Melissa Salazar, one of twin granddaughters of Abraham Salazar, the late chairman of the giant clothing company Salazar West, was killed yesterday in a tragic fall on the rock slide above Emerald Bay. She was hiking with her grandmother, Abraham’s widow, and her sister Jennifer.
I paged ahead to the obituaries.
Melissa Salazar, aged 6, survived by sister Jennifer, mother Alicia and grandmother Roberta Salazar. The family requests that memorials be sent to the Sierra Club and the League To Save Lake Tahoe.
I made a few notes, thanked Glennie and left.
I decided to drive out to Emerald Bay. As the road zig-zagged its way five hundred feet up the moraine ridge between Cascade Lake and Emerald Bay, I thought of the two glaciers that had gouged them out ten thousand years ago. The Cascade glacier stopped short of Lake Tahoe and left a postcard lake nestled in a small valley below a waterfall that plunges down from the mountains above. The Emerald Bay glacier won the race and pushed all the way to Lake Tahoe forming a picture-perfect bay of water surrounded by granite walls three thousand feet high. Both lay below the Wonderbra peaks that were named for a well-shaped maiden named Maggie.
I turned into the parking area at the Bayview Trailhead. The lot was still covered with a foot of snow. I ground forward in four-wheel-drive and parked.
My snowshoes were in back. I strapped them on, slipped on my anorak and headed up the trail that leads to Maggie’s Peaks and the place where the mountain had fallen away half a century before.
I set off at a good pace, my snowshoes sinking just a few inches into the firm spring snowpack. When I entered the dark fir forest on the east side of Maggie’s the snow was soft and much more work to hike in. Spot ran ahead, oblivious to the deep snow. He powered up the mountain without regard to the terrain or the low oxygen of high altitude. He followed scents that were as plain to his nose as Dayglo orange trail ribbons are to my eyes. Fifty yards ahead he jerked to a stop and pushed his head completely under the soft powder that lay below the shade of the dense firs. I hiked on past him while he investigated the criminal transgressions of squirrels and other creatures of spring. After a minute Spot raced past me, then veered off the trail and disappeared into the woods.
It is customary in Tahoe to worry about your dog in the back country. The concern isn’t about the bear or mountain lion, but the ubiquitous coyote. A single coyote will serve as bait and lure an unsuspecting dog out to a waiting pack, there to be devoured. But I didn’t think coyotes would make an attempt on Spot any more than they would try to bring down a bear.
The trail steepened. The fir forest thinned and in the bigger spaces were occasional large pines. I stuck my nose in the bark of one and inhaled. It had a strong and delicious butterscotch aroma which meant Jeffrey Pine.
The trail broadened. The trees opened up before me and I crested the top of the rock slide. Emerald Bay lay twelve hundred feet below me, as dazzling and richly colored as any water on earth.
Near the sandy beach where the wealthy widow Lora Knight built the Vikingsholm Mansion in 1928 in the style of a medieval Norwegian castle, the water was pure emerald. Heading out toward Fannett island where the heiress had her butler row her daily to take afternoon tea in the teahouse, the emerald color blended into turquoise. Past the island, the color turned to deep marine blue. And beyond, out in the main body of Lake Tahoe, the color was indigo, so deep in tone it was as if the blue light had traveled all the way up from the bottom, one thousand six hundred feet below the surface.
I stood at the top of the rock slide and thought of little Melissa plunging toward that saturated color. It was dizzying. I wavered for a moment, my legs seeming to sway. Could I lose my balance as I contemplated the height? And what of Melissa? Could a six-year-old child be carried away by such a view? Did she step on a loose rock and tumble? Was it possible for a sure-footed youngster to slip?
Or was she pushed to her sudden death?
Something cold and wet slapped my hand. I jerked with adrenaline, then realized it was Spot’s nose. I rubbed his head as he stood at the edge of the precipice. One of the large tourist stern wheelers was entering the mouth of the bay so far below.
Thinking it some strange white bug, Spot did his rumbling imitation of a Panzer tank.
I recalled the day a few years ago when my neighbor’s toddler had escaped the baby sitter and discovered how much more fun his toy car was in the middle of the road. Spot ran out and stood in our street as a truck roared up the mountain and around the corner. The angry driver screeched to a stop, honked and eventually got out carrying his tire iron before he saw that beyond the giant dog was a tiny child.