Hi,

We are a family of four coming from Australia for a month long trip and will be spending 4 days (23-26 Dec) at Tahoe over Christmas. Despite a fair amount of research Im still not sure the best place to us to stay. We are planning on skiing a day or two but really just picked Tahoe as a nice place to experience a white Christmas during our trip.

I'm looking for a place that has a Christmassy ambiance and the feeling I'm getting is South Lake Tahoe is not that place?? Northshore seems promising, but we don't want to be stuck in a ski village as such - would like other options for things to do as well.

I read that the North Shore has alot of nice "villages" any thoughts on what might suit us and possible accomodation options. Am happy to rent a condo/house.

Any input appreciated!

Cheers
Shann

Christmas is way too soon but it is right to plan ahead. North Shore is a great choice for a nice Lake Tahoe holiday.

I do hope that you get lucky and we have some snow for your visit. Some years there is a great amount of snow other years there is not so much.

You could check out Incline Village, Squaw Valley, Tahoe City for accomodations. Northstar is between the lake & Truckee and though it is a village area it is pretty nice.

The nice thing about the north shore is that htere are about a dozen ski resorts so if we have snow you will have a wide range of places. If we have little snow at least Norhtstar, Squaaw, Boreal and othere make snow for skiing.

While you can spend a nice Christmas slopeside or close on the Nevada side of Heavenly Valley at South Shore - http://www.skiheavenly.com/ where there are more casinos - I think the North Shore (Squaw Valley and adjacent Alpine Meadows being the two big ski mountains http://www.squaw.com/the-mountain/conditions ) offers more of a Christmasy feel.

From the North Shore - you could also drive over to Reno one afternoon/evening if you wanted to visit some Casinos - or you can also do that at Stateline - south of Incline Village.

You can also stay along the lake in North Shore - with incredibly beautiful views - and it's about 20/30 minutes to any of the ski areas. Here's one page I just googled - and there are others: http://www.tahoerentals.com/home.html

I'm not exactly certain what you're looking for (ambiance), but here's the low-down on the north shore (we're "north lake" people, rather than south).

Northstar and Squaw Valley are ski areas with "manufactured" villages (condos, restaurants, shops, skating rink and the like), but both are very nice. When there is snow, they're very convenient, because you can walk within the village. There is little housing within the Squaw Valley ski area itself, except for a couple of hotels and some condos, but there's plenty of housing on the road leading to the ski area. Northstar is a much bigger development, because the housing is technically within the resort itself (a lot of it is back from the road leading into the ski area, which is a couple of miles up from the main road). There are the "older" condo developments, very plain, but very popular, called Aspen Grove, Gold Bend,Silver Strike and Indian Hills. There are also loads of private homes within the development. All of those houses and condos have access to the original Recreation Center. Then there's the newer development -a Ritz-Carlton hotel and timeshares, a Hyatt timeshare, luxury condos (Catamount, Iron Horse and a few others), townhomes and houses (where, for example, Annika Sorenstam has a house), closer to the village (i.e. at the top of the road leading to the ski area). Those have access to the newer pool and fitness center but not the original one (which has a much better pool, but that doesn't matter in winter).

Neither of those is on the lake.

Surrounding the lake are a number of little towns and housing developments, very little of which is charming (but that doesn't make Lake Tahoe any less fabulous, because of the lake itself, the ski areas, the hiking, etc.). Going around the lake, starting where Highway 267 meets the lake, you have Kings Beach (funky beach town), then a few small towns that are just a few retail spots - a beach shop, a laundromat, a pizza place, that kind of thing - then Tahoe City, which is the biggest town on that side of the lake, with much more of the same kind of things, supermarkets, too, then you're on what's called the West Shore (Homewood, Tahoma, Meeks Bay), that's where the old money had their summer homes, and it's still lovely, no hotels, just rental homes. After that, you're on the south shore. Going the other way from Kings Beach, you get to Crystal Bay (yuck -- a few roadside casinos), then the largest town on that side, Incline Village, many more full-time residents here, access to the beach is private (you have to be a resident to have a permit), many incredible mansions on the lake, but also tons of regular housing, both single-family and condo. The southeast portion of the lake is very nice, but visitors don't usually spend much time there.

As someone said, snow is an iffy proposition in Tahoe at Christmas. Two years ago, there was a massive amount, last year, nothing.

Oops, I forgot to mention Truckee, which is the town closest to Northstar -- downtown Truckee is an old mining town and the main street is quaint.

Sorry for the multiple posts. Have you seen this map?

http://www.aaccessmaps.com/show/map/us/ca/tahoesub

sf7307's map is conceptually useful, but definitely not to scale. For actual distances among interesting points, look at Google Maps or the like. But fine work.

Shann, it would help to know what other things your family likes to do.

>>

Yes, but the entire circumference of the lake is only 71 miles, so distances really aren't all THAT important. What is important is what's on the lake and what's not, and what each area/town's ambiance is.