There's a difference between a mountain resort and a ski area. Ski areas are more primitive and have warming huts, resorts have lodges. Ski areas serve snacks and sandwiches and Mountain Resorts serve gourmet food at half a dozen restaurants. Heavenly is a mountain resort because it has the amenities and facilities to take your love for the mountain and turn it into a ski vacation that reflects your desire to live the mountain lifestyle while having all modern amenities available.
In the winter, the downhill skiing and snowboarding, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, and backcountry skiing and riding are all world-class. Then there’s tubing, sledding, ski, biking, snowmobiling, sleigh rides, ice skating, dog sledding, hot springs and the one-of-a-kind aqua ski shuttle!
Then there’s summer, with its phenomenal cycling, world-renowned mountain biking, golfing, water skiing, swimming, hiking, backpacking, climbing, camping, horseback riding, fishing, hot air balloons, helicopter tours, glider rides, and all manner of boat charters. From the 165-mile Tahoe Rim Trail to the white-sand beaches of Sand Harbor, Lake Tahoe is equal parts activity and tranquility.
Explore everything that Heavenly offers in one place. View all the dining, activity, shopping, lodging options and more on our NEW Resort Map experience.
About Lake Tahoe
Lake Tahoe has been a vacation destination for over three thousand years, when the Washoe and Paiute Indians enjoyed their summer R&R at the Lake. For just about as long, Lake Tahoe has elicited superlatives from its visitors. The Washoe called it "The Lake of the Sky". Mark Twain proclaimed the Lake to be "the fairest picture the whole earth affords!" These days, we use phrases like majestic, breathtaking and awe-inspiring.
However you describe it, Lake Tahoe is a pristine jewel of nature. Surrounded on all sides by the Sierra Nevada mountain range, you can see on average 72 feet down into its cobalt waters.
Lake Tahoe was formed about 25-million years ago and is the second deepest lake in the United States at 1,645 feet deep. It is the tenth-deepest in the world and one of the clearest. Lake Tahoe has 75-miles of shoreline, is 22-miles long, 12-miles wide, and the lake surface level averages 6,225 feet.
A vacation to Lake Tahoe is all about time management. With more winter and summer activities than any other travel destination, you’ll have a tough time squeezing everything in.
But above all else, Lake Tahoe is about the Lake itself. And the most spectacular view of Lake Tahoe - perhaps the most awesome view from a ski area summit anywhere - is at the top of Heavenly's Sky Express. From here the Lake looks like a brilliant blue sapphire, encased in a rugged ring of snowy granite. You won't find a better view than this at any Lake Tahoe ski resort.
There's special, and then there's a whole different category of special - reserved exclusively for Lake Tahoe.