TAHOE EVEN FOR NON-SKIERS

TAHOE EVEN FOR NON-SKIERS Story and photography by Margaret & Eric Anderson Michael Anderson & Teresa Murphy contributed to this story
	The winter wonderland of Tahoe, sparkling in the California sun on the Nevada -California border, is a prime place for enthusiastic skiers. With reason. It's one of the five best ski slopes in the United States, the others being Vermont's Green Mountains, Colorado's Rockies, Jackson Hole in Wyoming and Park City in Utah. The one that's getting the best press these days, however, is the one closest to San Diego: Ski Lake Tahoe, a consortium of the six largest ski resorts at Lake Tahoe, including Alpine Meadows, Heavenly, Kirkwood, Northstar-at-Tahoe, Sierra-at-Tahoe and Squaw Valley USA. However, in contrast to the other areas, Tahoe is the only one with a lake attraction, the largest Alpine lake on the North American continent to boot.


That gives a lot of choices for those who come with a skiing aficionado and don't care, themselves, to tackle the slopes. Skiers may smile to find the largest concentration of groomed downhill runs in North America (Sierra-at-Tahoe, for instance, has 46, Kirkwood 65 and Heavenly has both 84 runs and, now, a $20 million high-speed gondola that goes straight up from the center of town) but there's a surfeit of alternative things for non-skiers to do all as close as a toll free number (800 288-2463) or a look at the website virtualtahoe.com.
	Lake Tahoe, for instance, the third deepest lake in our continent, never freezes over, so the two paddle wheelers on it are busy year round. The original one, the 500-passenger Tahoe Queen, was built on the Mississippi in 1983 and the latest arrival, the 550-passenger M. S. Dixie II, came in 1994. Both offer great cruises around a lake that was carved by the glaciers thousands of years ago. The M. S. Dixie II, offers an advantage. It's based at Zephyr Cove beside the Zephyr Cove Snowmobile Center (the largest snowmobile tour center in the United States) where you can rent a snowmobile and also, fortunately, complete winter clothing. Guided tours to the top of Tahoe leave four times a day including evenings on full moon nights when the Sierras glitter below and around like a fairyland.


Got snow? Kirkwood resort in Tahoe gets 500 inches a year and Sierra-at-Tahoe gets 480. Although the annual lake water temperature high is 68 degrees F and the average low 41, January air temperatures can be as low as 18 degrees. Skiers know to come clad for winter wind chill but non-skiers must remember they need to rent winter clothing if they are snowmobiling or going on other winter activities.