I have friends up there and we kayak on places like Castle Lake and hike up near Panther Meadows and 4 wheel drive a lot usually sometime in August when it is warm there because usually all the back roads are open then because snow has melted off and really really remote places you can get to with a 4 wheel drive then that are exquisitely beautiful.
However, this year I don't want to have to breathe anymore smoke and I'm used to the thicker air at sea level as well on the California coast. So, in order to be able to breathe smoke I likely would have to go when it wasn't smoky and stay there a month for my body to adjust to 3500 feet plus elevations up to 10,000 feet where I would go while there.
So, staying away seems better at this point.
Also, any locals there that can leave the last 2 years of heavy smoke periodically have already left for the summer so they don't have breathing or health problems from breathing smoke all the time.
One of the very worst places to be right now is Lake Tahoe where the air is just sooo bad that it's really serious. For example, if you or I even went there on vacation we might wind up in the hospital there on oxygen because the altitude is at least 6000 feet everywhere on Lake Tahoe and when you add smoke to that people are just going to be in the hospital there on oxygen that aren't used to breathing air at 6000 feet plus smoke.
About 20 years ago this actually happened to my wife. I had lived around smoke summers in Mt. Shasta before so I knew how serious this can get already so I told my wife I wasn't going to unload our luggage to our room because it was too dangerous. And so, my wife got an attitude and said she would do it instead. I told her not to because of the smoke and fires nearby then. However, she didn't listen and wound up spending the night on oxygen in the hospital and got all embarrassed because I was right. Our 5 to 7 year old then had to watch all this and even went over to the fire engines nearby and asked for help for her Mom because she wasn't breathing right so the firemen put her on oxygen right then and then an ambulance came and took her to the hospital overnight. She was okay by the next morning.
That time the problem was that she carried luggage up three flights of stairs and we live on the California coast at sea level so she didn't realize she couldn't do that and stay out of the hospital.
I realized you might not know that this incident took place at Granlibakken which is a sort of Swiss Chalet winter and summer resort near Lake Tahoe where my wife got smoke inhalation and had to spend the night in the hospital on oxygen to recover at that altitude.
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