People don’t picture snow-covered mountains when they think of California. It’s all sunny beaches, right? Wrong! The Sierra Nevada Mountains, which form the spine of California, literally means “snowy mountains” in Spanish. As a result, ski resorts around Lake Tahoe on the California-Nevada border report the most significant snowfall in the Western U.S. The most famous of these is the legendary Palisades Tahoe (formerly Squaw Valley), the site of the 1960 Winter Olympic Games. This area is where ski stars from past to present have been raised, and many iconic ski movies have been filmed.
Palisades Tahoe is the kind of big, sprawling mountain where you should have a game plan before you go, especially on a powder day. Here’s insider info on how to ski the mountain like a local.