visits. Last February, Nevada biologists were informed that a young mountain lion was hanging around Incline Village. It was spotted three times by three different residents, including Jan Dyer, who lives near a brushy stream environment zone.
"It was not a kitty," says Dyer, who watched the large, long-tailed cat from an upstairs window. "It was slowly ambling its way through my yard. It sat down and swiveled its head. It was just before dusk, their normal hunting time, and I was able to observe it for some time."
Afterward, she found paw prints in her yard; mountain lion tracks are identified by oblong toe pads, an M-shaped metatarsal pad and typically an absence of claw marks. Dyer was captivated. "I felt very privileged to see it. It's their habitat. We live in their environment."
"They prefer the areas where the brush component meets the trees," notes Nevada Department of Wildlife spokesperson Chris Healy, pointing to the fact that Tahoe is not the cat's ideal environment. "We surmise the cat in Incline was basically caught by some snows."
Ideal habitat or not, mountain lions have been and are currently wandering the mountains around The Lake, though not en masse. The Incline Village sighting was only the latest in a string of interesting big cat incidents. In August 2005, a 90-pound mountain lion took a swipe at a dog (a Rhodesian ridgeback) on the South Shore. In the past 2 years, several North Shore residents have spotted lions in the Burton Creek State Park. A few years ago, a South Shore lion had an unlucky encounter with glass.
"One young mountain lion in the Zephyr Cove area jumped through a plate glass window," Healy explains. "We surmise—we don't know for sure—that this animal saw the reflection and went after it." The animal was collared by wildlife officials and monitored during the next year as it roamed between Highway 50 and South Lake Tahoe, Healy says.
The sightings don't mean Lake Tahoe residents and visitors should fear for their lives when they enter the forest. It only means people should be smart and alert, according to officials.
Mountain lions have rarely attacked humans; they usually avoid people. In fact, to date, there has never been a fatal attack in Nevada.
According to California Fish and Game Department spokesperson Patrick Foy, the reason for their disinterest in us "might be our bipedal nature—we stand on two feet and therefore pose a greater threat." If confronted by a lion in the wild, people should stand tall and shout aggressively. Don't turn and run. And be mindful that dawn and dusk hours are the most likely times for an encounter. Big cats usually stay out of sight most of the day.
In California, mountain lions have killed six people since 1890. The most recent three deaths occurred in 1994 and 2004, in El Dorado, San Diego and Orange counties, according to the California Department of Fish and Game. Nine non-fatal attacks on record with the California Fish and Game have occurred since 1986. The incidents have increased in recent decades, but so has human population.
However, wildlife incident reports—usually made when mountain lions exhibit threatening behavior or attack livestock—have recently increased dramatically. California statistics show that from 2001 to 2003, wildlife incident reports numbered less than 500. In 2004, the reports climbed to 717. The California Fish and Game Department does not have an explanation for the dramatic shift, says Foy, "but over the past 10 to 15 years, more people have left the city and moved into rural areas, bought a few acres, bought a goat or 2 and suddenly encountered a lion for the first time. The lions have been there for a long time, but the people have not."
Mountain lions are legally hunted in 11 western states, including Nevada. In 1990, California voters approved Proposition 117, banning the sport hunting of mountain lions and protecting their habitat. Since then, the proposition has survived a number of attempts to gut, amend or overturn it, including a 2005 state assembly bill, AB 24, which stalled in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
"We don't have evidence to suggest a dramatic increase in lions, but we do have evidence to suggest at least a gradual increase since 1991 when Proposition 117 passed," Foy says. California has between 4,000 and 6,000 mountain lions; Nevada wildlife officials estimate a state population of 3,000 to 5,000 mountain lions.
Wildlife officials say many people who report seeing a lion have actually spotted a deer, coyote or bobcat. A mountain lion is a tawny colored, shorthaired, big cat. It weighs between 80 and 150 pounds and is anywhere from 5 to 8 feet long, nose to tail. Its tail is remarkably long, extending to one-third of its body length. It has a smallish head, small ears, large paws and a light-colored underbelly. And it purrs. It also cheeps, chirps and, during mating season, makes horrifying amorous yowls that surpass the drama and volume of the most passionate domestic cat.
Mountain lions eat primarily meat, many times feasting first on the vitamin A–rich organs. They prefer deer and elk, although they will sometimes eat each other. They bury their kill in a cache and may return regularly to it for a number of days. On average, one deer can provide one adult lion enough food for a week.
The mountain lion kills as silently and quickly as possible. It stalks and then pounces. It has little long-distance stamina and must get very close to its prey before lunging. It leaps on the back of prey and, depending on its victim's size, usually kills by twisting or biting the back of the neck. Young males fight over territory and mates. Solitary by nature, lions define their territories with "calling cards"—tree scratches or scrapes in the dirt covered with debris and sometimes urine and/or feces. Territory sizes can vary from 25 square miles, noted in areas of California where prey is abundant, to 150 square miles in arid places where food is scarce.
Mountain lions have interesting range management strategies. When an adult dies, younger males compete for its territory. When the dominant cat wins, the others move on in search of the next vacancy.
The mountain lion seen by Dyer was probably one of these wandering males, according to Healy. "Young lions are kicked out by their mothers and are set out on their own to search for a home. Every time we get an incident, it's almost always a young male between the ages of 18 and 24 months."
How many mountain lions frequent Lake Tahoe? Fish and game representatives are reluctant to guess. However, Jack Spencer Jr., supervisory wildlife biologist with the
USDA/Wildlife Services, extrapolates from deer populations and his own observations that half a dozen lions live along the eastern Sierra Range from Stateline to Reno. "I caught 2 different lions last year in 2 different areas within a week's time. For every 400 to 500 deer, we most likely have a lion," he says.
But if encroaching development begins to cause deer populations to shrink, Tahoe's mountain lion numbers will decrease, according to Healy. Indeed, that is already happening.
"Deer herds are taking a major beating," he says. "With harsh winters, droughts and new development in the ranges, the number of deer has dwindled."
Regardless of the change in their numbers, visitors and residents in the Tahoe Basin should never underestimate the possibility of a lion among us. If you'd like to arm yourself with more information, visit the Websites below. Then maybe next time you feel a strange sensation in your gut signaling an untamed presence in the woods—the sensation of wildness that compels many of us to live at Lake Tahoe—you'll stand tall and confident, and perhaps be lucky enough to spy our silent, yet sometimes deadly, neighbor.