Mount Baldy Trail Closures Extended — What Hikers Need To Know

Forest managers restrict summit approaches after heavy snow and rescue operations — check official alerts before heading into the San Gabriels.

Mount Baldy is close enough to the city that people treat it like a day hike, which is why the latest extended closure matters. When winter turns the ridgelines to ice, the mountain stops being a fairly strenuous stroll and becomes a treacherous mountaineering adventure that can kill the underprepared and the overconfident.

Continue reading

Tahoe Trails: E-Bikes, New Connectors, and Upgraded Trailheads

Forest Service signs off on new e-bike branches, restroom-equipped parking and wayfinding. Construction slated for June 2026.

Lake Tahoe is about to change the way people get around on two electric-powered wheels. In early January 2026, the U.S. Forest Service finalized a basin-wide plan that expands where e-bikes can go and ties loose ends in the trail network across the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit. The agency incorporated community input into route selection and environmental analysis, resulting in a mapped program with new access and infrastructure.

Continue reading

NoraBella Becomes Part of Big Basin Redwoods State Park — a 153-Acre Expansion Announced Today

California State Parks purchases the NoraBella parcel for $2.415 million, adding ridged forest and creeks to California’s oldest state park.

The acquisition — the park’s first acreage addition since Little Basin in 2011 — is a strategic move in the broader Reimagining Big Basin effort born out of the 2020 CZU wildfire. Planners see NoraBella as a natural approach to rebuilding a visitor experience: space for a welcome area at Saddle Mountain, room for shuttle access that keeps parking and buildings away from the most sensitive old-growth trees, and sites for operations that let the core groves heal while still welcoming visitors. California State Parks is advancing a facilities plan, general plan amendment, and environmental review to guide rebuilding. Continue reading

How do you get inspired to write?

I get inspired the same way I learned to write—by doing it. When I was a kid, I just wrote because nothing was standing between me and a blank page of onion-skin typing paper loaded into a Smith Corona typewriter.
 
In high school, two friends and I started a story in Mr. Canary’s American History class. I’d write a paragraph, then one of them would, then the other, and it kept going like that for two years across different classes and notebooks. That chain taught me that a story could live beyond a single voice and that momentum beats inspiration every time.
 

Continue reading

What’s the best thing about being a writer?

I used to be a writer, and the best thing about it was that there was no expectation; I wrote, and no one expected anything. It was private work—messy drafts, late-night notes, parcels of thought I could toss out or keep without explanation. That freedom is the engine of getting better: you try things that look stupid on the page, you fail fast, and you learn what’s worth rescuing. There’s a calm in knowing nobody’s billing you for your honest mistakes.

Continue reading