Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows: Tales from Two Valleys

[fomofo]

I came across an interesting little book about the history and development of Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows...



It was first published in 2013, and runs from the beginnings of the ski areas up just till KSL acquired Alpine. Not surprisingly focuses a lot on Wayne Poulsen, Alex Cushing and John Reily, but there is a short section on Troy Caldwell and White Wolf, a lot of other interesting stuff, and a ton of cool pictures. If you click the pic above you can get to the Amazon listing for the book, which includes a "Look Inside" sneak peek. (I found a copy at the public library. If you're in Tahoe I imagine you can probably find it in a local bookstore.)

Here's a snippet from pages 47-48 of the paperback...

John Reily was also building ... a restaurant at the top of KT-22 aptly named The Cornice. ... With the dual purpose of marking his territory on top of KT and establishing a lookout over Alpine Meadows to woo investors, Reily hired Klaussen's friend, Henrik Bull, to design the building. ... During the Olympics, the building was used as a transmission center for television. It reopened as a restaurant in the summer of 1960.

There's a drawing of the Cornice Restaurant on page 48, but no pics, and I couldn't dig up anything by Googling. Anyone have any knowledge of it?

There's more on the restaurant starting on page 60, including this...

Before the end of August, a forest fire that had grown to disastrous proportions along Interstate 80 closed all roads to North Lake Tahoe and shut off power to the area. The Cornice was forced to close until winter.

Hmm, sounds oddly familiar.

Anyway, I found the book a good read, and thought some of you might as well.

[mcski]

I think the restaurant was demolished around 93/94 so someone should have some pics of it.

[old goat]

About the fire mentioned in the book https://www.theunion.com/news/local-...re-remembered/
The south face of Donner Ridge is still treeless brush and eroded gullies--the biggest one a huge funnel that sends water through a couple of I80 culverts directly into our little subdivision on Donner Lake. That slope will probably never reforest--the climax forest of mostly ponderosa and Jeffrey pine grew in colder, wetter times. The Donner Lake area was heavily logged in the later 19th century for the railroad and then the Comstock mines. A picture I found from 1914 shows the south side of Donner Ridge to be heavily wooded, so I'm guessing that slope might have been spared because of steepness.

[mcski]

If they had replanted after the fire, the trees would be big there now. Maybe the fire burned 2nd growth trees? All the pics I’ve seen would indicate pretty much every tree in the Tahoe vicinity was mowed down during the logging boom

[Dantheman]

All the pics I’ve seen would indicate pretty much every teee in the Tahoe vicinity was mowed down near during the logging boom

I would not be surprised. The mountains surrounding Park City were completely denuded during the mining days.

[old goat]

If they had replanted after the fire, the trees would be big there now. Maybe the fire burned 2nd growth trees? All the pics I’ve seen would indicate pretty much every tree in the Tahoe vicinity was mowed down during the logging boom

Could well be--but that still puts the 2nd growth at the end of the little ice age. By the 1960's things were warmer and drier and recovery on the south facing slopes, even with replanting, were less friendly to recovery of the original forest. Human beings do a lousy job of reproducing natural climax forests.

[bodywhomper]

I always look at that slope above I-80 wondering when it last avalanched in a large manner.

[old goat]

I've never seen any sign of avalanche there in 45 years. Even when there's big snow that slope doesn't hold much. Often bare in the winter.

[LightRanger]

Moving off-topic a bit, but you guys should watch Zeke's field observations on micro terrain from the Dixie Fire and burn severity on the Caldor. Talks a lot about this kind of stuff and really interesting.

Dixie observations:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7FyUlbIfY4

Caldor severity:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzXXc4uqsuM