CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
Out of South Lake Tahoe, one way: 44 km, roughly 51 min in the saddle. On the way it passes Cave Rock and Sand Harbor. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,250 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Water arrives beside the road and stays for 27 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go — slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did.
For about 21 km this is Lake Tahoe Loop, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it. Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast.
Lake Tahoe sits at 6,225 feet, which makes it one of the highest large lakes in the country, and the water is so clear that on a calm day you can see objects more than sixty feet down. It is also very deep, about 1,645 feet at its deepest, making it the second deepest lake in the United States after Crater Lake. The basin formed as the Sierra Nevada rose along fault lines and glaciers later carved the valleys, and the Washoe people spent their summers on its shores for thousands of years, long before Europeans arrived. Their name for the lake, Da ow a ga, means edge of the lake.
Read the complete Near South Lake Tahoe write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
South Lake Tahoe is where the day begins. Next is Cave Rock.
Cave Rock is a lump of volcanic rock on the Nevada shore of Lake Tahoe, and US 50 goes straight through it. Two tunnels bore through the stone, the older from 1931 and a second added in the 1950s, and when you ride through you are literally passing through a mountain that has been sacred to the Washoe people for thousands of years. The Washoe consider it a place of power and healing, and rock climbing was banned there after a long legal fight. Visitors are asked to treat the site with respect, and the park around the base has a boat ramp and picnic area.
Read the complete Cave Rock write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cave Rock comes up about 15 km into the recorded legs. Next is Sand Harbor.
Sand Harbor is where Lake Tahoe shows off. A cluster of smooth granite boulders sits in water so clear that it looks like glass, with pale sand coves between them, and the colour of the lake runs from bright aqua in the shallows to deep blue just beyond. The setting is a Nevada state park on the east shore, and in high summer it is among the busiest beaches on the lake, with the car park often full by mid-morning. Come early or late, and it is very different.
Read the complete Sand Harbor write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 36 km into the recorded legs you reach Sand Harbor. Next is Incline Village.
Incline Village sits on the north-east shore of Lake Tahoe, on the Nevada side, a community of about 8,800 people with some of the most expensive lake-view houses in the country, though from the road the mood is quiet pine woods and low buildings. It is the sort of place where a casual cafe has a view of blue water, and where the boulders on the nearby beaches are so large and smooth that they seem to have been placed by a sculptor.
Read the complete Incline Village write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Incline Village closes the day.
South Lake Tahoe → Cave Rock is 15 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cave Rock → Sand Harbor is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sand Harbor → Incline Village is 8 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.