The snow began to fall just before our arrival in West Shore. For a skier, of course, this is generally a welcome turn of events, but this particular snowfall continued for the better part of the next three days. Even by Tahoe standards it was an exceptional storm: shutting down roads, closing ski areas, leaving deep drifts that cozied up to the windows of our charming cottage at Tahoma Meadows Bed & Breakfast (530/525-1553). It was hunker-down time.
But even as the swirling flakes reduced us to shut-in status, I considered myself lucky. Of all the places to be snowed in around Lake Tahoe, I’ll take West Shore any day of the week. South Shore is too urban for my tastes, North Shore a bit run-down. East Shore is beautiful but, alas, there’s no skiing. West Shore, however, delightfully preserves the old-school Tahoe of yesteryear.
There’s a phrase recited here — a mantra, really — that I first heard from lifelong local Rick Brown: “The West Shore is the best shore.” He didn’t have to sell me.
West Shore extends from Emerald Bay in the south up to the Truckee River as it runs just outside Tahoe City in the north. The only way in or out is via Route 89, which wends its way through tall pines along a sliver of land tucked at the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains as they spill to Lake Tahoe. The main communities — Tahoma, Homewood, and Sunnyside — are small, sprawl-free, and populated by families who have owned property here for generations. Grand Gatsbyesque homes of timber and stone dot the waterfront, where summer residents guide antique wooden boats into the docks, a gin and tonic balanced in whichever hand happens to be free.
West Shore is an old-money Mayberry with a California twist, perched on the rim of one of the most beautiful lakes in all of ski country. Being here takes me back to the smaller and gentler ski communities of my native New England. It feels to me — and just about anyone else who visits — like home. “If you’re looking for casinos and hustle and bustle, then don’t stay here. But if you want to escape the crowds and have a five-minute drive to fantastic skiing, this is the spot,” says Dick White, who runs Tahoma Meadows with his German wife, Ulli.
With the ski areas closed due to the blizzard conditions, we slept in late the next day, watching movies and sipping through a noontime bottle of Sonoma Coast pinot before slipping into our cross-country gear and breaking trail to Sugar Pine Point State Park. When the snow abated and the sun reappeared, we were so relaxed that it seemed wrong to rush out and catch the first chair.
On the West Shore, thanks to Homewood Mountain (877/263-7768), there’s no need. Skiing here on a weekday, it’s possible to feel as though you have the whole place to yourself. “You can get to Homewood at 1 p.m. and still get fresh lines for the rest of the day,” White told us. “I don’t bother with Alpine or Squaw on a big powder day. Too competitive.”
With seven lifts, 60 runs and 1,650 feet of vertical, Homewood is small by Squaw Valley standards, but its prime location makes up for its diminutive size: Homewood is closer to Lake Tahoe than any other ski resort in the Tahoe Basin. “I’ve skied all around the lake and Homewood has the best views of the water, bar none,” says Gary Chaney, who operates a bed-and-breakfast, Chaney House (530/525-7333), in an old stone mansion that was hand-built by an Italian artisan in the 1920s. “Sometimes the lake radiates blue. Other times there is a foggy pillow on the surface. It has many moods.”
Homewood Mountain’s humble roots took hold nearly 50 years ago, in the afterglow of the 1960 Winter Olympics at Squaw Valley. The games had enlivened then-sleepy West Shore. Locals packed hot toddies and trudged to Sugar Pine Point to watch the Nordic events; the Swiss Nordic team stayed at Homewood Resort, which up until then had been a summer-only lodge for well-to-do families from the Bay Area. “The Swiss skiers were a jovial bunch,” recalled Brown, who was just a boy at the time. “They wore red sweaters with white crosses on the front and enjoyed whooping it up in the bar.”
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When the Games ended, entrepreneur Ron Rupp approached Brown’s grandfather, Don Huff, and pitched the idea of opening a ski hill. At the time, Huff was operating Homewood primarily as a summer resort, but he was intrigued by the idea of attracting more visitors during the winter season. He told Rupp to have at it. Rupp began by installing a rope tow in 1961, but construction on the project was delayed when he was called up to serve in the Air Force Reserve during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Homewood opened as a ski area in the winter of 1962.
It was a one-man show from the start. Rupp installed and maintained the rope tows, gave ski lessons, carried injured skiers off the hill in an old toboggan, and sold candy and hot chocolate out of a small A-frame ski shop with a rusty potbellied stove. Tickets were $2. “Parents would come in with their kids and I’d fit them with boots and poles and skis and push ’em out the back door. Then I’d ring the ski-school bell and start the lifts,” says Rupp. His black Labrador retriever Magoo followed him around the hill all day long. “It was an exciting time and a lot of fun.”
Little has changed since then in that regard. We rode the trees off the Glades run — where, true to White’s prediction, there was fresh snow to be had deep into the afternoon — and did laps beneath the Old Homewood Express, a high-speed quad that was installed in 2007 by the resort’s new owner, JMA Ventures, in an effort to win the hearts of locals. A real-estate investment firm primarily known for successfully revitalizing San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square, JMA is planning to create Tahoe’s first boutique resort at Homewood. If regulators sign off, it will break ground in 2011 on a five-star hotel and spa, a new base village, and a mid-mountain lodge with a gondola.
Like many visitors before him, JMA president Art Chapman fell in love with West Shore during family ski trips. He sought out the Yurosek family, who had taken ownership of Homewood in 1998, and acquired the largest private piece of land on the lake. Because protective locals are wary of outsiders, Chapman then hired consummate townie Brown as the resort’s vice president to ease the transition. “Homewood is all about the lake,” Chapman says. “There is no other ski area in the basin where you have the feeling that you could end up splashing into the water at the end of your run.”
After a big day at Homewood, we were starved. West Shore has several fine eating options — West Shore Café (530/525-5200), Sunnyside Café (530/583-7200) — but the food is even better in North Shore, just a short drive away. One of the hippest new restaurants, Baxter’s (530/562-3200), was opened in the Northstar base village by the owners of Moody’s Bistro in Truckee. There’s live jazz in the bar, and the Sud Tyrol-inspired menu showcases the slow-food movement credentials of executive chef Mark Estee, whose farm-to-table creations feature heirloom pork, locally sourced greens, and grass-fed beef. We sampled a trio of savory entrees: smoked duck breast accompanied by confit and seared duck liver foie gras, a dish of heirloom pork belly that was crisp on the outside and buttery inside, and venison drizzled with huckleberry glaze.
The next night we headed to Squaw Valley, an easy 15 minutes from Tahoma, to dine at PlumpJack Café (530/583-1578). Founded and managed by the PlumpJack Group, which was started by the family of the outspoken and dashing mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, and is now run by his sister, Hillary, the restaurant sports an urban chic interior in an earth-tone palette. We began our evening with a bottle of 2006 Roessler Red Label pinot, a worthy complement to the first course of Kobe sushi, then enjoyed a second course of beef tenderloin with horseradish crema and pan-roasted barramundi.
Not that you need to leave West Shore for fine dining. This summer, in addition to his involvement in the Homewood expansion, Rick Brown and his wife, Betty, reopened the historic Swiss Lakewood (530/525-5211), a longtime Homewood institution. But here in West Shore, the more things change, the more they remain the same. Not only does the menu feature many of the restaurant’s beloved Swiss mountain dishes — albeit with a twist of California cuisine — but Rick and Betty have lured several longtime employees back into the fold as well.
For Brown — for most who live and work here, really — West Shore is more than just business. “We have the best lifestyle anyone can ask for,” he told me. “My wife and I ski all winter, then cruise the lake in our 36-foot wooden boat all summer. I can’t imagine being anywhere else.”
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