lookout vistas

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Martis Peak, Tahoe National Forest

Easily reached off of Interstate Highway 80 in Northern California, you can drive to this lookout vista via a narrow paved road during the summer fire season.  For driving directions, see the Martis Peak 2 link above.

Martis Peak is a working lookout, staffed during the fire season.  If the lookout sees a smoke in this vista, they aim the "fire finder" at it; and read the direction in degrees (called the azimuth) to the fire.  From their knowledge of the terrain, they then estimate the distance to the fire on the map in the center of the fire finder.  This location is reported to the fire fighting dispatch center, which for Martis Peak is at the Grass valley airport.

This is a rotating panorama of the vista around this lookout.  It can be slow to load, but is worth waiting for. Clicking on the panorama will stop its motion, and you can then click and drag it manually at different speeds depending upon where you place your cursor adjacent to the edge of the panorama.  If it does not appear, you may see a message at the top of the page asking you to turn off your pop-up blocker to allow it to appear.  If you see a message in the panorama space reading “out of memory”, just click over to one of the other links on this page, and then back in to this one to make the panorama appear.

Martis Peak lookout was originally built by the U.S. Forest Service in 1914 and staffed by them until 1986.  The lookout building was restored by the state fire protection agency Cal. Fire in 1996, and is now staffed by one seasonal employee and several volunteer lookouts during the fire season, July into October.

This is a diagram on the wall above the west windows of the lookout, of the mountains and ski areas which can be seen to the west of the lookout.

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