February 8th: Survival Tactics for Chickadees in the Tahoe Basin

The Tahoe Basin is known for its many different animal species that live in the area. One of the more popular species in the region is the chickadee, with many locals and tourists making the trek to Chickadee Ridge during summer and winter to feed the birds. Aside from the free handouts the birds on chickadee Ridge receive, how do the chickadees survive year-round in the Tahoe Basin? Join Tahoe Silicon Mountain, a local network of entrepreneurs and professionals, on Monday, February 8th, to hear Ben Sonnenberg speak on the Natural Selection and Spatial Cognition in Wild Food-catching mountain chickadees.

Sonnenberg will enlighten the audience on how the chickadees survive the cold snowy winters by storing and retrieving food. The Pravosudov Lab at the University of Nevada, Reno has been working on untangling the secrets behind how mountain chickadees are able to recover their hidden food stores and whether or not these memory abilities are under natural selection. 

Sonnenberg is a fourth year PhD student at the University of Nevada, Reno where he conducts research in the avian cognitive ecology lab focusing on mountain chickadees. His projects include monitoring the spatial learning and memory abilities as well as the reproductive investments of the long-term study population. Ben is a Montana native from Bozeman, Montana and received a Degree in Biology from Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, WA. He has worked around the country, including Washington, Nevada, Alaska, and Connecticut conducting avian related research and public outreach.

Please join us on Monday, February 8th, at 5:00 PM online at bit.ly/YouTubeTSM.  The event will be available on YouTube as a livestream and after the event. Livestream for this event starts at 5:00 PM on bit.ly/YouTubeTSM Or log onto YouTube and search for Tahoe Silicon Mountain. 

The audience will be able to submit questions during the presentation.

A Suggested donation of $5.00 will help TSM to defray the expenses of live streaming the event.  Please donate at www.Tahoesiliconmountain.com

You can find us at TahoeSiliconMountain.com or sign up for email meeting announcements here: http://bit.ly/TSMEmail

January 11: Donner Party’s Forlorn Hope Expedition

On December 16, 1846 fifteen members of the Donner Party left Donner Lake to bring back help for the friends and family left at the lake, making for a tragic part of Truckee’s history. Called Forlorn Hope, only seven survived the 33-day ordeal which covered almost 100 miles. These brave survivors spurred the four rescue parties that saved half of the Donner Party.

On December 16, 2020 four extreme athletes (Tim Twietmeyer, Jennifer Hemmen, Bob Crowley, and Elke Reimer) followed the trail of the Donner Party’s Forlorn Hope from Donner State Park to the Sacramento Valley near Wheatland. Join Tahoe Silicon Mountain, a local network of entrepreneurs and professionals, on Monday, January 11th, to hear the story of the team’s journey. Listen to the team’s thoughts on why they think the Forlorn Hope party made the decisions they did and the difficulties the team faced as they made the journey amidst the early snowfalls of the 2020-2021 season.

The trip culminates 7 years of research, both from written word and in-the-field surveys. Multiple trips were made to scout the route the team traveled. The key purpose of the team’s trip was to 1) Discover the lost trail of the Forlorn Hope, 2) Honor the members of the Forlorn Hope Party, and 3) Inspire others to combine history with sport. The team made the trip in 5 days, compared to the 33 days it took the Forlorn Hope party to make the trip. After successfully retracing the steps of the Forlorn Hope Party the team had these comments in their trip blog.

“We walked four across as we neared the end. We saw the small wooden sign hammered into the ground off in the distance, as the wagon road–and we, turned south. Each of us reached into our pocket to reveal the tribute cards we’d carried across the Sierra, over the pass, along the Yuba, in

the shadow of Devil’s Peak and Cisco Butte, by the fateful wrong turn, into the teeth of Burnett Canyon and the North Fork of the American River, up the hill so steep, across the river again, along the Bear River and now here, the place the seven Forlorn Hope survivors had been brought.

As we neared the spot where the adobe house once stood, we gently laid each card down at the base of the sign; reuniting the seventeen members of Forlorn Hope for the first time in 174 years. We felt relief too, our mission accomplished.”

For additional information on the trip, please visit the expeditions website www.forlornhope.org

Please join us on Monday, January 11h, at 5:00 PM online at bit.ly/YouTubeTSM. The event will be available on YouTube as a livestream and after the event. Livestream for this event starts at 5:00 PM on bit.ly/YouTubeTSM Or log onto YouTube and search for Tahoe Silicon Mountain.

The audience will be able to submit questions to the panelists during the presentation.

A Suggested donation of $5.00 will help TSM to defray the expenses of live streaming the event. Please donate at www.Tahoesiliconmountain.com
You can find us at TahoeSiliconMountain.com or sign up for email meeting announcements here: http://bit.ly/TSMEmail