On May 5th, at about 8:00 AM, a man arrived on foot at the Sierra County Sheriff’s Office (SCSO) to report his vehicle had caught fire approximately one mile up the steep, narrow, and twisty Galloway Road, south of Downieville. 

The Downieville Fire Protection District (DFPD) responded quickly to the news and, when they arrived on the scene in their green and yellow, four-wheel drive fire wagon, their crew discovered the fire being driven up the hill by a light wind through the heavily forested area. 

Given the circumstances, the DFPD immediately asked for mutual aid from firefighters in Alleghany and Pike City, as well as the US Forest Service. 

By 11:00 AM, local volunteers plus a Forest Service Hotshot crew from the USFS’s station in Camptonville were able to slow the fire’s spread and the incident command was assumed by the Forest Service, allowing the volunteer firefighters to be released.  

(GRASS VALLEY) — Footage of the legendary Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, has been caught on film in the wee hours of morning at BriarPatch Food Co-op in Grass Valley. 

Employees were filming a short documentary about the history of cooperative grocery stores on Super 8mm film when they were startled by what appeared to be a 6-to-7 foot tall hairy beast walking down the aisles in lanky movements with arms swinging. 

By Don Russell

For the 157th time in the Great Yuba Pass Chili Cook-off’s 30 year history, Jenny Varn again took home the first place trophy. 

There was much amiss at last Saturday’s festivities. Sixteen cooks suffered the balmy weather. Some health issues prevented Loyalton’s Andy White from creating his traditional masterpiece. He rarely misses the event, and always improves it. His absence, however, did not prevent judge Paul Bianco from taking some cheap shots at him in a rant that excoriated several other participants. With any luck, those disparaging comments will be published in some future edition of this scurrilous rag. 

By Laney Griffo

For more than a decade, big tree hunter Michael Taylor has been bagging big tree finds. This past October, he added the second, third and sixth tallest known sugar pines to his list of finds.

The second and third tallest Sugar Pines are located in Tahoe National Forest and measure at 267.5 ft and 267.15 ft. The 267.15 foot tree, dubbed the “Redonkulous” tree, measures at 10.5 feet in diameter at the breast height, which is 4.5 feet up from the ground. 

The sixth tallest Sugar Pine, which is still unnamed as is the second tallest, was found in Stanislaus National Forest and is 263.17 ft tall. 

Taylor is a LiDAR specialist, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging. According to NOAA, LiDAR, “is a remote sensing method that uses light in the form of a pulsed laser to measure ranges (variable distances) to the Earth.” Taylor said the laser gives billions and or even trillions of returns which can be used to construct a surface map. 

(Downieville) This past Saturday, January 30, the Sierra County Sheriff’s Office (SCSO) received information about a man from the Tahoe area who left Grass Valley for Truckee along CA-49 the previous Sunday but had not been heard from since then.

With photos of the missing individual and his vehicle in their possession, the SCSO forwarded this information to all local law enforcement agencies, CalTrans, and the California Highway Patrol (CHP), asking them to be on the lookout for the man and his truck. However, despite the efforts of these groups, as well as family members checking CA-49 through Nevada, Yuba, and Sierra counties, these endeavors proved fruitless. 

However, on Sunday, January 31, one week after going missing, the Nevada County Sheriff’s Office received a 911 call from the missing person. Although the call was dropped, they confirmed it was from the missing person and obtained the caller’s GPS location, Henness Pass Road east of Alleghany in Sierra County.