- This time I'm up in the Tahoe area to enjoy some backcountry snow fun.

So grab your warm gloves and your snow boots and come along on this "Wild Nevada."

- [Narrator] Support for PBS Reno and "Wild Nevada" comes in part from the William N. Pennington Foundation.

Bill Pennington was an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and gaming pioneer who built a legacy of community service in Nevada.

- [Narrator] And by Thelma B. and Thomas P. Hart Foundation, Kristine Perry, Margaret Burback, Mark and Susan Herron, in memory of Sue McDowell, Lloyd Rogers and Gaia Brown, Stanley and Neila Shumaker, and by individual members.

(gentle music) (gentle upbeat music) - Hi, I am Chris Orr, and I'm starting this trip up in the Tahoe area.

Now, the Tahoe area is beautiful for fun and adventure year round, but when it's covered in snow, it presents endless miles for backcountry exploration and snow play.

So this time, I'm gonna be exploring by snowshoe and ski and I'm gonna be starting on my cross-country skis with Nevada Nordic.

In an area commonly known as Tahoe Meadows, which is located off the Mount Rose Highway, about four miles west of Mount Rose Ski Resort and about six miles east of Incline Village, I head up a snow staircase to access the Nevada Nordic trail system.

To learn more about how Nevada Nordic, a Tahoe area based nonprofit, is working to create and maintain a cross-country and multi-use community in the area, I meet up with Meghan Pry.

We have a beautiful Tahoe morning.

Thank you for meeting me up here, Meghan.

- Thanks for coming out.

I'm excited to show you our trails here at Nevada Nordic.

- So what kind of trails are ahead?

- We've got trails for everybody here.

We've got beginner trails, we've got trails with challenging terrain and steep hills.

And of course, we've got those lake views that everybody loves.

- Well, I'm definitely on the beginner side.

I have a feeling you're on the more advanced side.

So I'll have you set the pace and I'll see if I can keep up.

- All right, let's check it out.

- [Chris] The Nevada Nordic trails are beautifully maintained and designed to showcase this amazing part of Lake Tahoe and its iconic views.

They are so well done in fact that even a novice skier like myself feels comfortable giving them a try.

Well, we've just barely touched the trails and this feels like we definitely got choices to make.

- Yeah, we sure do.

This is what we call Meadows Junction.

This is kind of a great meeting spot where you'll see a lot of people mingling and heading out on our different trailheads.

We've got a range of trails here that you can access.

Some of them are flatter and some of them are steeper and will head up to the lake.

- When I'm out here, if I didn't have you as my expert, how would I know which trail is the beginning trail and which trail is the more advanced trail?

- We have maps that we have kind of scattered throughout our trail network and they indicate our green, blue, black, kind of the standard guidance on easy, medium, hard trails.

We have a lot of signage out trying to encourage people to stay to certain size of the trail to make sure it's safe for everybody out here.

And for our snowshoers and hikers, we actually created a specific snowshoe trail to Chickadee Ridge, 'cause we find that most of the people out here on snowshoes are really excited to get up to Chickadee Ridge, see the lake, see those chickadees.

And we've hidden some gnomes out there too, just to spice it up and make it extra fun for people to kind of find some gnomes as they're hiking up to Chickadee Ridge.

- So when you maintain trails like this, how often do you as an organization groom them?

- Our goal is to groom every night.

We have three groomers who are just amazing and they work super hard to dig out the cat when there's been a snowstorm and get it going.

And they start grooming usually around five o'clock.

- [Chris] So it's not just after fresh snow that you have to groom?

- [Meghan] Yeah, exactly, you wanna groom every single night just to get that nice fresh corduroy for our skiers.

It's particularly important for our skate skiers to have the corduroy and then our classic skiers really love the tracks as well.

- So I know that from here there's some pretty amazing views of the lake.

Is that a more advanced trail or do you think I have it in me to get up there?

- I think you can do it.

It's all about confidence.

- Well, I think I'm up for it.

So should we give it a shot?

- Let's try it out.

- Okay.

I'm not above falling, so if I fall, I'll just pick myself up and keep going.

- There you go.

Practice makes perfect.

(Chris laughs) Years ago, Diamond Peak operated a cross-country trail system up here.

And when that went away, some local cross-country skiers felt there was still interest for a trail system up here.

And Nevada Nordic nonprofit was formed nine years ago now.

And every year, we've just been growing a little bit more and really been seeing a huge rise in popularity as well.

So now we're up to grooming 20 kilometers of trail, and we operate under permits with the US Forest Service and NDOT, the Nevada Department of Transportation.

All right.

Look at that.

- [Chris] This view is beautiful today.

It is truly blue Tahoe today.

- You bet, and you gotta earn it.

You gotta make your way up the hill to get to this view, but then it is so worth it.

- I figure if I was gonna learn, this is the right place to do it 'cause it feels less pressure and you can set your own pace.

- I think our community's really appreciative and everybody out here is just super happy.

- Quite a resource for the area.

- We don't have many frills here, but we don't find that that holds people back.

People are down to park along the side of the road, make their way up to our trails, and then get this little slice of paradise.

- The Nevada Nordic trails lend themselves to a variety of skiers and multi-use adventurers.

Some of them even of the four-legged variety.

I get the chance to talk with Jen and Michael Raffaelli of Lead Dog Athletics, along with their dogs Annie and Lucky, to learn more about the dog powered sport of skijoring.

Well, I saw the dogs and I had to stop, but you guys are actually not just taking the dogs for a walk, you guys are gonna be having some fun.

- We are gonna take these guys skijoring, which is our favorite and their favorite sport of all the dog powered sports.

So we're gonna put our cross-country skis on and enjoy all the beautiful, groomed, dog-friendly trails here.

- [Chris] Now, and you show people how to do this with their dogs, right?

You actually teach skijoring?

- Yeah, so when we moved down here, we were just excited about the opportunity to live in snowy mountains.

When we left Alaska, we were looking for what is another magical, amazing outdoors place with lots of wild open spaces to explore and also what's a dog-friendly place.

We wanted to make sure there were lots of opportunities to play with dogs and this whole region has so many incredible places to explore that are also dog-friendly.

And we thought, well, we should really share our love of dog powered sports with the people who live here and they want their dogs to be out playing in the mountains with them.

So we started our business just over a year ago and we teach people canicross, which is running with your dog attached and pulling, there's bikejoring where you hook 'em up to a bike, and then skijoring is the most popular because it's just magical to glide along on skis and be pulled along by your dog who's happily cruising through the snow.

- So I'm guessing that to be able to do skijoring, you need a couple of things, and obviously, you need skis.

- Yeah.

- And then you need a dog.

Is there a right type of dog for skijoring?

- There's not just one, but there is a right type and it should be a dog that loves to run, a nice athletic dog, they shouldn't have physical limitations or injuries that might hold them back from being able to comfortably run and pull you.

But size doesn't matter so much because when you're skijoring, especially, you can assist as much or as little as you need.

You can assist by breaking if you've got a powerful speedy dog or you can assist by skiing.

And either way, you're connected to your dog, both literally and figuratively, as they're pulling you along.

So you need a good pulling harness like these guys are wearing so that it's comfortable for them.

- And I'm guessing, of course, that's probably really important because you wouldn't want to bring a dog out on a leash and a collar and have 'em putting all of their weight on a collar, right?

- Yeah, the way I like to think about it, you know, these harnesses are designed that you want to fit, so it's pressing against their breast bone and that's gonna make it comfortable for them to pull because otherwise, who wants to pull when they got something across their neck and they can't breathe, right?

And that's part of the enjoyment of it.

- Do you find more and more people doing it up here at Nevada Nordic?

- It's still so new, but yeah, we see people who come back.

It's been fun to go from teaching people how to do it, to helping them coordinate to go out as a group and just practice together with that chase drive.

It's super rewarding to see people go from needing us.

Like, our goal is that we coach people and get them started and then set them off on their own to go explore and adventure.

It's awesome to see it.

And Nevada Nordic is such a special place that people can come out here and the trails are groomed, there are beautiful views of the lake, and it's all dog-friendly.

So it's a great place to practice.

You know, there's tons of loops to explore.

You can go as short or as long as you want.

We're hopeful that it'll just keep growing and keep catching on.

And so long as people are getting a great foundation in doing it safely and properly, we'll see it really take off as a sport.

- Annie and Lucky are eager to get out onto the snow and make some tracks, so they head out to show me how it's done.

Okay, Lucky, okay, Annie, you guys gonna show me?

- Ready?

- All right.

- Ready, let's go.

- Go, go, go.

- Oh, Lucky, that's nice.

Yeah, go boy.

That's it.

- It is such fun to watch a pup and skier working together to enjoy both the sport and this beautiful snowy landscape.

After a fun day of skiing and snow play at Nevada Nordic, it's time to warm up and get some rest for the next part of my snowy adventures.

As the day gets started, I'm ready to explore more backcountry snow options in the Tahoe area.

So I head just over the border to the community of Truckee, California.

I meet with Greyson Howard of the Truckee Donner Land Trust to learn more about their work to provide opportunities for the public to access some of the surrounding areas.

Greyson, thanks for meeting me this morning.

This is not only a beautiful day, but it's a beautiful location.

- Thanks and thanks for joining me here at Truckee Springs.

This is one of the Truckee Donner Land Trust's newer open space properties.

And it's a unique one because we're right in the heart of our community in Truckee across the Truckee River from downtown.

And it's a great place for people just to get out into nature really quickly and easily year round, whether it's going for a walk or a bike ride in the summer.

We have this new portion of the Truckee River Legacy Trail, paved trail that'll eventually connect from Glenshire to Donner Lake.

And then we have the bridge that connects to downtown Truckee and this will also serve as a part of the Tahoe-Pyramid Trail, connecting all the way from Nevada to Lake Tahoe.

- [Chris] You know, I'm really looking forward to being able to come back and take a nice long run along here 'cause it just lends itself to that kind of use.

But I know today we talked about doing some snowshoeing, so I'm thinking we're probably gonna have to go somewhere else to find enough snow to do that.

- Yeah, we can head up a little bit in elevation to Johnson Canyon and it's a great place for people to get out and enjoy the snow safely, whether you're sledding or snowshoeing or backcountry skiing.

So let's head up that way.

- Okay, perfect.

To experience some of the backcountry that the Land Trust helps maintain, we head from Truckee into Johnson Canyon.

To get there, we get onto Interstate 80 west from Donner Pass Road.

And in a quick five miles or so, hop off again heading toward Donner Lake, and then turn right onto Billy Mac Road.

From there, it's into the parking lot for Johnson Canyon Trailhead.

- So this is a Truckee Donner Land Trust acquisition that dates back to 2006 and it's about 630 acres of open space that we've protected in this canyon that drains down into Donner Lake to the south.

And it's a really great spot year round for access because we're right off of the interstate, it's easy to get to.

And here in the wintertime, it's a great place for a variety of winter fun, whether you wanna build a snowman right here off the parking lot, have a little picnic, or if you have bigger adventures in mind, like back country skiing or snowshoeing like we're gonna do today.

- You know what's nice about it too is there's actually a parking lot, and so often when you go to places to get out into some deeper snow, you're fighting trying to find a place to park.

But this actually does have a nice old trailhead.

- Yeah, that was one of the things that we've been thinking about over the last few years is that it's hard to access free winter recreation in our area.

Even though it's such a big winter recreation destination, so much of it is based on resorts or things like that.

So we wanted to create a place that you could safely park.

And so we partnered up with a couple other nonprofits to pay for this to be plowed every winter and to give people the opportunity to come up and enjoy the snow.

- So that way you don't necessarily need like heavy duty four-wheel drive just to get out onto the snow.

- Yeah, right off the interstate, easy to get to.

Coming up from Reno, it's a great place to come and explore.

- Should we find a trail?

- Yeah, let's head up and see what we're seeing.

- Okay.

So with it being so close to town and being so accessible, I'm guessing this is a favorite for locals.

- [Greyson] Absolutely, yeah.

In the winter, we see lots of folks out here just having fun in the snow or starting off their big backcountry ski.

In the summer, we have hikers, we have trail runners, we have mountain bikers.

It's a very popular place both for itself and for what it connects to for bigger adventures.

- [Chris] With Johnson Canyon being such a great starting point, where could we go from here?

- So in the winter, we have a lot of backcountry skiers that'll head north towards the Yarra Valley and even to our Frog Lake backcountry huts.

And in the summer, this trail that we're loosely following connects to the Donner Lake Rim trail, which runs east/west, all the way to Castle Valley on Donner Summit.

So from there, you can connect to the Pacific Crest Trail, to the Hole in the Ground Trail.

It's really a great launching point for any size adventure you're looking for.

- [Chris] After a steep but fairly short bit of snowshoeing, we are treated to a spectacular view of Donner Lake and the surrounding area.

- Well, this looks like a good spot to look at the view.

- Wow, well, we started in Truckee and now we're looking at Donner.

This is a view well worth snowshoeing or hiking to 'cause it is, it is gorgeous up here.

- Yeah, this is a, you know, beautiful spot with a view of the whole Sierra Crest that we're looking at here.

And not only are we looking down on the 630 acres of Johnson Canyon that we just hiked up, but we can see a number of other projects in the 45,000 acres of open space that the Land Trust has protected since 1990.

We work as a nonprofit to protect open space in this region and also create sustainable recreation opportunities for the public to enjoy.

For the last 35 years, we've protected about 45,000 acres of open space throughout this whole region.

We manage about 50 miles of trails for people to get out on.

We want people to come out and experience these beautiful places because we believe that if you come out and enjoy them and come to love them, that you'll care about protecting them and help us in our work to protect these beautiful, unique spaces that are not only just enjoyable for us all to come out and hike on, but really important to us for the water that flows into the Truckee River down to Reno, or the forests remaining healthy and resilient to wildfires as wildfires become more of an issue.

So it's really important that people come out and get to see it themselves.

- Well, when you get up into this kind of landscape, it makes it really easy to understand why an organization like yours is doing such great work because these are beautiful views and amazing miles.

It's a great country up here.

- Yeah, we enjoy it.

- I say goodbye to Greyson and head into some territory that could be dangerous, but I have a good reason to do it.

I'm meeting David Reichel from the Sierra Avalanche Center.

He knows the right way to safely explore the backcountry.

David, thank you for meeting me out here.

It's so pretty today with all the snow, but I know there's a lot more involved than just beauty when it comes to snow.

- There is, when you're in the mountains and we have snow, you need to be thinking about avalanches as well.

- I know I don't know enough about the dangers or the safety involved with avalanches.

So maybe we could take a walk and you can give me some pointers.

- Absolutely.

- Okay.

Well, the sign tells me that I definitely brought the right person to go for a little bit of a hike with.

- Yeah, so this is, we call this a beacon checker or a transceiver checker safety checkpoint.

These trailhead signs are not at every trailhead where we head into the backcountry in our forecast area, but they're at a lot of them and they're just a nice reminder to folks that the terrain back here is real, there's avalanche risk, and you should be prepared before you head back there.

- So what is the beeping telling us?

- So I have a transceiver on on my body right now.

Whenever you head into the backcountry in winter, you should have a shovel, a beacon, and a probe.

And this is just a real simple way to check it.

You should check it more thoroughly with your companions back at the car.

But this is kind of just a reminder for everybody in the community that, you know, this is real deal terrain back here and you need to be prepared.

You need two, right?

So like, we call it companion rescue.

So if you have a transceiver and I have a transceiver, if one of us were to get buried, you would be in search and I would be sending and you would be able to find me.

But if I get buried and I don't have a partner that has a transceiver, nobody's gonna find me.

So you really need two.

We call it companion rescue because it's really your crew that needs to come to your rescue.

- So if a person gets themselves in trouble with an avalanche, how much time do you have to rescue a person?

- So we teach in avalanche classes that after 10 minutes the odds of survival drop precipitously.

- So you've gotta be fast and respondent.

- And that's to get them out, right?

So you need to get to where they got buried, you need to find them with your transceiver, you need to pinpoint them with your probe, and then you need to dig them out with your shovel.

Everyone who travels in the backcountry should be carrying a shovel, a beacon, and a probe so they're prepared to execute a companion rescue like that.

- When we have big snow years, I understand avalanche danger because there's a lot of snow, but is that the only time when you're up in the mountains that you're in danger of avalanche?

- [David] When we get a new storm and it's snowed two feet in the last couple days, we usually see avalanche danger spike.

But avalanche danger exists when we have snow.

It doesn't really matter if it's fresh snow or a lot of snow or not much snow.

If there's snow in the mountains, then there's some risk.

- So even if you think, "Oh, you know it's a light snow year, avalanche danger's gonna be pretty low."

That's not true.

- [David] Correct, I mean, one of the phrases that we say is, "If there's enough snow to ride, there's enough snow to slide."

So if there's enough snow to go play in the mountains on ski, snowmobile, whatever, there's also enough snow for an avalanche to occur.

So every day, all winter long, the Sierra Avalanche Center publishes a forecast at seven in the morning.

So we let the public know what the avalanche danger is and what the avalanche problems are each day, all winter long.

It is absolutely true that the number of backcountry travelers has increased a lot in the last decade.

As someone who loves the mountains, I totally understand it.

I'm one of those people, but it's really important that everyone checks the forecast and knows what the conditions are before they head out there.

- With the better understanding of how to stay safe in avalanche zones, I head just down the road to Donner Lake where I have the chance to talk to Malea Jordan and her dog Ripp, who are both avalanche search and rescue first responders in the area.

Tell me about your friend Ripp.

- Yeah, Ripp is almost a year-and-a-half English Shepherd.

He's a search and rescue avalanche dog, and yeah, he works in Lake Tahoe.

Our first duty is to be a first responder, a medical first responder, and then having a dog just kind of is a side part of being a first responder.

So you still have to fulfill all your basic first responder duties and then also train your dog.

So it can be a lot.

You wear a lot of hats, so it's just a lot more training.

- So if a person sees you and Ripp working together, either on a ski hill or back country, what's the best way for them to interact with Ripp, or should they even interact?

- If you see us out on the mountain, whether it's on a snowmobile or getting on a chairlift or in a lift line or something like that, he is working, I'm working, he has to be focused on me.

And so it's super important if you do see us out on the mountain working to just do not pet, but also, like, most importantly, probably, do not distract.

That is a huge thing with many service dogs.

- So don't offer 'em part of your hotdog.

- Yeah, don't offer 'em.

Don't offer 'em your lunch.

How we train our dogs is basically honing into their prey drive instincts.

They start off with like a little puppy, you get like their favorite toy and you're like, "Oh, Ripp, like, come get this toy.

Come get this toy."

And you'll run away and kind of disappear.

Fast forward a hundred progression steps and they are searching for human scent and their reward to finding you is tug.

And so it's a prey drive response of hunting, finding, catching, tugging is the reward.

- When you think about being called into service and having to use an avalanche dog in a rescue situation, do you know how much it improves the response rate or the ability to find somebody that might be in trouble?

- If you're buried in avalanche, your best and fastest way if you're not wearing a transceiver, is to be found with a search and rescue avalanche dog.

- I know which rescue I would prefer.

That's all I've got time for in this episode.

But when Mother Nature cooperates, there are miles and miles of snow available in the Tahoe and Donner area for fun and backcountry adventure.

The key, though, to any great day in the snow is to be prepared and to stay safe.

If you want more information about this or any in the "Wild Nevada" series, visit our website at pbsreno.org and stream us with the PBS app.

And until my next "Wild Nevada" adventure, I hope you have some adventures of your own.

- [Narrator] Support for PBS Reno and "Wild Nevada" comes in part from the William N. Pennington Foundation.

Bill Pennington was an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and gaming pioneer who built a legacy of community service in Nevada.

- [Narrator] And by Thelma B. and Thomas P. Hart Foundation, Kristine Perry, Margaret Burback, Mark and Susan Herron, in memory of Sue McDowell, Lloyd Rogers and Gaia Brown, Stanley and Neila Shumaker and by individual members.

(gentle music)