By Laura Read
In a 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, [...]

By Laura Read
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 [...]

By Laura Read
Three decades ago, Tahoe Nordic Center founder Skip Reedy hatched an idea: host a point-to-point ski race 30 kilometers (18 miles) along an old ski route between Tahoe City and Truckee. Skiers would love it, he thought: after enjoying a seven-mile uphill to the 7,770-foot Starratt Pass, they’d swoop downhill through a couple [...]

By Laura Read
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 the story might just be the same.
While some Lake [...]

By Laura Read
My bed shakes, jostling me awake. The bunkhouse is roaring. Out the barred window by my head, I discern through the inky blackness eight milky forms seeming to glide around like Martha Graham dancers. Polar Bears. When I’d gone to sleep hours earlier, they’d been milling around the bunkhouse – enjoying the [...]

by Laura Read
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 [...]

By Laura Read 
Lo·ca·vore, n. 1. One who eats local or regional food, often produced within a 100-mile radius. 
 Naysayers declared Tahoe couldn’t support a culture of seasonal, locally produced food because: A) The growing season is too short. B) Existing farms are too far away. C) Residents care more about sports than food. Yet lo and [...]

By Laura Read
A few years ago when Amy Larkin, the education director for the Art Association of Jackson Hole, looked into buying a home, the 31-year-old couldn’t afford what she liked, and she didn’t like what she could afford.
“Most of the affordable housing options were poorly built and poorly designed,” says Larkin. But last year [...]

By Laura Read
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 [...]

By Laura Read
The City of Roseville has been hot news lately—not just for its soaring population, but also for its solar boom. Roseville, where Sacramento creeps into the foothills, aims to have 10 to 20 percent of its new homes built with integrated solar panels and energy-efficient features such as upgraded insulation, test-tight ducts, energy- [...]