Christmas Tree goes up at Heavenly Village

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif - It was a true community effort to get the Christmas Tree delivered to the Heavenly Village in South Lake Tahoe last week. For the third consecutive year, a tree was selected from the South Shore to be on display for the holiday season.

On Monday, November 16, 2020 the 64-foot tree was cut down by Kenny Curtzwiler of K & K Services at 6:30 a.m., lifted by a crane and placed onto a flatbed truck, escorted by South Lake Tahoe Police and CHP, driven to its destination, lifted off the truck and placed into a stand to be decorated.

Curtzwiler said this was his third year to do the tree. He said Gary Casteel and Dreu Murin of Heavenly Village had contacted him and said they wanted to try to be the Rockefeller Center of the West Coast and have a large Christmas Tree.

Now the tradition continues. Curtzwiler said the process for the next tree starts almost immediately after placing the current tree. The perfect tree has to be found, paperwork needs to be completed, plans in place with different participants, then the big day.

Two years ago he was watching trees being marked to be cut down at the airport and asked if they could save a couple to be used for Heavenly Village. Now that those have been used he'll start looking in hazard areas for the next one.

According to Curtzwiler those who worked to make "the big day" happen and run smoothly and safely were Lt. Travis Cabral and the South Lake Tahoe Police Department, South Lake Tahoe Fire Rescue, California Highway Patrol, Mark Gibbs and Joe Irvin from the City of South Lake Tahoe, Ed Cook Crane Service, Robert Haen, TRPA, Heavenly Village personnel along with the K & K Services crew. Curtzwiler donates his time.

Heavenly Village is holding a tree lighting ceremony on Friday, November 27 at 6:00 p.m. It will follow caroling with Santa and Mrs. Santa in front of the gondola at 5:00 p.m.