New leadership brings fresh air to Clair Tappaan Lodge

A new and inspiring leader has shown up at Clair Tappaan Lodge, and he's given everyone a shot of optimism for the Sierra Club's beloved rustic meetingplace high in the Sierra near Donner Summit (see article to right).

"He's been able to find and draw people into the operation with skills that have been needed but missing for years," said Dick Simpson, coordinator of the ski huts surrounding the Lodge (see article below) and a past Lodge Committee chair. "It's no longer a dream to think that new customers will find and use Clair Tappaan."

Ernie Malamud has been a Club member since 1951. For much of his career he was an experimental physicist. In 1986 he founded a Chicago-area science museum that grew under his leadership to 100,000 visitors per year and a $1.5 million budget. In 2000 he moved to Nevada City, an hour down the hill from Clair Tappaan.

The Lodge will need every bit of his talent - and every guest and every volunteer it can get.

"When I became committee chair I thought it would be a marathon," Ernie wrote in a recent lodge newsletter article. "Six months later it seems more like the Iditerod, and I'm the lead dog. It's a huge job, and the only way to succeed is to have a lot of people pulling with me."

Before he took the job, he asked for a meeting with Club executive director Carl Pope. He was offered 10 minutes on the phone, but he insisted on a half hour in person. He got it, and it turned into an hour. Carl promised Ernie that as long as the lodge was making the mutually agreed-upon progress towards break-even, he would not recommend that the Board change its status or move to sell it.

In Ernie's playbook, marketing and publicity come first right now. He's got it moving along on a scale unknown in recent decades. As of this fall, he lists 18 volunteers, many of them professionals, on the marketing and public-relations teams. He also foresees improvements to the building to ease marketability. High on the list is a snow-free, textured-concrete path up from the road to the front door.

WhatYouCanDo

Come visit! If you've never been to Clair Tappaan, you don't know what you've been missing. Bring your friends! Bring your family! For information, call (800)679-6775 or see the web page

Organize an activity at the Lodge. Take a look at scheduled activities on the web site and see what you can add. The PR team would help you publicize it. Or bring a group: a family reunion, a birthday party, a scout group, a church group, or a group of work colleagues on a retreat.

Join the Lodge Committee. Volunteers are still needed and welcomed. There are many ways you can help. You can reach Ernie at (530) 470-8303 or email malamud -at- foothill.net

Ted Cuzzillo

A winter of activities begins at Clair Tappaan Lodge

The winter season at Clair Tappaan Lodge is about to begin. Come do your own thing, or jump into one of our diverse special activities - weekends, holidays, and weeklong events too. Below is just a sample. For more information about these or other events, see the Lodge's web page (click on "Activities").

Sat. - Sun., Nov. 18 - 19 - Wilderness Medicine Training. Dr. Steve Brown, along with doctors he's recruited from around Tahoe, cover the basics of taking care of yourself and others when help is out of range. Learn about splinting, insect bites, basic orthopedics, first-aid kits, and other handy topics. Learn from docs who deal with these things every day.

Thu., Nov. 23 - traditional Lodge Thanksgiving. Some families come every year to this 72-year tradition.

Sat., Dec. 2 - full-moon snowshoe (or hike). Put on your snowshoes and tromp up the hill in the moonlight. Hot chocolate supplied by Lodge staff goes down well when you stop at the top.

Holidays. Kids decorate a Christmas tree and break open a piñata.

Sun., Dec. 31 - New Year's Eve, the Lodge's big night. "The Lodge is fully transformed with festive decorations," says manager Peter Lehmkuhl. It all starts calmly enough. Guests have a normal Lodge dinner. At 8 the talent show begins and runs about two hours. At about 10, hors d'oeuvres and cocktail hour begins, then music and dancing until midnight, with a countdown, balloons falling from the ceiling, and if you're lucky, festive kissing. By 12:20, says Peter, everybody's in bed.

Sun. - Fri., Feb. 4 - 9 - downhill skiing at Tahoe.

Sun. - Sat., March 4 - 10 - Snowshoe and photography in the High Sierra.

Sierra Club huts combine convenience with a rich winter tradition

Since the mid-1930s the Sierra Club has owned and operated a series of huts for backcountry skiers and snowshoers in the Donner Summit/Lake Tahoe area. Inspired by hut systems in Europe, they provide rustic shelter and a chance to enjoy winter wilderness away from traffic and crowds. The numbers of people using them and their styles have changed over the years, but the opportunities to explore and experience untracked snow have not.

In the December 1946 Sierra Club Bulletin, Howard Koch and Dick Weber, recently returned veterans from the Italian front, recounted a two-day 30-mile ski tour the previous February. They left Clair Tappaan Lodge on what is now Donner Pass Road late the first morning, headed north, and spent the night at the Club's White Rock Lake backcountry hut. They reached Sierraville at sunset on the second day, climbing Mount Lola on the way. Their description of gliding from the summit back to their packs is classic winter-backcountry prose.

Koch noted that the White Rock Lake hut stove and its vent pipe were in "sad shape" and that the hut itself appeared to have been used very little (if at all) in the previous five years; this may explain why that hut seems to have fallen off the map sometime during the following decade. Peter Grubb Hut, where Koch and Weber stopped for lunch, had been built by the Sierra Club in 1938 - 39; in the 10 years following the war, the Club built another three huts south of Donner Pass Road. The White Rock Lake Hut was apparently abandoned sometime during that same period; no sign of it exists today.

Although Koch barely mentioned their lunch stop, Peter Grubb Hut is now one of the most popular backcountry destinations in the Sierra. Thanks to I-80, which bisected the trail from Clair Tappaan Lodge, its distance from a road is half what it would have been in 1946; as many as 100 skiers will make it to Peter Grubb for lunch on a sunny winter weekend now. Few venture much farther north, however, and the trip to Sierraville is rarely duplicated.

Because of the much higher usage, the hut system is now operated on a reservation basis, typically recording 2,000 visitor nights per season. Gathering firewood and keeping the huts in good repair has become a major activity; six full-weekend volunteer work parties were scheduled this year.

Although originally planned as shelters for skiers traveling between Donner and Echo Summits, the huts are used today almost exclusively for overnight shelter by visitors on two-day (weekend) trips from the nearest road. Peter Grubb is three miles north of I-80 at Donner Summit and Ludlow is about seven miles west of Highway 89 and Lake Tahoe near Homewood. Only Benson (three miles south of the Sugar Bowl ski area on the Sierra crest) and Bradley (five miles west of Highway 89 and two miles north of Squaw Valley) are sometimes linked on three-day trips.

Each hut will hold about 15 and comes with a wood stove and cut (but not split) firewood. Peter Grubb and Bradley now have limited solar-electric lighting. Users bring their own food, sleeping bags, warm clothing, and candles. Cost is $12 per person per night.

For more information (including reservation information) visit http://ctl.sierraclub.org/outings/lodges/huts/map.asp or phone (800) 679-6775.