Some Summer Recreation Areas In Lake Tahoe Now Open

The Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit of the U.S. Forest Service is opening summer recreation areas early because of the unseasonably warm weather. 

Even though summer recreation sites have been closed, people have kept visiting the because it feels like summer. 

One of the sites is Kiva Beach near south shore.

Harpreet McDermitt brought her family of seven.

“We expected it to be open, but we didn’t look at that ahead of time, we just assumed," she says.

So McDermitt parked her car on the road where there were already dozens of others.

Leroy Martin who lives nearby says that’s a safety problem.

“Yeah, yeah, traffic hazard," he says. "It is going to cause problems out there.”

To reduce the hazard the Forest Service is opening Kiva and the other sites early with no staffing.

“Right now I have no one,” says Recreation Forester Don Lane.

He says people will have to keep the sites clean until the Forest Servcice can staff them and he says early openings may become the new norm as the climate changes.

“If things continue the way they have been we are going to have to change, we need to change," he says.

He says the sites will be open for free until there are personnel in place to provide bathroom and trash service.