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Tahoe Tour

Here is a short tour of the Lake Tahoe area.  First, you may want to know a few facts about Tahoe. 

Elevation:    6,228 feet above sea level. Lake Tahoe is the largest high alpine lake in the Northern Hemisphere.  (The only lake that is both bigger and higher in the world is Lake Titicaca on the border of Bolivia and Peru.)  

Depth:    1,600 feet. Tahoe is the tenth deepest lake in the world.

Size:    22 miles long, 12 miles wide, with a surface area of 140,000 acres.

Clarity:     Underwater visibility is approximately 70 feet.

Weather:    Average high temp in January is 39 degrees, average high in August is 80 degrees.  Summers are dry with occasional thunderstorms in August.  Winters are wet.  Precipitation is mostly snow with the West Shore receiving up to 300" per year and the East Shore 150" per year.  The mountains receive substantially more.  An average year will have 275 to 300 days of sunshine a year.

Water Temperature:    Cold!  Although the shallow beach areas can warm up to 60 degrees in August, most of the lake stays 40 - 50 degrees year round.  Swimmers can easily suffer from hypothermia so wetsuits are advised. 

Drainage:    There are sixty streams that drain into Lake Tahoe.  The only outlet is the Truckee River in Tahoe City.  The Truckee flows North to Truckee, California, then East to Reno, Nevada and then Northeast to Pyramid Lake.  Pyramid Lake has no outlet, its only water loss being evaporation.

The map below shows the areas immediately adjacent to the lake.  Just off the map are Reno to the upper right, Carson City directly to the right, the town of Truckee to the upper left and the ski resorts of Alpine Meadows and Squaw Valley to the left.  

For those of you who are wondering exactly where Lake Tahoe is in the big picture, remember the "elbow" of California where the east border of the state bends?  That elbow is in the middle of the lake.

Following the map are some photos that show different parts of the Lake Tahoe area.  Some are areas that figure in the novels, others are general.  Enjoy!

Here is Emerald Bay, the only bay on the lake. Carved by a glacier during the last ice age, it is surrounded by mountain walls that rise up 3,000 feet. If you ever visit you'll see why it is one of the most photographed places in the world. Occasionally, Emerald Bay will freeze over in the winter because, unlike the main lake which is over 1,600 feet deep, Emerald Bay is less than 400 feet deep which allows the water to get a little bit colder than the main lake. Incidentally, Lake Tahoe never warms up much in the summer, so if you ever try to swim in it beware of hypothermia! In the middle of Emerald Bay is Fannette Island, the only island in Lake Tahoe.

To the right is Cave Rock on the east shore of the lake. Cave rock was and still is a sacred place for the Washoe Indians, the people who lived at Lake Tahoe for hundreds of years before the white man named John Fremont "discovered" the Lake.  The Washoe wintered to the east down in the Carson Valley and in the summer hiked up to the lake to fish and hunt.  Although there is disagreement over the origin of the name "Tahoe," one of the likeliest explanations is that the Washoe called the lake something like "Daow" which means, depending again on the source of information, something like "big water." 

This is Sand Harbor on the east shore of the lake, just south of Incline Village.  A beautiful crescent of sand beach with brilliant turquoise water, Sand Harbor is where the "Shakespeare on the Beach" festival is held each summer.  Imagine relaxing in a sandy natural amphitheater on a summer evening in August while a top-drawer theater company puts on "Hamlet" or "Othello" with moonlit Lake Tahoe as a backdrop.  Almost as exciting as earlier in the day when you were lounging on the hot, sunny beach reading TAHOE DEATHFALL or TAHOE BLOWUP!

The photo to the right shows Jennifer's big powerboat blasting through the waves with the west shore of Tahoe in the background.  (a scene from TAHOE DEATHFALL)

To the left in the distance is snow-covered Freel Peak. At the south end of the Tahoe Basin, Freel Peak is Tahoe's highest mountain at 10,881 feet.  Freel Peak and the valley below it figure prominently in TAHOE BLOWUP.

To the right is the Vikingsholm castle at the end of Emerald Bay.  It was built of stone in 1906 by a Norwegian heiress who wanted to duplicate the style of medieval castles in Norway.  Every day she had her butler row her out to Fannette Island in Emerald Bay where she climbed up to the stone Tea House to take tea.  (Which, of course, the butler carried in a silver teapot.) The Vikingsholm castle puts in an appearance in TAHOE DEATHFALL.

To the left is a winter wonderland with soft, deep snow perfect for back-country skiing or snowshoeing.  Flagpole Peak is in the background.   

 To the right are Maggie's Peaks just to the southwest of Emerald Bay.  On North Maggie's (on the right) is the Rock Slide where a big part of the mountain slid down toward Emerald Bay in 1955.  The Rock Slide is where Melissa Salazar fell to her death in TAHOE DEATHFALL.  A picture of the Rock Slide is below with a slight dusting of snow in late fall.

      To the right is a view from the Mount Rose highway looking south  down the East Shore.