RJG: Epic ski season means epic waits as traffic backs up for miles around North Lake Tahoe resorts By Amy Alonzo Within minutes, Jen Lang-Ree realized her mistake. Her commute from her home in Tahoe Donner to Truckee’s Tahoe Forest Hospital is just 4.3 miles. But with thousands of skiers crowding the roads to north Tahoe’s ski resorts the morning of Jan. 28, the drive took her 66 minutes. She forgot it was a Saturday. “I was pretty stressed out,” said Lang-Ree, who works as a nurse practitioner in pediatrics. “I didn’t know when I would get there.” Lang-Ree has lived in the Tahoe Basin for 31 years. She’s dealt with her fair share of tourist traffic over the years. But that weekend was the worst she had ever seen. She watched as drivers traveled in the wrong lane on Donner Pass Road, trying to bypass the gridlock. With traffic at a dead stop, she decided to try the backroads. “It backfired,” she said. “All the exits in Truckee were gridlocked.” She called her manager to explain her predicament. Still not moving, she logged in to work remotely, prepping for her day. Then, she waited. Tahoe and Truckee-area residents are used to battling tourist traffic. But this winter, the traffic is unlike any year before, according to those getting stuck in it. Residents, government and public safety officials are now grappling with how to handle the massive influx of visitors each weekend. Skier visitation skyrockets Ski resorts circle the Lake Tahoe Basin, with Northstar and Palisades Tahoe – two of the largest and most popular resorts in California – just a stone’s throw from each other on the north rim. Each of the resorts is accessed by a single-lane highway – Highway 89 to Palisades Tahoe and Highway 267 to Northstar. On Saturdays, thousands of people funnel up Interstate 80 and through Truckee to reach the resorts. Some skiers are turned around before they have the chance to park. Resorts across the country logged record visitation numbers during the 2021-22 season, according to the National Ski Areas Association. A combined 61 million skier and rider visits – an increase of 3.5 percent over the year before – visited the slopes. Nearly seven million of those visits were to California and Nevada. And this season is shaping up to be another record-breaker. On the last Saturday in January, the day Lang-Ree couldn’t get to work, Palisades Tahoe reported its highest visitation so far this year – roughly 19,000 skiers and riders. That’s more than the town of Truckee’s population of 17,200 residents. Resorts are hustling to keep pace, Palisades Tahoe public relations coordinator Maddy Condon said. Palisades Tahoe offers a free shuttle service to the resort. There are two overflow parking lots. The resort’s app pushes out parking updates. Light-up sign boards and the local radio station announce when resort lots are full. Olympic Valley Road – the main road into Palisades

Tahoe – is converted from one lane to two to move drivers along. And law enforcement helps turn people
around when the lots are full. Parking capacity at the resort is simply not enough to keep pace with the number of visitors. On most Saturdays, many people have to bail on ski plan and turn around due to no parking, according to Condon. “There’s a lot of people wanting to come experience the great snow we have, and a lot of those people are Ikon Pass holders,” Condon said. In 2008, Vail Resorts – the company that owns Northstar – introduced its Epic Pass, letting skiers and rider purchase one pass to access all of Vail resorts. In 2018, Alterra – the company that owns Palisades Tahoe – introduced the Ikon Pass, mimicking the Epic Pass model. Nearly a million Ikon passes sold in 2019, according to Bloomberg News, and the number of skiers and riders has only increased across the nation since then. Limiting single-day ticket sales or individual pass sales to Palisades Tahoe won’t fix the problem, Condon said, because Ikon Pass holders would still have access to the resort. Most Saturday
visitors are Ikon Pass holders. Northstar did not provide visitation numbers to the RGJ or answer questions about efforts to improve weekend traffic flow. ‘It’s a capacity issue’ By 8 or 9 a.m., ski resort parking lots are full. Palisades Tahoe contracts with California Highway Patrol to help direct traffic and turn drivers around when no open spaces remain. This past weekend, a second officer was stationed at an off-ramp in Truckee, and the Truckee Police Department had officers assisting within the city limits, California Highway Patrol Officer Carlos Perez said. When officers are assigned to help with traffic, it leaves just two or three others to patrol the rest of their jurisdiction, which stretches from Kingvale to the Nevada state line and down to Tahoma. There aren’t enough officers to help with traffic on Hwy. 267, where Northstar is located, Perez said. And when an emergency call comes in, CHP is just as stuck as some of the other drivers. “When we have all that traffic, they just
slowly inch to the side,” Perez said. “We put our sirens and lights on and it’s a slow go, but we eventually get to whatever emergency call.” The town of Truckee is working with CHP to funnel traffic through town as quickly as possible to prevent gridlock on Interstate 80, said Truckee Emergency Services Coordinator Robert Womack. Beyond that, there isn’t much the town can do. There isn’t space in town to add adequate off-site parking. Widening Hwy. 89 “is many, many years off, if it can even go in,” Womack said. It’s a capacity issue, Steve Nelson, public information officer for Caltrans, said: “Until we widen 267 and 89 – and that’s not in the foreseeable future – that’s the only way to relieve it.” The situation is on everyone’s radar, said Hardy Bullock, Nevada County supervisor. Joint meetings between the resorts, the town of Truckee and Placer and Nevada counties are in the works. The problem, he said, is there is a “growing demand with static capacity.” Translation: Resorts
are selling a product that the community and its infrastructure can’t support. Leave early and plan ahead Future events and development could bring even more visitors to the region. Palisades Tahoe is hosting the Palisdes Tahoe Cup Feb. 24-26. The event is one of just four World Cup ski races in the United States this year. And Alterra, the company that owns Palisades Tahoe, has not relented on its proposal to expand the resort’s village to include a series of high-rise condos, a 90,000-square-foot “mountain adventure camp” and additional employee housing. The proposal also includes hundreds of parking spaces. Whether that parking helps or hinders the traffic would remain to be seen, said John-Paul Moody, 40, who works the graveyard shift at the Save Mart in Truckee. He gets off at 7 a.m. and, instead of driving home to Carnelian Bay, he works a second job with Door Dash on the weekends to kill time while the traffic calms down. Facing what is usually a 26-minute commute without traffic.

Moody has spent up to three hours trying to get home. Now, Truckee and North Tahoe residents know to stay home when Saturday rolls around – even the diehard skiers. Court Leve lives in Truckee and skis at Palisades Tahoe – but only during the week. “I don’t leave my neighborhood on weekends anymore,” he said. And for people like Lang-Ree who must get to work? “There’s no good option,” she said, “other than leaving really early and planning ahead.” Amy Alonzo covers the outdoors, recreation and environment for Nevada and Lake Tahoe.

Reach her ataalonzo@gannett.com.