The inexpressive Depths of Lake Tahoe Water Sports

Lake Tahoe water sports are rightly famous. There is something there for every person who wants a vacation on the California Nevada border lake. Everything from river rafting the Truckee river to para-sailing for the more adventurous to pedal boats for a more relaxing and quiet afternoon. Of policy there is water skiing, wake boarding, kayaking, jet-skiing, canoeing, float planes, windsurfing and more.

But there are incommunicable depths to Lake Tahoe water sports with many tales of mafia hoods dumping bodies in the lake back in the 1950s.

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"That may or may not be true, but we can't be sure because we can't go down that far," said Van Arnum, a former coroner.

The secrets of Lake Tahoe will always be a mystery, except for those who know for sure they have lost family or friends in drownings, boating accidents or other fatal mishaps. The conditions within the lake, the second deepest in all of North America, ensure that bodies in the Lake stay forever below the surface.

Not long ago locals were mystified when the body of a young woman was found in shallow waters near Glenbrook, on the Nevada side of the lake. "Usually a someone who goes into the lake, they don't come back up," said a local undertaker. "I just never, never have seen anything floating," he said. "They usually go down and that's it."

"We have had a number of cases over the years where drowning victims, or apparent drowning victims, never surfaced again," said one local sheriffs lieutenant. "They're just gone."

Last summer a man from India was reported by his friends to have drowned in water 700 feet deep after he fell into the lake off a flotation device. He was wearing a life vest, which was later found floating by itself. The case, as is the general practice, was filed as a missing someone in case his body ever surfaces.

A number of factors conduce to the phenomenon of bodies not rising to the exterior at Lake Tahoe, agreeing to the diagnosis agency at the University of Nevada, Reno. When population drown, their lungs fill with water, dropping them into the depths of the lake. Decomposition starts, and while that process gases such as methane, nitrogen and oxygen are produced.

In warmer water, the gases would allow a body to rise "like a balloon. The body buoys up to the top," A Nevada diagnosis agency spokesperson said. But since Lake Tahoe is so cold, bodies don't decompose, gases don't form, and the bodies stay submerged.

Lake Tahoe has a consistent temperature of 39 degrees fahrenheit from the depths of 600 to 700 feet, agreeing to the U.S. Geological Survey. Its exterior temperature varies with the season. In August and September the exterior temperature runs from 65 to 70 degrees. while the winter the exterior temperature ranges from 40 degrees to 50 degrees.

So enjoy your Lake Tahoe water sports but take care not to become part of the strangeness of the great Lake.

The inexpressive Depths of Lake Tahoe Water Sports