South Lake Tahoe Ca

The gondola took off with surprising swiftness, cables and pulleys whisking up the mountainside with silent precision. From the horizon rose Lake Tahoe, a sapphire ringed in aquamarine and emerald. It was an uncommonly resplendent sight, but I couldn't help but divert my eyes back toward the gondola station, where we had left behind something even rarer: a second chance. If ever there was a place that needed a second chance, it is South Lake Tahoe.

After Jaycee Lee Dugard was abducted and went missing for 18 years, Meghan Dorris, an elementary school classmate, went to college and traveled the world: Egypt, Costa Rica, Spain, Japan, Jordan. Two years ago, Dorris returned home. She remains close to high school friends, attends their weddings and keeps tabs on their growing families. "I just wonder what Jaycee would have done," Dorris, 28, said Sunday as she walked through town, a crisp breeze rustling aspens, sun sparkling on the cerulean lake.

After Jaycee Lee Dugard was abducted and went missing for 18 years, Meghan Dorris, an elementary school classmate, went to college and traveled the world: Egypt, Costa Rica, Spain, Japan, Jordan. Two years ago, Dorris returned home. She remains close to high school friends, attends their weddings and keeps tabs on their growing families. "I just wonder what Jaycee would have done," Dorris, 28, said Sunday as she walked through town, a crisp breeze rustling aspens, sun sparkling on the cerulean lake.

As Southern California temperatures soared Monday, firefighters across the state were kept busy battling blazes, and they made steady progress despite the severely dry conditions and record-low rainfall this year. The 482-acre Rancho fire in the Los Padres National Forest, northwest of Santa Barbara, was 90% contained Monday night. The fire broke out about 6 p.m.

As Southern California temperatures soared Monday, firefighters across the state were kept busy battling blazes, and they made steady progress despite the severely dry conditions and record-low rainfall this year. The 482-acre Rancho fire in the Los Padres National Forest, northwest of Santa Barbara, was 90% contained Monday night. The fire broke out about 6 p.m.

A Placer County prosecutor said he may file criminal charges against Squaw Valley Ski Corp. because of a diesel fuel spill into a creek at Squaw Valley. The company is already facing possible fines of $1 million or more by the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board, which will consider the case next month. Joe Barbara, a deputy Placer County district attorney, said he wants to review a recent report on the spill before filing any criminal charges.

A California judge has amended his order barring the Tahoe Daily Tribune from publishing color photos of two murder defendants. Superior Court Judge Jerald Lasarow said his Nov. 29 order was misunderstood and it applied to only new photographs, not pictures the newspaper had already published. He had expressed concerns about prospective jurors seeing the couple in orange jail jumpsuits.

Water providers in South Lake Tahoe have negotiated a $12-million settlement from Exxon Corp. in a suit saying oil refineries, fuel distributors and service stations polluted Tahoe's ground water with the gasoline additive MTBE.

The U.S. Forest Service plans to triple the amount of logging in the Tahoe Basin next year in an effort to clear an estimated one out of five dead and dying fir trees in the Sierra Nevada, officials said. Three years of drought and an ongoing attack by the fir engraver beetle have wiped out large sections of forest and speckled the once-emerald-green basin with brown trees.

For Dave and Christine Latshaw, the little bed and breakfast they opened in May on the outskirts of town was a dream come true -- a means to abandon the stress of Southern California for the calm and majesty of this famous resort community. The Fireside Lodge is so called for the cozy hearths that adorn each of its nine guest rooms.

U.S. Forest Service investigators late Friday announced that the cause of the devastating Angora fire that burned hundreds of homes and put this resort community on edge was an illegal fire started at a popular campground. Addressing a crowd of 500 residents packed into the Lake Tahoe Middle School gymnasium, officials asked for the public's help in identifying anyone who might have been seen Sunday in the area around Seneca Lake.

In a temporary setback for strained firefighters and a ravaged community, flames leaped a containment line Tuesday afternoon, threatening hundreds of homes only hours after residents had felt that it was safe to return. By evening, firefighters, including two who escaped danger by using emergency shelters, had saved the neighborhood.

The mood of the crowd jammed into the meeting room was angry. Many had lost their homes to the forest fire that swept through the Sierra Nevada just south of Lake Tahoe. They said they were angry at bureaucrats and environmentalists who made cutting of trees and clearing of land difficult. There was always too much red tape, they said, and now it was too late.

Some fires race across grasslands and others burn miles of brush. But for firefighters, the most difficult are those that leap from treetop to treetop. The blaze that has destroyed so much so quickly near Lake Tahoe is the latter, the kind known as a "crown fire" to the frustrated professionals who struggle to fight them, let alone understand them.

The gondola took off with surprising swiftness, cables and pulleys whisking up the mountainside with silent precision. From the horizon rose Lake Tahoe, a sapphire ringed in aquamarine and emerald. It was an uncommonly resplendent sight, but I couldn't help but divert my eyes back toward the gondola station, where we had left behind something even rarer: a second chance. If ever there was a place that needed a second chance, it is South Lake Tahoe.

U.S. Forest Service investigators late Friday announced that the cause of the devastating Angora fire that burned hundreds of homes and put this resort community on edge was an illegal fire started at a popular campground. Addressing a crowd of 500 residents packed into the Lake Tahoe Middle School gymnasium, officials asked for the public's help in identifying anyone who might have been seen Sunday in the area around Seneca Lake.

A California judge has amended his order barring the Tahoe Daily Tribune from publishing color photos of two murder defendants. Superior Court Judge Jerald Lasarow said his Nov. 29 order was misunderstood and it applied to only new photographs, not pictures the newspaper had already published. He had expressed concerns about prospective jurors seeing the couple in orange jail jumpsuits.

Water providers in South Lake Tahoe have negotiated a $12-million settlement from Exxon Corp. in a suit saying oil refineries, fuel distributors and service stations polluted Tahoe's ground water with the gasoline additive MTBE.