Lake Tahoe 2015/16 - Year of Godzilla Baby Jesus

[alfajores]

Whats the deal on buying passes around here? Spent 6 years riding in Colorado and now I'm in the bay area for the winter. I know I can be EPIC! with vail again, but not sure I want to ski N* or Heavenly, but Kirkwood might be fun. Or should I just stick with the split board and bet that I won't want to ride lifts?

Mileage varies but I would not bet on split boarding for al your turns unless you are on a loose schedule, dont mind driving up for one day a month and like touring alone-ish.

Great bet is the 6pack for finding what you like and getting a cheap pass wherever. Squalpine had some great days last year, Kirkwood had more (go ahead and challenge me on that) but you have two resorts with slightly less big days but more snow when they get it versus a resort with more snow days and NO snow making.

Or just get sugar bowl. You will like sugar bowl too.

A good sales person would ask what you are looking for, but you are on TGR and probably want what we want.

[bodywhomper]

apparently parking and pull-outs on hwy 89 for many of the west shore roadside attractions are gone.....

[meter-man]

apparently parking and pull-outs on hwy 89 for many of the west shore roadside attractions are gone.....

Huh? CalTrans took out the pull-outs? Say what?

EDIT: could this be related to #3 for "water quality" improvements? http://www.tahoeroads.com/docs/files...Map7-27-14.pdf

[lepistoir]

All the king's men could not put highway 89 back together again.

Email to me this morning:

Mike Schwartz is fired up for good reason...

Read on to learn more about our west shore parking situation.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mike Schwartz
Date: Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 10:17 PM
Subject: Re: Caltrans Contacts....


To Tahoe Land Managers:

Shannon Friedman from TRPA finally responded to us today and said NOTHING to acknowledge the public need and right to access Desolation Wilderness and public land in general in the winter. She basically told us to just drop it.


It is not the job of the public to fight to restore access to public lands and maintain what little local economy exists along hwy 89. It is your job. I have watched our access disappear over the years. You have no idea just how many people are going to explode when they hear this story. You can't eliminate backcountry winter access and claim some microscopic environment erosion control was more important....while approving new development around the Lake at the same time.


TRPA isn't even willing to put these small parking area deletions on hold. They could at least pretend that they didn't know about the tens of thousands of annual skier visits, say "whoops", and declare that winter access IS important to protect and certainly achievable in the small parking numbers we used to have. I have the whole plan explained at the end of my attached letter to fix the whole issue. To me, this issue is more than just Bliss and Jake's peak. There are 10 logical access points around Desolation Wilderness that should be adopted as protected, restored, or just left alone. We are well on our way to losing them all. Our public land managing agencies blame each other. Who is left to complain to? I guess the Governor. Why is this even an issue in the first place? Summer Hiking trail parking would never get shut down. And many are dirt. There is no problem with dirt! Fine, pave it if you want. Or use Gravel. Want to call my landscape friends? There are solutions to parking other than just deleting it.


Some land managers could be seen as heroes for stepping up here. Backcountry Skiing is just as important as anything else we protect. It's the first thing anyone ever did in Lake Tahoe! And it's grown to be the best thing we all do here. Very few opportunities exist in the country as good as the user experience in this zone. It's part of the local economy. It's the reason why many people visit or move here.


Take away our access to Desolation Wilderness? And claim coverage balancing or Cal Trans issues? It's been working fine for decades! There is no erosion from cars parking in winter time conditions on frozen, flat, snow covered ground. And obviously there could be some improvements that would work for all "stakeholders". I'll remind you that the public is a stakeholder, and we have never been included in a single meeting. I'm paving the rest of my front yard ASAP and buying a snowmobile. And we are all going to send our parking tickets to Shannon in a shoe box. Not that anyone is impressed with CA State Parks, who bows out of this issue. Why can't they open their parking lots at Pyramid Peak and Bliss State Park?



Attached is my rant letter once again. Just read the end of it and reference the attached google earth image where I'm summarizing the current state of the 10 important, historical, logical, and awesome access locations to Desolation Wilderness and good backcountry ski and snowshoe terrain. Half of it is gone now, and the rest is soon to disappear.


Mike Schwartz

Tahoe City

(Came to me via Rich Meyer Alpine Guide)

[bobz]

From Mike Schwartz (The Backcountry shop in Truckee), via Eric O. on facebook; I presume they welcome me publicly linking it:

"If you enjoy or help manage Lake Tahoe, please support immediate action to improve access to our public lands for skiing the west shore of Lake Tahoe and Desolation Wilderness. By Improving, I mean giving it back. It’s always been there, only TRPA has been approving projects without including public comments to remove the final and most important parking opportunities near Bliss State Park on hwy 89. Last week Tahoe lost about 5 small parking spots that held about 50 cars on a daily basis to the north and south of the entrance to this CA State Park. Skiers don’t enter the park, but rather skied uphill on public land. All TRPA says is that the asphalt coverage balance needed to be changed. Small but essential asphalt patches were removed last week in the middle of the night, and boulders and rock drainage rows were installed. Desolation Wilderness is a unique national treasure, for which TRPA would certainly never remove summer trailhead parking! There would be some simple solution to build it to code or find another working parking location. Winter parking for backcountry skiing and snowshoeing is just as important as parking for summer hiking..."


Comments that follow say quite a bit more about how it isn't just there that west-shore access has been reduced or eliminated.

more at https://www.facebook.com/eric.ongerth/posts/10153630823068610

(edit: I see someone else just posted more or less the same stuff from the same person, but there's good info at the above link so I'll leave it.)

[Deep Days]

How about some NZ stoke from a month ago...

Remarkables...tasty it was!



Cardona...laps with my son made the trip!

All those airplane turns in Cardona are just plain nasty. As are those sidehill-type long ass right turns in the Diagonalator.

Very nicely done, as usual, 666. Will be stoked to see more shots of the up-and-coming boy during the winter of Godzilla Baby Jesus!

[SchralphMacchio]

Dudes.
Those Jakes and Bliss Parking areas are a big deal. Especially if this year temps allow for lake level snow.

We need to organize. Spread the word - that is a pretty big impact.

[alfajores]

Huh? CalTrans took out the pull-outs? Say what?

EDIT: could this be related to #3 for "water quality" improvements? http://www.tahoeroads.com/docs/files...Map7-27-14.pdf

Sounds like Clean Water Act 319 programming. That is what I do.

[meter-man]

Sounds like Clean Water Act 319 programming. That is what I do.

Work with E Blake? More importantly, can you get some more funding to reverse the change? The WQ improvements are related to the Lake Tahoe TMDL for clarity. http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/lahont...dl/lake_tahoe/

[LightRanger]

Sounds like CalTrans was inundated today...

Brannon, Tom L@DOT wrote:
All hands,

The email chains on this subject got very large very fast so I had to simply pick the email that I thought was the earliest in order to communicate our solution. If I have left anyone out in this reply, accept my apologies and pass this along!

I’m happy to say that at the location where most attention was focused, a pullout right of station 460 in our water quality improvement project, we made a plan change to pave a full 25 foot distance from the roadway (versus the 15 foot originally planned) in order to provide more parking opportunities to the public. My thanks go out to our project management, design, and construction staff for their fast assessment and on the fly engineering skills. I also want to thank Shannon at TRPA for very fast turnaround on review and approval of the proposal.

Obviously, parking at Tahoe is a bigger issue than this individual project can solve. Competing uses of limited space will continue to be debated in the future but I’m glad that we are able to provide a good compromise at this location.

Thomas L. Brannon
District 3 Deputy District Director
Program/Project Management

[SchralphMacchio]

Anyone have a link to a map showing location of Station 460?

[LightRanger]

Nick and I googled around a bunch earlier and couldn't find it. I'll look again in a bit. I did find some PDFs with more detailed info than the public relations-style cartoon maps, but they were like surveyor/draftsman style and resolution was kind of shitty.

Edit:
Haven't been able to find anything more specific than linked in Eric O's FB post. http://www.dot.ca.gov/dist3/Projects/1A844/prjindex.htm

The draftsman maps I noted above were for points further north like Tahoma and whatnot.

[old goat]

This is funny. At Donner Lake a little east of the boat launch there is a cal trans culvert that drains the mountainside above the lake ("Donner Ridge") into a gully. Because the culvert carries the drainage from such a large area it develops very large flows. Three times this summer--twice in one day--during brief heavy rain and hailstorms--the flows have overwhelmed the gully, scouring rocks and dirt from the hillside, washing the debris down across a couple of private properties with small homes, filling the sediment trap on the north side of Donner Pass Rd, plugging the culvert under Donner Pass Rd, and washing the dirt and rocks across the road and into the lake. Originally the mountainside drained into multiple gullies, spreading out the flows, but when I80 was built only 2 culverts were placed in this area. Despite decades of efforts and losing 2 lawsuits Caltrans has been intransigent in refusing to correct the situation. We again requested action prior to the rebuilding of I80 but were ignored. The amount of sediment draining into Donner Lake on just 2 days this July surely exceeds the amount of sediment that drains from the 89 parking areas over a decade or more. All of this is a reflection of Caltrans' fuck you attitude towards the public--it seems that they do whatever they feel will piss off the public the most. Good luck getting more than the one parking area restored.
#donnerlakematters (just kidding)

[LightRanger]

^^^ See, e.g., the Bay Fucking Bridge fiasco.

[lepistoir]

1 Pyramid peak, hwy 50
2 Ralston, (aspen tract)
3 fallen leaf lake
4 Tallac
5 Bayview
6 Eagle lake
7 Jake's south
8 Jake's north
9 Bliss peak
10 Rubicon

It's important to immediately contact Shannon Friedman at TRPA sfriedman@trpa.org, Tom Brannon at CalTrans tom.brannon@dot.ca.gov, and the office of supervisor Sue Novasel
530.621.6577
bosfive@edcgov.us

You may not get through until Monday obviously, but there is a chance that some parking can be saved with raising voices now while construction equipment is in place and Mike has been able to bend their ear. I would point out that winter access to Desolation wilderness is necessary and in demand and ask them to immediately prevent any further loss of access while looking at ways to re-open lost access through the 10 locations Mike has mapped out. Tell them which areas you use, where you park and how many people go with you. Thank them for listening and let them know you are spreading the word about this issue and will follow up with them soon.

[cat in january]

Thanks for the heads up. I will make the call as an out of state touron who accesses the area and spends tens of thousands of dollars in the local economy (well that part is untrue).

[meter-man]

Thanks lepistoir. To be clear, are numbers 7-10 affected currently? If so, which did DOT remedy on Friday?

Just want to be informed when I call them.

[bodywhomper]

I believe #1&2 in the map are outside TRPA's area

[LightRanger]

Indeed. Those and several others are outside the scope of what's going on right now--eg the FS would need to weigh in on action.

[TahoeJ]

So I've only parked at a few of these pull-outs before so I'm not going to get into specifics because my exact recall might be incorrect as I was usually just following (or riding with) a friend and not paying close attention, but I drove along the west to south shore this morning and noticed very distinctly how much curb / road-side work had been done (as observed in-progress over the past several weeks) and how many less pull-outs there were in general (even just the little ones), whether there was an access point or not.

Putting aside trail and other access, this is fucking stupid from a traffic management standpoint as well (especially in an area that experiences high density in tourism). Get ready for more assholes to stop their cars in the middle of the road Emerald Bay style to take a picture or do whatever it is they like to do.

Also: 666, as the boy gets older, does that mean you're going to start landing switch more often? Don't think that went unnoticed. ;-)

[Razorslug]

Especially since backcountry carpools will become more and more mandatory. Anyone have an open spots for a Tahoe Ski lease this winter?
-

[Tahoe Bromide]

I'm going to guess this is going to impact warmer season recreational enthusiasts, like boulderers. There are several small pullouts used to access several bouldering areas north of Emerald Bay. I wonder if that user group is aware of the situation too?

[TahoeBC]

Stopped by a famous internet skiers pad yesterday and chatted a bit about this with him, his take was he was stoked, and said it will help the cancer from growing and limit access to those willing to work a bit harder for access.

I don't necessarily share that view, I can certainly see using my fat bike more often for ski access though.

[dishwasher-dave]

Regarding W Shore Access stuff. It is a big deal. There has been a strong outpouring and there is some indication that the main Jake's lot will be at least partially spared. I'm unclear what exactly this will mean and it doesn't address all the pullouts further to the North in that area. Additionally, there is some indication that the upper DL Bliss lot may be more accessible this winter to partially address the the losses elsewhere. I don't think these 'wins' make up for the overall 'loses' but if they actually materialize it will be better than what the worst case scenario looked like a week ago. It's still likely that overall parking along this area will be reduced by roughly 50% from what it was last year (and for the last 40+ years). Feel free to contact agencies and government officials and I would recommend addressing the highest level folks you can. Save Jakes.

[bodywhomper]

Stopped by a famous internet skiers pad yesterday and chatted a bit about this with him, his take was he was stoked, and said it will help the cancer from growing and limit access to those willing to work a bit harder for access.

lol

all folks need to do is dig for some older TR's and find all the secret parking places and routes. probably even waypoints that can be loaded into their GPS.

maybe there can be a truckee/north tahoe 'mini' at the echo 'parking lot' that includes an adventuring group: halls->NW couloir of the big T->cross->catherines->angora ridge. i'll scout it out on the thursday or friday beforehand, post-up picts and the waypoints. (will need a loaner gps).

my prediction, jakes will be a downclimb to the road most days of the year from here on out.