Twain Harte TimesTwain Harte Information & Photo Gallery

There are major changes taking place at Yosemite National Park and I hope someone is paying attention.

I saw a post come through yesterday from the Calaveras County-based The Pine Tree website with an announcement regarding a formal settlement agreement having been reached on the Merced Wild and Scenic River Comprehensive Management Plan (CMP).

In addition, would be weekend and holiday Half Dome climbers at Yosemite will be required to obtain a permit to climb the cables for the first time. Safety issues were cited at the reasoning behind the change.

I attempted to read through the Litigation Update documents, but it’s going to take a great deal of time to read through them all to make heads or tails of the verbose dispute, which spans a decade.

If anyone has a working knowledge of the case, I’d love to read the Cliff Notes on it.

Sugar Pine, California -- Snowfall

Most of Twain Harte has been without power since yesterday. 

According to PG&E recorded messages, they have had equipment damage that they are working to repair. PG&E is currently estimating power restoration sometime after 3:00 p.m., January 26th. 

Fortunately, folks in Sugar Pine currently have power, although residents have experienced numerous power outages over the past several days. 

We left our house this afternoon and for a nice change we headed up to Sugar Pine for a wonderfully HOT shower, some warm food and to pick up an electrical generator. When we left our house it was a chilly 49° — inside the house. 

Sugar Pine Ridge

It got down to a brisk 28° outside last night. Today it’s beautiful, the sun is shining, the snow has stopped falling — at least for now. We are expecting more snow, down to around 3500 feet tonight. Another storm has been predicted to roll through Sunday evening. 

If you are planning a trip up highway 108 into our winter wonderland, expect to chain up. Tire chains or snowtires are required past Twain Harte. A check point has been established just east of Twain Harte, where installers are present and for $30, they will chain up your vehicle for you. 

We drove up highway 108, as far as Sugar Pine, the highway is clear of snow but wet, it’s currently 35°, so ice isn’t much of an issue at this time. I’ll be posting regular updates, as often as I can — depending of course on the availability of power. 

Stay warm!

(Scroll down for updates.)

Let it Snow!

Twain Harte was transformed overnight from a dreary, slushy mess to a winter wonderland with beauty beyond measure.  I simply can’t look outside our door without being moved by the absolute splendor.

The snow turns Twain Harte into an almost magical place — that is, unless you have to drive to work in it.

The plow came through here at 7:35 a.m. but we won’t be going anywhere, anytime soon. Our driveway, as well as the driveway of our neighbors are snowbound and will require a good shoveling before our tires will take us anywhere today.

Do I have any volunteers?  🙂

Snow Covered Trees!

If you can: stay home this morning, until the roads have been properly cleared. If you must get out in all this snow, do drive carefully.

We lost power to our house several times last night. Once it was even off for a couple of hours but as you can see, it’s back on now. I worry a lot less today about power surges and outages than I once did. We have replaced all of our old electrical power strips with new surge protectors that are intended especially for electronics.

Even though we’ve experienced several power bursts, and short power outages, all of our electronics are protected and backed by $500,000 in insurance, which comes with your Power Sentry Surge Protector purchase, giving us peace of mind. It’s a small price to pay to protect your computer equipment and let me tell you, this time of year, we really need it.