Journeys›Photograph

Sunny April Afternoon at Lake Tahoe

·Placer County, California·#tahoe#snow#spring#landscape#lake
A vast lake reflects a clear blue sky, flanked by snow-covered mountains and dense pine forests under white clouds.

Drove down to the Placer County side of Tahoe for the afternoon, mostly just to be outside. April here still means snow more often than not — eleven snowy days in an average month — and this winter left enough that the peaks around the basin are white nearly to the waterline, with old crusted drifts along parts of the shore. The lake itself never freezes, so it sits open and dark under all that white.

Walked a stretch of shoreline and didn't cover much ground. Standing at the edge you can see the rocks on the bottom a long way out, which is the thing everyone says about Tahoe and it holds up — they've been measuring the clarity with a Secchi disk for decades. The whole basin is fault-block and glacier work, millions of years of it, and on a clear day like this you can more or less read it in the ridgelines.

Wind off the water still had winter in it. There's a broken-down wooden dock near where I stopped, half its planks gone, waiting out one more season.

Snowy mountains and dark evergreen trees flank a wide blue lake under a bright, partly cloudy sky.Snowy mountains and dark forests rise above a shimmering lake with light reflections under a clear blue sky.A calm lake reflecting the sky, with snow-capped mountains and evergreen trees lining the distant shore.Blue lake with sparkling water in the foreground, backed by snow-covered mountains under a blue sky.Sunlight sparkles across a lake with dark, forested mountains and snow-capped peaks under a blue sky.Sunlight glints on a dark lake with distant snow-covered mountains under a bright blue sky.Sun rays streak across a clear blue sky above a lake, forested shores, and snow-capped mountains.A panoramic view of a dark blue lake with snow-capped mountains and green forests under a bright blue sky.

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