GETTING
AWAY
Good Medicine: Summertime at Lake
Tahoe
I’m at once fascinated by the athleticism of everyone
I encounter in Lake Tahoe. It’s not surprising,
I suppose, to find the outdoorsy populating a place
whose commerce is wrapped up in the outdoors. At
Lake Tahoe, former ski instructors seem to lurk
in even the most prosaic jobs. But I can’t escape
the idea that there is something more intrinsic
to it.
Mark Twain passed through the Sierra Nevadas in
the 1860s and immortalized the area in deftly penned
descriptions. In 1872’s Roughing It, he
asserts that “three months of camp life on Lake
Tahoe would restore an Egyptian mummy to his pristine
vigor,” calling the air “very fine and
bracing… the same air the angels breathe.”
Well, maybe. But it takes a bit of effort for
mere mortals to acclimate to it. Huffing along
the Tahoe rim trail, I found myself inserting odd
ellipses into my sentences to gulp in quick breaths.
“I don’t think we get used to needing less air,”
comments North Lake Tahoe local, Pettit Gilwee,
who lists trail running among her hobbies, “I think
we just get used to stopping to breathe.”
At lake level, Tahoe is 6200 feet above sea level.
Parts of the rim trail scale another 2200 feet
to circumvent the lake.
“When I was in the process of moving here, several
people told me the ideal elevation for the human
body was 7500 feet above sea level,” says Alexis
Roman Hill, who was still among the newly initiated
to the area when I spoke with her last June — a
three-week transplant from Detroit.
Hill moved to Incline Village in 2008 to do sales
and marketing for the Tahoe Shakespeare Festival.
“Shortly before the move, I had lost a lot of weight
from the stress of the changes. I lost my appetite
and my skin was breaking out,” she explained, “but
since arriving my skin has cleared, my appetite
has returned and I feel great.”
According to Arizona osteopath Dr. Art Mullen,
the body
increases hemoglobin and other oxygen carrying
components in the blood over an extended period at high elevation— a phenomenon that has
appeared to be beneficial in certain types of athletic
performance.
However in terms of overall health, Mullen contends
there is no scientific evidence to suggest that
increased hemoglobin levels are advantageous. “In
fact, you can precipitate that same occurrence
by smoking cigarettes,” says Mullen. “I don’t see
any benefit to living at higher altitudes in terms
of enhancing your longevity or anything else.”
He doesn’t entirely discount the perception,
however, adding, “I think there is something positive
to be said about the emotional aspect of living
at a higher altitude.”
Perhaps Tahoe’s wellness benefits can be touted
along the same thread of reasoning 
that Polar Bear
Clubs like to talk up dips in subzero streams and
Icelanders follow up the sauna by rolling naked
in the snow. In June, squares of ice still patchwork
the rim. It is crisp and achingly pristine.
The rim contains 165 miles of trail,
built and maintained entirely by a crew of volunteers
headed by the Tahoe Rim Trail Association. From
its vantage, the lake unfolds in 180 degrees
of translucent aquamarine graduating into fathomless
blue before the panorama ascends into green pine
carpeted mountain ranges. The peaks are ever-frosty
white.
Lake Tahoe is the second deepest
lake in the United States and one of only
three on the West Coast to receive the special
designation Outstanding National Resource Water,
under the Clean Water Act. One can peer an average
of 70 feet into its diaphanous depths.
To safeguard the Tahoe basin’s fragile ecosystem,
the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency — a bi-state
pact, ratified by Congress, between California
and Nevada — has been in effect since 1968. Prior
to the agency, unchecked development dating from
the 1940s compromised the lake’s famous clarity
and signature azure blue.
Even before that, following the discovery of the
Comstock Lode in 1859, the forests were rampantly
denuded for 20 odd years to support the sprawling
labyrinth of mines channeling their way beneath
nearby Virginia City, nearly devastated the basin.
After the decline of the silver era, the lake
— long and slightly molar-shaped — developed into
two distinct regions. North Lake Tahoe hit its
stride in the 1920s, quickly becoming characterized
by the luxurious weekend lodges of San Francisco
elite. South Lake Tahoe, precipitated by the development
of gambling halls on the Nevada-side of state line—emerged
in the 1950s.
Within the last few years, the city has begun
to enact a plan to reinvent the south shores. Vetted by the Regional Planning Agency, which regulates
everything from building and development to land
use, South Lake Tahoe began its facelift in 2002
with the introduction of Heavenly Village in the
center thoroughfare. To make way for Heavenly,
the city removed a number of decaying Eisenhower-era
motor courts.
It also enacted a mountain-lodge architectural
mandate, an ordinance that cloaks everything in
matching veneers. I generally like these types
of initiatives, as it is eminently fascinating,
if not slightly disconcerting, to stumble upon
McDonalds and other all-too-familiar fare duded
in the habiliments of a mountain hamlet.
Since the makeover, the two ends of Lake Tahoe
have settled into more comparable though distinct
identities. South Lake Tahoe amps up the hedonism
factor a few notches beyond that of its conscientious
north-flanking twin. Adding another dimension to
the culture, California and Nevada bisect both
halves, quartering the area into an odd patchwork
of laws and liberalities.
In North Tahoe I stayed in ecologically-aware
Cedar House Sport Hotel, a boutique inn whose European
style is juxtaposed with raw materials drawn from
its rugged backdrop. The hotel's quaint charm,
together with its environmental focus culminate
in rich details, from a rosy naked cedar façade
to my favorite touch, a manicured roof garden overlooked
by second floor balconies.
Later, I quit the tranquility of North Tahoe for
its headier southern counterpart. Moving to the
new Montbleau Resort and Spa, I exchanged hemp
and cedar scored to the airy peal of wind chimes
for gilded glamour punctuated by clanging slots.
Ever more, the Tahoe tourism juggernaut has come
to resemble a year-round enterprise. Come spring
thaw, ski instructors trade their poles for oars
and take to the nearby Truckee River while hikers
and trail joggers resume where cross-country skiers
and slalom runners leave off.
June marks the opening of the summer season, an
occasion heralded by a mountain of opening days
events. In South Tahoe I boarded the Tahoe Queen
in time to become a passive participant in the
annual sternwheeler race that pits the Queen against
the M.S. Dixie II.
Afterwards, I was taken to Heavenly’s crowning
glory, the gondola that links the resort to the
downtown shopping district. If gondolas generally
might be described as glorified ski lifts, that
at Heavenly — in keeping with its lofty designation
— could rightly be 
termed exalted. The enclosed
cars heft passengers up 3500 feet via cable to
10,067 feet above sea level.
The views from the Gondola and the mid-climb observation
deck are impressive. “In winter, there are days
when the lake is so still the entire mountain range
is reflected in it,” says Jennifer Boyd of Weidinger
Public Relations. “It’s like you’re skiing into
glass.”
Twain described the lake as alternately “glassy
and clear or rippled and breezy or black and storm-tossed,
according to nature’s mood.” And as nature was
in a breezy state of mind that day, the much-anticipated
zipline was out of commission due to wind.
Without it, there was little more than nature—
and an overpriced hamburger stand— to entice us
at the summit. With Boyd as my rosy-cheeked guide,
I set out on another high-altitude hike, ambling
through the looping trails at a humbling tenable
pace. “When you train here for a marathon that
takes place somewhere else like Las Vegas, it feels
so different when you get down to sea level to
perform,” says Boyd. “It is so much easier.”
Later, at my behest, Gilwee estimated that Lake
Tahoe must play host to some 15 marathons a year,
and these only encompassing non-ski events with
a running/biking focus. According to Jack Daniels,
PhD and head distance coach at NAU’s Center for
High Altitude Training, many individuals report
altitude training helps raise them to a new level
of performance. However, says Daniels, this is
most often a result of not being in peak shape
upon arrival at altitude.
“What this amounts to usually is that altitude
is a cooler, drier, more enjoyable place to spend
some time, without distraction from the task at
hand,” he concludes.
Lake Tahoe encompasses all of these qualities
with a remarkable climate offering 274 days of
sunshine a year.
The clear skies open the way for Shakespeare to
be played out under the stars. The six-week Lake
Tahoe Shakespeare Festival takes place mid-July
through August on an outdoor stage that abuts the
lake in North Tahoe.
The festival setting has a way of broaching its
boundaries, inching its way into the role of invisible,
yet very present third lead in last summer’s productions.
The enthused staff, brought in house for the first
time last year, doesn’t mince in recognizing the
transcendent nature of its stage. In 2008’s A
Midsummer’s Night Dream, the ancient Washoe
Indians— who once occupied the Tahoe basin — seamlessly
fused into the plotline.
Back in 1872, when Twain waxed that he could not
think there any amount of fatigue that could not
be rid with one night in Lake Tahoe, he placed
a single stipulation on his prescription. The night
in question must be spent “not under a roof, but
under the sky.”
If you plan on heeding his advice, the perpendicular
elbow of Sierra Nevadas and north shore — in the
company of Shakespeare — is a mighty fine place
to start.
Lindsay DeChacco is associate editor of Highroads magazine
Photos courtesy of Lake Tahoe Visitors Authority
If you go
Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival
July 11 — August 23
948 Incline Way, Incline Village
775.832.1616, laketahoeshakespeare.com
Summer Season Kick-off in South Lake Tahoe
June 12-14
800-At-Tahoe, BlueLakeTahoe.com
Cedar House Sport Hotel
10918 Brockway Rd., Truckee
530.582.5655, cedarhousesporthotel.com
Montbleu Resort Casino and Spa
55 Highway 50, Stateline
888.829.7630, montbleuresort.com
