![]() Sierra-at-Tahoe is built into the side of a canyon cut by the South Fork American River down the western slopes of the Sierra crest, just over the hill from the Lake Tahoe basin. “This isn’t the last fire that’s going to hit a ski area, so the whole world is watching us.” “There’s really no playbook to follow so we’re making it up as we go,” Rice said. For an industry built into increasingly fire-prone forestlands, Sierra serves as a frightening case study in surviving a threat that seems to grow each year. Most of the trees remained upright.īut expert assessments have revealed significant damages to ski infrastructure and deep trauma to the landscape that will almost certainly change the character of Sierra’s runs and the experience of skiing there. The base buildings were unscathed, having been doused in flame-retardant gel. The lift terminals and towers were still standing, with chairs dangling from their cables. When he returned to the resort after the flame front had passed, Rice thought the damage might be minimal. Heat from the Caldor Fire damaged ropes on some of the resort’s lifts. The Nob Hill lift burned by the Caldor Fire at Sierra-at-Tahoe. In the days before the fire hit, Rice and Paul Beran, Sierra’s mountain manager, aided by a private structure-defense crew, worked to armor the resort from the fire, going so far as to aim its snow-making water hydrants at chairlift terminals and lodge buildings when they evacuated. But getting hit by a whole flame front is new.” “We’ve had some other ski runs or sides of ski areas burn. “Across the nation, this is the first ski area that took what we consider a direct hit,” said Scot Rogers, district ranger with the Eldorado National Forest, where the resort is located. Wildfires have grazed the edges of ski areas before, but a resort has never taken the brunt of one, head-on. “Our goal is to get open this winter, but there is so much to be done between now and then.” “At a minimum, we’re open 100% next season,” Rice said. ![]() But it is forging ahead with repairs to its ski infrastructure and tree removal in the hope of opening in early 2022 for a shortened season. Only weeks removed from the fire, Sierra will miss its typical winter opening this month. The fire also scorched chairlift towers, destroyed a maintenance shop and raised temperatures in some places to an estimated 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit - hot enough to melt a snowcat. Many are now considered “hazard trees” - so damaged that they could topple without warning - and will have to be leveled at their stumps before the resort can reopen safely. Thousands of conifers burned when the Caldor Fire swept through the resort property in August. “It hurts me to see these trees come down,” said Rice, 66, who has managed the resort for 29 years.
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