Distance from Los Angeles: Less than an hour drive
Projected season opening date: By Thanksgiving, if Mother Nature cooperates, or by Yule on Dec. 21 at the latest.
What makes it special: Only 45 miles from Los Angeles in the San Gabriel Mountains, Mt. Baldy has 26 runs spread over 800 acres and three mountains. It also has a respectable vertical descent of 2,100 feet with wide-open glades, tree runs, bowls, moguls, groomed runs, cornices and quarter pipes. For those who don’t ski or snowboard, Mt. Baldy also offers snow tubing.
What’s new this season: With upgrades, Lift No. 3 now features more comfortable carriers to the top of Thunder Mountain at 8,600 feet. Chair No. 4 on the west side has a new drive and control system, allowing year-round use with both uphill and downhill loading when conditions permit. Continuous improvements to snowmaking are also helping Mt. Baldy open earlier each season. The resort’s former Last Name Brewing has rebranded as Mt. Baldy Brewery.
Lift ticket prices: Mt. Baldy season passes are currently on sale through Christmas Day: adults are $549 (regularly $799), teens and seniors are $449 (regularly $639) and children under 12 are $279 (regularly $399). You can pre-purchase lift tickets online for a discount. Walk-up tickets are $129 on busy days when the mountain is in full operation.
Pro-tip: Mt. Baldy has the most steep runs in Southern California. Advanced and expert skiers and snowboarders might want to head to Chair 1 to try “Nightmare,” a 36-degree slope that maintains its drop for 1,000 vertical feet.
INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. — Jim Ross has had a long and fruitful career as a Democratic campaign strategist. Among his victories was electing Gavin Newsom as San Francisco mayor.
Tom Ross has enjoyed similar success on the Republican side. He counts Kevin McCarthy’s election to the Legislature and, later, Congress, among his wins.
The two are brothers who, despite their differences, harbor an abiding love and respect for one another, along with an ironclad resolve that nothing — no campaign, no candidate, no political issue — can or ever will be allowed to drive a wedge between them.
“Tom’s the best person I know. The best person I know,” Jim, 57, said as his brother, 55, sat across from him at a local burrito joint, tearing up. “There’s issues we could go round and round on, which we’re not going to do.”
“Especially,” said Tom, “with someone you care about and love.”
That sort of fraternal bond, transcending partisanship and one of the most heated political fights of this charged moment, shouldn’t be unusual or particularly noteworthy — even for a pair who make their living working for parties locked in furious combat. But in these vexing and highly contentious times it surely is.
Maybe there’s something others can take away.
::
The Ross brothers grew up in Incline Village, not far from where Nevada meets California. That was decades ago, before the forested hamlet on Tahoe’s east shore became a playground for the rich and ultra-rich.
The family — Mom, Dad, four boys and a girl — settled there after John Ross retired from a career in the Air Force, which included three combat tours in Vietnam.
John and his wife, Joan, weren’t especially political, though they were active and civic-minded. Joan was involved in the Catholic church. John, who took up a career in real estate, worked on ways to improve the community.
The lessons they taught their children were grounded in duty, discipline and detail. Early on, the kids learned there’s no such thing as a free ride. Jim got his first job at the 76 station, before he could drive. Tom mowed lawns, washed cars and ran a lemonade stand. The least fortunate among the siblings wore a bear suit and waved a sign, trying to shag customers for their dad’s real estate business.
To this day, the brothers disdain anything that smacks of entitlement. “That’s our family,” Jim said. “We’re all workers.”
Like their parents, the two weren’t politically active growing up. They ended up majoring in government and political science — Jim at Saint Mary’s College in the Bay Area, Tom at Gonzaga University in Washington state — as a kind of default. Both had instructors who brought the subject to life.
Jim’s start in the profession came in his junior year when Clint Reilly, then one of California premier campaign strategists, came to speak to his college class. It was the first time Jim realized it was possible to make a living in politics — and Reilly’s snazzy suit suggested it could be a lucrative one.
Jim interned for Reilly and after graduating and knocking about for a time — teaching skiing in Tahoe, working as a sales rep for Banana Boat sunscreen — he tapped an acquaintance from Reilly’s firm to land a job with Frank Jordan’s 1991 campaign for San Francisco mayor.
From there, Jim moved on to a state Assembly race in Wine Country, just as Tom was graduating and looking for work. Using his connections, Jim helped Tom find a job as the driver for a congressional candidate in the area.
At the time, both were Republicans, like their father. Their non-ideological approach to politics also reflected the thinking of Col. Ross. Public service wasn’t about party pieties, Jim said, but rather “finding a solution to a problem.”
Jim, left, and Tom Ross have only directly competed in a campaign once, on a statewide rent control measure. They talk shop but avoid discussing politics.
(William Hale Irwin / For The Times)
Jim’s drift away from the GOP began when he worked for another Republican Assembly candidate whom he remembers, distastefully, as reflexively partisan, homophobic and anti-worker. His changed outlook solidified after several months working on a 1992 Louisiana congressional race. The grinding poverty he saw in the South was shocking, Jim said, and its remedy seemed well beyond the up-by-your-bootstraps nostrums he’d absorbed.
Jim came to see government as a necessary agent for change and improvement, and that made the Democratic Party a more natural home. “There’s not one thing that has bettered human existence that hasn’t had, at its core, our ability to work collectively,” Jim said. “And our ability to work collectively comes down to government.”
Tom looked on placidly, a Latin rhythm capering overhead.
He believes that success, and personal fulfillment, lies in individual achievement. The Republicans he admires include Jack Kemp, the rare member of his party who focused on urban poverty, and the George W. Bush of 2000, who ran for president as a “compassionate conservative” with a strong record of bipartisan accomplishment as Texas governor.
(Tom is no fan of Donald Trump, finding the president’s casual cruelty toward people particularly off-putting.)
He distinctly remembers the moment, at age 22, when he realized he was standing on his own two feet, financially supporting himself and making his way in the world through the power of his own perseverance.
“For me, that’s what Republicans should be,” Tom said. “How do you give people that experience in life? That’s what we should be trying to do.”
It took a physical toll on Jim Ross, Newsom’s campaign manager, who suffered chest pains and, at one point, wound up in the hospital. Was the strain worth it, he wondered. Should he quit?
“The only person I could really call and talk to was Tom,” Jim said. “He understands what it is to work that hard on a campaign. And he wasn’t going to go and leak it to the press, or tell someone who would use it in some way to hurt me.”
That kind of empathy and implicit trust, which runs both ways, far outweighs any political considerations, the two said. Why would they surrender such a deep and meaningful relationship for some short-term tactical gain, or allow a disagreement over personalities or policy to set things asunder?
Jim lives and works out of the East Bay. Tom runs his business from Sacramento. The two faced each other on the campaign battlefield just once, squaring off over a 2018 ballot measure that sought to expand rent control in California. The initiative was rejected.
Though they’ve staked opposing positions on Newsom’s redistricting measure, Proposition 50, Jim has no formal role in the Democratic campaign. Tom is working to defeat it.
The brief airing of their differences was unusual, coming solely at the behest of your friendly columnist. As a rule, the brothers talk business but avoid politics; there’s hardly a need — they already know where each other is coming from. After all, they shared a bedroom growing up.
Jim had a story to tell.
Last spring, as their mother lay dying, the two left the hospital in Reno to shower and get a bit of rest at their father’s place in Incline Village. The phone rang. It was the overnight nurse, calling to let them know their mom had passed away.
“Tom takes the call,” Jim said. “The first thing he says to the nurse is, ‘Are you OK? Is it hard for you to deal with this?’ And that’s how Tom is. Major thing, but he thinks about the other person first.”
He laughed, a loud gale. “I’m not that way.”
Tom had a story to tell.
In 2017, he bought a mountain bike, to celebrate the end of his treatment for non-Hodgkin lymphoma. He’d been worn out by six months of chemotherapy and wasn’t anywhere near full strength. Still, he was determined to tackle one of Tahoe’s most scenic rides, which involves a lung-searing, roughly five-mile climb.
Tom walked partway, then got back on his bike and powered uphill through the last 500 or so yards.
Waiting for him up top was Jim, seated alongside two strangers. “That’s my brother,” he proudly pointed out. “He beat cancer.”
Tom’s eyes welled. His chin quavered and his voice cracked. He paused to collect himself.
“Do I want to sacrifice that relationship for some stupid tweet, or some in-the-moment anger?” he asked. “That connection with someone, you want to cut it over that? That’s just stupid. That’s just silly.”
Moreover, the Fourth of July means we’re in the heart of boating season. There are 4 million recreational boaters in California, according to the state Division of Boating and Waterways. There’s an average of 514 boating accidents a year. And July is the worst month.
I’ve been boating at Tahoe for 55 years, and on some water since I was a teen.
These are my basic rules for safety and enjoyment, at least in a vessel up to about 30 feet. My Tahoe boats mostly have been 22 to 24 feet.
For starters, if Lake Tahoe winds are already blowing at 10 mph and it’s not even noon, be smart. Don’t venture out in a recreational powerboat. The water’s likely to get much choppier in the afternoon.
If you’re out there and see white caps forming, head for shore.
If lots of sailboats show up, you don’t belong on the water with them. Get off.
And another thing: Don’t pay much attention to the manufacturer’s claim of how many people a boat will hold. Boat makers tend to exaggerate. If it says 10 people will fit, figure on maybe eight tops.
Sure, 10 may be able to squeeze aboard, but the extra weight causes the boat to ride deeper in the water and become more vulnerable to taking on water in heavy swells. That can lead to capsizing. And all those passengers squirming around makes driving more difficult because of the constantly changing weight balance.
But most important: Monitor the weather forecasts before you even get near the water.
Lake Tahoe is big and beautiful — 22 miles long and 12 miles wide, at 6,224 feet in the Sierra mountains. It holds enough water to cover all of California by 14 inches. Two-thirds of the lake is in California, one-third in Nevada.
Weather patterns vary. Scary winds and thunderstorms can be at one end of the lake, and calmer water and blue skies at the other.
Even on calm mornings, Lake Tahoe’s weather and boating conditions can turn hazardous quickly.
(Max Whittaker / For The Times)
My wincing at reports of the multi-fatality accident and many other boating mishaps that Saturday afternoon off the south and west shores stem from repeated references to all of it being caused by a sudden, unexpected storm.
The intensity of the storm may have been unexpected — north winds up to 45 mph, producing eight-foot waves. But winds had been forecast by the National Weather Service in the high teens and into the 20s. And that should have been enough warning for boaters: Stay off the water.
The person who made the most sense after the tragedy was Mary Laub, a retired financial analyst who lives in Minden, Nev., over the steep hill from South Lake Tahoe. She and her husband keep a 26-foot Regal cabin cruiser in Tahoe Keys on the south shore. And she habitually watches weather forecasts.
She had planned to go for a cruise that Saturday but dropped the idea after seeing the forecast.
“The afternoon winds pick up at Tahoe. If they’re approaching 10 [mph] before noon, I don’t go out,” she told me. “I saw that forecast and said, ‘No way.’
“If there’s any whisper of wind, I don’t go out. We’ve been caught out there before. I don’t take a chance.”
The people who died were in a practically new 27-foot Chris-Craft Launch, a high-end, gorgeous open-bow boat. It was the vessel’s third time on the water. Ten people were aboard, mostly in their 60s and 70s. They were relatives and lifelong friends, celebrating a woman’s 71st birthday. She was among the fatalities.
They were trying to return from popular Emerald Bay to their west side home in midafternoon when eight-foot swells swamped the boat, deadening the engine and capsizing the vessel off rocky Rubicon Point near D.L. Bliss State Park. They were tossed into the abnormally cold water and presumably drowned, perhaps paralyzed by hypothermia.
A mother and daughter in the party, both wearing life jackets, were rescued by a Washoe County sheriff’s team. Whether the others were wearing life jackets hadn’t been revealed as of this writing.
One four-person crew in a 24-foot open-bow MasterCraft grabbed their life jackets, wisely abandoned the boat and swam to shore. They scampered up rocky cliffs in their bare feet to safety. The boat was practically totaled.
I called meteorologist Dawn Johnson at the National Weather Service in Reno.
She said the forecast for that Saturday afternoon had been for winds up to 20 mph and gusts to “25 or so.”
There also was up to a 25% chance of thunderstorms. “If you have thunderstorms on the lake, make sure you get off the water,” Johnson said. “You have a higher risk of being struck by lightning on open water.”
There were strong winds Friday night, she recalled, but by 11 a.m. Saturday they had dropped to 5 to 10 mph. Then they picked up as forecast.
“We see winds gust at that magnitude multiple times a month, most likely in the afternoon,” she said. “Sustained winds reach 25 to 30 mph.”
But normally they produce waves of only 2 to 4 feet, she added. “We’re trying to figure out exactly what happened.”
Four-foot waves are a hurricane in my book.
And Mother Nature doesn’t care about a boater’s weekend plans.
June 23 (UPI) — The U.S. Coast Guard has called off a search for two people missing after six people were killed when their boat capsized over the weekend in California’s Lake Tahoe.
The search was suspended at 10:55 a.m. local time Sunday, the U.S. Coast Guard said in a statement.
The 27-foot Chris-Craft boat with 10 people on board was reported to authorities as having capsized in turbulent weather at about 3 p.m. Saturday in Lake Tahoe waters within the vicinity of D.L. Bliss State Park.
According to authorities, waves reached a height of 8 feet and winds were reported to be about 30 knots. A large swell had reportedly capsized the vessel.
The El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that the bodies of six people who were on board the boat were recovered from the lake. Two people were rescued and taken to a local hospital, authorities said.
The search, launched in an effort to find two others missing, was called off after the Coast Guard investigated more than 390-square miles over a 12-hour period, it said.
“Suspending a search is always a difficult decision to make and weighs heavily on each Coast Guard member involved,” Coast Guard Cmdr. David Herndon said in a statement.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and loved ones of those involved in the boat capsize.”
