Heavenly Lake Tahoe

The question is whether to put a comma in that title or not. The resort, in a rather cheesy fashion, is called Heavenly, but it manages to live up to its namesake. This weekend we drove up to Lake Tahoe for some skiing. That sentence makes the endeavour sound simpler than it was, because first we had to buy some snow chains for the car, in case we needed them, which in the end of course we didn’t. Having established that we couldn’t get chains for the BMW, we set about trying to buy the alternative – tyre cables. And of course we had to ring around a lot, because no one had them, with it being the end of the season, but we eventually succeeded and rebuffed the cashier’s inquiry as to whether we’d like the garage to fit them there and then with a quizzical look (of course, we’d love the darn clunky things on our wheels for the entire 200 miles of our journey, through places that never see so much as a frost, when there might be at most ten miles of snowy road right at the end!). Anyway, we eventually set off from a breezy San Francisco, watching the temperature rise to 29°C as we travelled through the flat Sacramento valley, then plunge to 10°C once we were in the mountains, passing some incredible rock formations on the way. The journey took just under four hours.

Lake Tahoe is one of the highest, largest, deepest lakes in the world and sits in a huge bowl in the Sierra Nevada mountains. From the summits, it was possible to observe just how high it is compared with the surrounding plains, which stretched for possibly hundreds of miles, many thousands of feet below. We stayed in a cheap motel (of which there are very many) near the California/Nevada stateline. Even without a map, it is easy to see where the border lies – the California side is a largish settlement of low-rise buildings surrounded by pine forest, while the Nevada side is a small cluster of huge, multi-storey casino hotels, profiting from the fact that gambling is illegal in California. We didn’t actually do any gambling ourselves, but couldn’t resist taking a peek at the many poker/blackjack/roulette/goodness knows what else tables and gaudy flashing slot machines. On the second night, we also had dinner in one of the casinos. It was a superb all-you-can-eat buffet on the 18th floor for about £10 and we had the good fortune of sitting right by the window with its amazing views of the lake, forest and snowy peaks.

Our motel was near the foot of the gondola that takes you up into the ski area, which was convenient, as it meant we could just tramp back there with our skis after the first day. In contrast to last time, the weather was sunny and clear, so we were able to enjoy some fabulous views and, more importantly, see where we were going for more of the time, which always helps. We had a great couple of days exploring the different runs. The only rather scary moment was when we completely lost each other, shortly after an argument regarding whose fault it was that we’d gone the wrong way. Jon disappeared and I ended up doing a bit of unplanned off-pisting in an icy little gully with lots of rocks and tree trunks poking up. We eventually found each other the best part of an hour later after we’d taken very different (and quite creative routes) back to our original destination. It was good that we went there when we did, because there can’t be much more of the season left now. The lower level runs were incredibly slushy (which made skiing on them rather exhausting), while some of the supposedly easy runs were deemed “experts only” because of the paucity of snow. I certainly made the most of what was left, which meant I woke up today stiff in a number of places! Not to mention the fact that my resulting jelly legs only managed to add to my earthquake paranoia once we got back to San Francisco.