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The hidden side of Jack London Park
The hidden side of Jack London Park
In the mission to make each park your own, you could have hiked the Sonoma Ridge Trail on Friday and seen only one other person in six hours. The full 10.5-mile route passes a small lake, ...
This Week's Stories
Yosemite closure leaves rec options; conditions set for inferno
The evacuation and closure of Yosemite Valley and Wawona at noon Wednesday leaves the northwestern sector of the 750,000-acre park still accessible for recreation. That includes Hetch ...
Sierra Nevada recreation sites become a weekend destination
A phenomenon in the Bay Area and Sacramento Valley has extended this summer to the Sierra Nevada west of Tahoe. It’s this weekend thing. During the school year in the Bay Area, roughly ...
Being alone on the wilderness trail: Perilous or benign?
“Dear Tom, I won a lottery to go around the High Sierra Camps out of Tuolumne Meadows (in Yosemite). Unfortunately, the person who was supposed to go with me couldn’t go. I’m ...
Chart-buster times: salmon to whales, bears to bighorns
Out on the briny green, salmon and striped bass are jumping in the boat, and the humpback whales are just plain jumping. Out on the range, elk, lions and bighorn sheep are roaming around ...
Outdoors
Lesson told when car careens off mountain road
Late Saturday afternoon, as we were driving a two-lane mountain highway, Highway 89 north of Tahoe, a small pickup truck sailed off the road to its right. It careened down a short slope, hit the ground ...
Nature’s fortune-tellers predicted wild weather for Memorial...
Over Memorial Day weekend, getting a psychic reading on the weather could have saved your trip. In the wild side of life, nature’s fortune-tellers are the sky, the clouds, the meadows ...
East Bay district shows how best to fund parks
A new staging area and trailhead have become symbols of how to pay for parks. The lesson from the East Bay Regional Park District: Don’t do it with user fees. The new staging area is ...
NorCal lakes heat up for boating, fishing, camping
A bald eagle, its black wings and white tail feathers gleaming against a cobalt sky, arced in a glide right over our boat. We watched it circle over a small cove at the lake, then tuck its wings and swoop ...
Mama fox and her 5 pups teach a wildlife lesson
On Saturday night, a mama fox taught a new lesson from an ancient course on wildlife breeding. The result was that field scout Brian Murphy was able to capture a rare and spectacular ...
Anglers cast for magic on Saturday’s trout opener
Come Saturday, anglers across California will try to turn their fishing rods into magic wands. At many lakes and streams, they just might be able to do it. Unlike a year ...
Orcas’ attack on gray whale shows the unfortunate side of...
Start with the premise that every animal has a soul, and that every soul wants life. That can make it difficult to see a life-and-death encounter in the outdoors and accept it as part of ...
Whales, orcas converge in Monterey Bay
The prospects of an annual phenomenon — the “Killer Whale Season,” as marine biologist Nancy Black in Monterey calls it — has many on edge in Monterey Bay. “Migrating gray whales and their ...
Outdoors
Sunday drive to Marin County’s Limantour Beach
What you see: Limantour Beach fronts Drakes Bay at Point Reyes National Seashore and then curves northwest to the mouth of Drakes Estero, as well as south for miles into wilderness. In spring, the ...
On the trail of tracks, shadows and a wolf
Sometimes the most important moments of your life can come and go without much thought. Then days, months or years later, you realize out of the blue what you missed. This sequence played out this past ...
Streaming your entertainment outdoors after big rains in Bay Area
Rivers, streams and creeks provide the instruments for nature’s symphony. Watersheds can be some of the prettiest places in nature, but what stays with you is how their flows and sounds can make you feel ...
Tom Stienstra: ‘Perfect storm’ set to ignite spring...
Another blast of rain is forecast for the Bay Area and Northern California this week. That will be followed on the weekend by temperatures in the low 60s, according to the forecast, then climb into the low ...
Yosemite’s March run: lodging, snow treks wide open
With its winter brush and 5 feet of snow this month, nature has painted a fresh coat across Yosemite, the world’s finest artwork. The timing this week offers a rare opportunity for Northern ...
At dinnertime, mountain lion lurks in the shadows
The King of the Forest showed up at our door last week. On a cold, dark and quiet evening, the biggest mountain lion I’ve ever seen, roughly 200 pounds, staked out our home. In the Bay Area and ...
Sunday getaway to Loch Lomond Reservoir
What you see: As you approach the lake, you round a bend and Loch Lomond Reservoir comes in view in a movie-like reveal moment. The lake is 93 percent full, emerald green, set at the bottom of a long ...
Ski areas leverage skiers on pricing
Whether you take part in snow sports or not, you should be aware that the way many ski areas leverage skiers could transform the travel industry. Recent snow at Tahoe, with another blast expected Monday, ...
This Week's Stories
Yosemite closure leaves rec options; conditions set for inferno
The evacuation and closure of Yosemite Valley and Wawona at noon Wednesday leaves the northwestern sector of the 750,000-acre park still accessible for recreation. That includes Hetch ...
Sierra Nevada recreation sites become a weekend destination
A phenomenon in the Bay Area and Sacramento Valley has extended this summer to the Sierra Nevada west of Tahoe. It’s this weekend thing. During the school year in the Bay Area, roughly ...
Being alone on the wilderness trail: Perilous or benign?
“Dear Tom, I won a lottery to go around the High Sierra Camps out of Tuolumne Meadows (in Yosemite). Unfortunately, the person who was supposed to go with me couldn’t go. I’m ...
Chart-buster times: salmon to whales, bears to bighorns
Out on the briny green, salmon and striped bass are jumping in the boat, and the humpback whales are just plain jumping. Out on the range, elk, lions and bighorn sheep are roaming around ...