TRUCKEE, Calif. – After officially becoming a nonprofit organization earlier this year, Truckee Pride kicked off its second annual Pride Week and has big plans to expand its support for LGBTQ+ people in the town. David Mack, founder of Truckee Pride, hopes to bring year-round events and to focus on better health and social outcomes for queer people in Truckee.

How it started

The idea for Truckee Pride started on a December day two years ago, when Mack asked why Truckee didn’t have an existing Pride event. He decided to get in touch with official organizations, event organizers, and volunteers, and the whole processed snowballed from there. “They were all really stoked,” said Mack. “There’s a real alchemy in getting that many people together to put something on.”

---

---

Like last year, a team of volunteers came together to organize the events. But this year, their offerings expanded significantly. They were able to get larger spaces for screening movies, volunteer for trail work, come together at a queer Shabbat, and put on workshops and shows. Brian Broom-Peltz, one of the volunteers, said, “My friends in Los Angeles are surprised and impressed at the variety of events and how inclusive they are.”

Amanda Denz, one of the primary event organizers, was excited about the varied events. “It can really include a wide range of people, which makes it accessible to everyone and open to all walks of life,” she said.

---

---

The nonprofit also recognized the desire for more youth-friendly events, which several volunteers responded to, including high schoolers who put on their own teen-focused event through their nonprofit called The Aspen Collective. “I would have loved to have these kinds of events in my small Irish town,” said Mack.

Queer healthcare

Rural and small communities aren’t typically what people think of as queer spaces, but LGBTQ+ communities exist everywhere, and can often go unseen and unsupported without deliberate and organized action. And health outcomes, according to the 2022 PRC Community Engagement and Behavioral Health Survey, are far worse for LGBTQ+ people.

Queer people in North Tahoe are more likely to consider moving away from the area and face higher rates of loneliness, isolation and healthcare insecurity. This comes on top of the wider healthcare crisis in America, which is exacerbated further in rural communities with less healthcare infrastructure—the Tahoe Forest Hospital District is considered a critical access hospital.

“Queer healthcare in general is a topic close to my heart,” said Mack, who is actively working on increasing the visibility on sexual healthcare and gender-affirming treatments. “Bringing more support and inclusion has become a more core part of our mission. And there are good health outcomes from being embedded in communities,” Mack declared.

Volunteers at work

Truckee Pride is completely volunteer-run and Denz encouraged anyone who was interested to get involved. This year saw new volunteers and participants from previous years taking on bigger responsibilities.

Leo Murrell, one of the founders of The Aspen Collective, created the music-focused collective because it helped him feel safe. He came out in high school, but according to him, Truckee wasn’t always a very queer place, and he found acceptance and safety in the alternative music scene in Reno, especially at The Holland Project.

“We were really lacking safe, sober spaces for teens here in Truckee,” said Murrell. “For a lot of kids, there’s nothing to do once they’re out of school, out of sports practice, and there’s a high level of substance abuse.” But creating queer-friendly and teen-focused spaces through The Aspen Collective helped to curb those issues, at least for a time. This Pride, they put on their second Punk Pride event. Last year’s event raised a $2,600 scholarship for a high school student to attend Camp Brave Trails, a queer-affirming leadership event.

It’s probably their last event for some time, since Murrell and co-founder Eliot Lowe are both heading off to college in the fall. But Murrell hopes that their work will inspire other young people in Truckee to organize spaces and events. “In the future, I do want to come back or even go into other rural communities and plant that seed,” said Murrell.

Nubbia Greniger, who was involved in the Rainbow Run last year, took on organizing four different events this year, including Pride Shabbat and Bike Night. “As a mom, it’s important that my daughter feels loved… I want her to have something like this week, where she can feel special and loved.”

Broom-Peltz, who also helped organize this year’s Bike Night, agreed. Making the support for the LGBTQ+ community visible through the presence of queer people and allies alike is something he considered deeply important. “Inclusion doesn’t happen in silence. And putting on events like this, throughout Truckee, shows people that they are loved.”

Queer Ascent

One of the major events organized in conjunction with Truckee Pride this year was Queer Ascent—the brainchild of climber Jordan Cannon, who came out in Climbing Magazine in 2021. He is currently an athlete with Arc’teryx, an outdoor apparel and equipment company that sponsored the event. He pitched Truckee as the location for the event last year, which serendipitously aligned with Truckee Pride.

Cannon put together the event to make a welcoming and inclusive space for queer climbers and was elated that Truckee responded well to the event. “It far exceeded our expectations…. There’s definitely room to do more and grow the event each year. I’m still trying to find my place with this leadership role, but I’m looking to set the stage to uplift others.”

He was especially excited to see a diversity of attendees at his climbing clinic, because he was inspired to come out through calls for more diversity after Black Lives Matter protests in 2021.

“My career could have been really different if I had come out before I was an athlete with Arc’teryx,” said Cannon, who acknowledged that coming out as a white gay man was likely easier than it was for other people. “I was thankful to have Arc’teryx fully behind me and stay committed to those values, even as corporate sponsorship tends to pull out of this stuff. It’s important now, more than ever, to double down.”

Shelma Jun, also a climber with Arc’teryx, is no stranger to affinity events like these. They created Flash Foxy, an inclusive climbing space that was originally for women, then expanded to gender diverse people. “Any liberation has to be intersectional, so we have to be able to talk about those intersections where our attendees might be having challenges in their life,” said Jun.

Climbing as a sport has typically been dominated by men, which has made it harder for women and trans people to make spaces for themselves. “For a lot of people, there’s that feeling of having to leave parts of yourself behind to participate in climbing community,” said Jun. “As a queer immigrant, I’m a master of that kind of compartmentalizing… so these spaces help me to ask the question of, ‘What does it look like to bring my full self?'”

Jun, who splits their time between Bishop, Calif. and New York, wants to make rural spaces more inclusive too. “Why is the default that if you’re queer, you have to be urban?” asked Jun. “Queer people have a right to be in rural spaces, to have connection with the land, to heal and connect.”

They believe that rural communities are in a unique position to commit to their communities, a feeling shared by headliner Pattie Gonia, an environmental activist and drag queen.

“I’m grateful to be from a rural place, a place about the size of Truckee,” said Pattie Gonia. “Something I learned from it is that you can’t just throw your neighbors away. People in power want us to be afraid of one another, but we have a lot in common.”

Pattie Gonia emphasized the importance of rural pride and how it celebrates a strong and powerful community. In May, she helped fly a transgender flag on El Capitan in Yosemite, sending the message that trans people are natural. “It felt important to ally trans people and show a message of love, to fly a flag higher than hate,” said Pattie Gonia.

She urged people in rural places to find their communities, to build and create spaces, and to make access and inclusion a forethought. “Being an ally is a verb. It requires action,” Pattie Gonia said. “Showing up for things like Pride, in queer spaces that prioritize queer experiences, shows your support.”

Truckee Pride year-round

During her performance, the sendoff for Truckee Pride Week, Pattie Gonia called for environmental protection and action, supporting LGBTQ+ people in rural places, and celebrating queer joy. The ticket sales helped fundraise for the Truckee Pride nonprofit, who will be continuing their work through the rest of the year.

“We’re trying to regularly meet and distribute our efforts throughout the year,” said Mack, who also is trying to build enough support in the nonprofit to ensure it can run smoothly, even if he’s not constantly at the helm.

Now, more than ever, it’s become important to support LGBTQ+ communities who are being attacked in the current political climate. “It’s fortunate that Truckee is full of people with sensible, loving and caring mindsets,” said Mack. “We’re just trying to make sure that the LGBTQ+ community here isn’t just celebrated in June, but year-round.”

Denz said, “Juxtaposed with everything else going on in my news feed and the broader country, making it clear that this is a safe place feels like something I can actually do. And it really makes me love this town.”

For more information on Truckee Pride, you can visit their website at https://www.truckeepride.org/ or follow them on Instagram @truckeepride.

Eli Ramos is a reporter for Tahoe Daily Tribune. They are part of the 2024–26 cohort of California Local News Fellows through UC Berkeley.