Slow Mid-January Days Around North Lake Tahoe

A few slow days on the mountain in mid-January, and this one moved at the same pace as the clouds. The sun spent the whole morning trying to burn through a low deck over the ridge and never quite managed it — the rock spires along the crest kept going in and out of the haze. Coverage up high is wind-worked but real, the cliff bands still poking through where the slope steepens.

By afternoon the clouds broke apart enough to see the far knob clearly, lift shack on top, tracks cut into everything below it, and a scatter of rust-red dead trees standing in the green.

Wound down in town under the big Tahoe mural — the entire back wall of the place is the lake at dusk, snow-capped boulders in the foreground, with capiz-shell lamps hung in front of it like they were painted in too.