Tahoe's Seven Summits
Birds return to Lake Tahoe, page 4 Summer 2014 Drought offers TAHOE’S SEVEN SUMMITS good news, bad By Jeff Cowen news for Lake Tahoe In Depth By Jim Sloan The Lake may be this Region’s Tahoe In Depth most famous geographic feature, but it is Tahoe’s peaks that define our From the shoreline, a long-term landscapes and, at times, the course or severe drought seems to put of our lives. Daily, we glimpse them Lake Tahoe in dire straits. The water towering over our tedium, indelible recedes, streams dry up and the reminders of nature’s greatness and our shoreline beaches expand to expose own impermanence. Succumbing to a bathtub ring along the 72-mile their power, we climb them. shoreline. Some climbers are peak collectors, But from the water, things don’t “bagging” the major summits one by always look so bad. During a one. Others climb on a lark, impulsively drought, many of the pollutants joining friends and unprepared for the that affect Lake Tahoe’s clarity can’t Photo © Steve Dunleavy experience ahead. Regardless of our Pyramid Peak rises above the fog-choked Tahoe Basin. find their way to the Lake. Droughts paths, once we reach their summits, we slow down the rate of urban runoff, feel at once tiny and expansive, earth and rodents. Trees become shorter and neighborhoods. reducing erosion and the flow of fine and time stretching in all directions wider, until they disappear entirely. Our Climbers of even our most benign sediment and other water-clouding below us, the experience undeniably bodies change too.
[Show full text]