CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. 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 and back again: 111 km, roughly 2 h 03 in the saddle. The stops in between: Emerald Bay, Tahoe City and Incline Village. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,250 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
A lake loop based around South Lake Tahoe, California, via Emerald Bay. Key character: alpine lake; forest; mountain views. Surface: paved.
Water arrives beside the road and stays for 15 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 30 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 Emerald Bay.
Emerald Bay is the most photographed corner of Lake Tahoe, and it earns the attention. On the southwest shore, a narrow glacial inlet of green and blue water cuts into the granite, with a tiny rocky island, Fannette, sitting in the middle like a lid. Lake Tahoe itself is enormous and cold, sitting at roughly 1,900 metres in the Sierra Nevada and among the deepest and clearest lakes in North America. In calm weather the water is a startling shade of turquoise near the shore and deep indigo further out.
Read the complete Emerald Bay write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Emerald Bay comes up 27 km in. Next is Tahoe City.
Tahoe City is the unofficial capital of the lake's north shore, a small town that has the shops, bars and bike racks of a resort without ever feeling too big. It sits at the point where the Truckee River leaves Lake Tahoe, the lake's only outlet, flowing north and east to the Nevada desert. A small dam controls the outflow, and the nearby Fanny Bridge, named for the view people have when they lean over the rail to watch the trout, is a good place to see how a river is born.
Read the complete Tahoe City write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
54 km in you reach Tahoe City. 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, late in the day. Next is Stateline.
Stateline is a town that exists because of a line on a map. On the southeast corner of Lake Tahoe, the border between California and Nevada runs straight through the street, and a cluster of casino towers stands on the Nevada side, a few steps from the motels, cafes and gas stations of South Lake Tahoe. When California tightened its rules on gambling, the casinos took their chance on the other side of the line, and the glitter has been there ever since. It looks odd against the pines and the mountains behind, and that is part of the joke.
Read the complete Stateline write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Stateline. That is the ride.