Ed Z'berg Sugar Pine Point State Park
California
The cross-country skiing and biathlon events of the 1960 Winter Olympics were held in what is now this park.
Olympic athletes raced through these woods. When the 1960 Winter Olympics came to Squaw Valley nearby, the biathlon and the cross-country skiing were held on ground that is now Ed Z'berg Sugar Pine Point State Park. Skiers still use some of those same courses. There are about eleven miles of trails for skiing and snowshoeing, and some of the snow paths get machine groomed. This is the only California state park in the Sierra Nevada that keeps recreational facilities running through winter, and rangers lead snowshoe tours. Every January the park and the towns along the western shore of Lake Tahoe hold an Olympic Heritage Celebration Week. Winter here is serious. Highs hover around forty degrees, and the coldest lows drop below zero. Roughly thirty-two inches of precipitation falls in an average year, most of it as snow.
This is the first of 2 parts. The rest runs about 2 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.
The biathnew
Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Nearby, on the same roads
- Lake Tahoe Dam 7.7 mi A Russian-born engineer once tried to drain Lake Tahoe's outflow all the way to San Francisco.
- Donner Memorial State Park 19.2 mi The pedestal under the pioneer statue at Donner is twenty-two feet tall because that was the depth of the snow.
- Sugar Bowl Ski Resort 20.5 mi Goofy's famous holler started as an Austrian ski champion's yodel on these slopes.
- Maybert, California 37 mi To get rid of squatters, the Forest Service burned the last cabins of Maybert to the ground.
- Wilbur D. May Center 37.3 mi A department store heir brought home a shrunken head from South America, and it sits in a Reno museum.
- Remington Hill, California 39.1 mi A man who helped build the ditches here made a million dollars, lost every cent, and died in the poorhouse.