Unpaving the way: the Tahoe Backcountry Alliance makes headway in their first season

Last week we posted the article, “Allied Forces” by Associate Editor Lucy Higgins from the February issue, about the rise of backcountry alliances throughout the U.S. These organizations have missions to unite the backcountry community and craft land use policies that will increase access to winter landscapes.

One of the organizations highlighted in the article was the recently formed Tahoe Backcountry Alliance (TBA) that was spurred into existence by a paving project in the Lake Tahoe area last year that threatened parking for backcountry skiing. For the original article, Higgins spoke with Rich Meyer, one of the TBA’s founders, about the organization’s success in securing the threatened parking zone near a popular trailhead used to access Jake’s Peak.

It has now been a full winter season since we spoke with Meyer about the TBA, so we caught up with him to find out how projects have progressed over the past few months and what the TBA has planned for the summer.

Here is what Meyer had to say.

Backcountry Magazine: What are some of the successes the Tahoe Backcountry Alliance has had this past winter?

Rich Meyer: We aren’t even a year old ’til Labor Day, but we got our first season under our belts and it was certainly a big learning curve. We launched a bunch of different things, from Facebook to Twitter to Instagram. We got our Mail Chimp email service going, and I will say that we had some great success there. I think we are close to 3,000 likes on Facebook, and we are getting close to 1,000 members. We’ve gotten great traction out of the Facebook scene. That seems to be where we do the best with getting the word out. 

BCM: How has the process of becoming a nonprofit gone for you?

RM: We have started to officially get our nonprofit status together and we are slowly getting an official board together. One of the things we did to try to engage as many backcountry skiers and riders as possible was to launch a survey. It was really short, and it took less than four or five minutes to take the entire survey. But it was an opportunity for people to give us their names, give us their email, give us their thoughts, and then say where they like to ski and if they feel if there is enough parking available. We really want to show local agencies that we have a big crowd of skiers that spend money in the Tahoe area and recreate in the Tahoe area. Some people live there, some people come in from Sacramento, Reno, the Bay Area. That was a big goal for year number one. We have had almost 1,000 people take our survey so far.

BCM: How do you think the snowier weather this winter helped bring together the community? 

RM: After multiple years of less than optimal snow conditions, everybody was stoked, from the retailers to the ski areas, to skiers. It helped us in getting going. 

BCM: How did the parking issue progress over the first winter of the Tahoe Backcountry Alliance?

RM: The parking issue—going back to the article that came out— had success and you guys wrote about that success. But it is going to be an ongoing job. We’re going to have to be vigilant because that same paving project continues south on that Highway 89 corridor. We are going to have to fight for other parking spaces that have historically been used without any questions. There are a couple that are just three, four, five miles south of the Jake’s parking lot that we saved. They are now in jeopardy because of that same paving program. We have gotten some positive responses from CALTRANS (The California Department of Transportation). They have said, “Yea, we are looking into it,” and “Yea, it should be fine,” but we haven’t gotten any concrete guarantees that these parking areas are labeled or on a map as a parking area. They are still undocumented pullouts. We are going to have to keep banging the drum and keep going to meetings and keep writing letters and stay super positive. We don’t want to be fear mongers, but when people feel like they are going to loose something, they act, and we might have to go down that road again.

BCM: What are some of the action items the TBA has on its plate for this summer?

RM: This summer we want to publish the results of our survey that we did this last winter and make that a nice package to keep people engaged over the summer. We are also going to do a trailhead counting program for next winter. We have secured a bunch of trailhead counters similar to what they use in the Wasatch a couple of years ago. This will hopefully allow us to show and tell all of these backcountry skiers these numbers. We are going to pick our prime, most popular backcountry trailheads in the Tahoe area and try to get trailhead counters in—maybe a dozen of them and get some hard numbers, some hard data. We want to be able to show the public and all of the government agencies, “Hey listen, this is how many people are getting into the backcountry. You need to listen up.”

Another project we are considering is an “Adopt a Trailhead” project. We may raise enough funds to pick a trailhead that needs plowing and parking and show the Forest Service, show the State Parks, show the counties that we are willing to put our hard earned cash out there to maintain a parking area even if they’re not. We have found through watching other mountain bike organizations and other trail crews that when they put their own money and labor out there, it usually comes back to help them. The Forest Service realizes, “OK, these people are legit. They’re serious and they’re proactive, so we will get on board and help out.”

Then we are just going to have to keep pressing to keep what we have and to pursue a few things that we’ve lost. There is one road in particular that goes to Mt. Tallac. Mt. Tallac is the iconic, massive peak that overlooks Lake Tahoe. There is a road that I think is technically a county road that has a gate on it. It has been blocked for a number of years now but it didn’t used to be. We are not sure why this road is gated. The highway patrol will say that there was some vandalism, the homeowners say they don’t know, and there are so many different agencies at play here. I don’t think there are evil forces working against us, but there are a lot of layers for us to work through to find an answer.

BCM: What have been the benefits of working with the Winter Wildlands Alliance?

RM: Stealing ideas from other grassroots organizations has been helpful. Other grassroots alliances are in the same boat, fighting the same fight. The trailhead counter idea we got straight form the Wasatch Backcountry Alliance. Having a larger resource behind us has been helpful. They are not guiding us, but [they have been helpful]. We are not breaking new trail. We have seen other alliances go down these roads and when they have success, we feel we can use that and run with a lot of the same programs and share those successes.