We head up the road into the Sierra Nevada again, this fine snowy week—to Tahoe, again, more specifically, in search of the perfect winter timeout in crisp mountain air. Elbowing through peak holiday-season crowds is not perfect for everyone, of course, myself included, so you could wait until January or later, and try to come up during the week.
The first thing about Tahoe is the lake itself. Like a vast oval mirror laid across the California-Nevada border, reflecting both states back on themselves, sapphire-blue Lake Tahoe is North America’s largest alpine lake. Mark Twain described Lake Tahoe as “a noble sheet of blue water . . . walled in by a rim of snow-clad mountain peaks. . . . As it lay there with the shadows of the mountains brilliantly photographed upon its still surface I thought it must surely be the fairest picture the whole earth affords.” If you ignore modern-day condo-to-condo encroachments and the area’s unsightly strip development, the lake is still some picture.
Lake Tahoe exists by the grace of geologic accident. Despite the area’s later glacial scouring, the Tahoe Basin was created by the earth’s faulting. As the land sank, the Sierra Nevada rose on the west and the Carson Range on the east. Over the eons, snow melt and rain filled this great basin, and kept on filling it: volcanic lava flows then glacial debris plugged the lake’s original outlets. Today, Tahoe’s only outlet is the Truckee River, which begins at Tahoe City and flows north and east to Reno and Nevada’s Pyramid Lake.
Surface measurements alone—Tahoe is 22 miles long and 12 miles wide, with a 72-mile shoreline—still don’t do the great lake justice. Tahoe’s depth averages 989 feet; it plunges down 1,645 feet at its deepest point. And the lake usually contains some 122 million acre-feet of water, enough to cover the entire state of California to a depth of 14 inches.
As in all things, more important than quantity of lake waters is quality. Though there are water quality problems, and continuing challenges due to Tahoe’s popularity, even today Lake Tahoe water is some of the purest in the world, with dissolved gases, salts, minerals, and organic matter rivaling the ratios found in distilled water. Tahoe water is so clear that, despite measurable increases in algae growth and sedimentation in recent decades, objects can be spotted to depths of about 60 feet. (A couple of decades ago, it was 75 feet.) Because of its great depth, the lake never freezes. As surface water gets colder it sinks, forcing warmer, lighter water upwards. Though Emerald Bay and other shallow inlets may occasionally freeze over, the lake itself is ice free because of its own gentle temperature-controlled dance.
The second thing about Tahoe—in the winter, in a good snow year—is its world-class skiing and snowboarding. Shredders fixate on the black-diamond runs but, as outdoorsman Tom Stienstra pointed out in the Chronicle’s Sunday Travel snow issue, this past November (2018), turn away from all those adrenaline highs and embrace euphoria instead on Tahoe’s excellent “cruiser runs,” intermediate routes.
Of course, there’s something for everyone, from family-friendly learning centers such as Big Bear Mountain and snow-tubing at Northstar to community races at Homewood. Wanna ski green? You can do that, too, now that 100 percent of the electricity at Squaw Valley/Alpine Meadows comes from renewable sources. And that’s not even considering all the cross-country options.
