After months of waiting, two popular bouldering areas located in the hills above Santa Barbara have reopened to public use.  The Brickyard, a remarkable sandstone boulderfield that holds such classics as Yeti (V4) and Grotesque Old Woman (V7), and The Playground, a bouldering destination that also has 20+ sport routes, have been closed since the Gap [...]

Homewood is doing some simple, but powerful, things to keep Tahoe blue.
They’ve begun an effort to keep sediment from running right down the hill and into the lake.  If you haven’t been to Homewood, it sits right across the street from Lake Tahoe, so any intense rain washes sediment from the hill down into the [...]

The Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit of the U.S. Forest Service is seeking public comment on the actions proposed to deal with invasive plant species on National Forest lands in the Lake Tahoe Area.
According to the public letter issued by the Forest Service, chemical treatment is proposed for approximately 100 acres of infested area, and alternative treatments (manual, [...]

With more than 4,800 actions planned across 179 countries the International Day of Climate Change, scheduled tomorrow October 24,  has the potential to become the largest public demonstration devoted to climate issues ever.
The events are being coordinated and publicized by 350.org, a group devoted to raising awareness of climate change.  According to the interactive map [...]

Get outside. It makes You happy! This L.A. Times piece highlights an interesting study carried out by psychologists from the University of Rochester.
Subjects were shown sets of images and were then immediately asked a set of questions.  Those that had seen images of natural environments held community and family values higher than those that had [...]

Never thought about that one before. Forest fires have always been simply an effect, in my mind, of higher temps, drier climates and longer summer seasons.
This new study makes it sound more like a vicious feedback loop in which forest fires are both a cause and effect of global warming.
Of course we [...]