Old County Road to Mt Watson

Lake Tahoe
Trip Type: XC-skiing
Elevation: 6600 - 7600 ft
Distance: 6 miles
Surface: Snow
Vegetation: Forest

View from the top of Mt Watson

We're slowly getting to know the best places for easy-to-follow, ungroomed skiing in the Tahoe Area.  Back east, the hiking trails tend to be, you know, marked... so once there's some snow, you can strap on some fishscales and hit a hiking trail with light climbing.  In the Sierras, that lack of any trail marking makes it very difficult to follow most hiking routes in winter unless you're following a well worn trail frequented by locals.  We tried to hit just such an high traffic trailhead over President's Day weekend this year.  We headed up to Tahoe City and set out to ski the Tahoe Rim Trail as it heads southwest out of town.  The trail was indeed easy to follow, but all the foot traffic and freeze-thaw cycles left it icy enough that it was pretty unpleasant to ski.  Lucky for us, we met a local at the trailhead who had better suggestion for us: Old County Road near Tahoe Vista




Old County Road is used for OHV traffic in the summer and it's part of the snowmobile trail network anchored by the fiberboard freeway along the north ridge over Lake Tahoe.  As far as I hear, the snowmobile traffic on the fiberboard freeway is quite heavy and you wouldn't want to ski there, but on this feeder trail it seems pretty light.  (We were passed by three or four packs of snowmobiles.  They were all polite and passed at a safe speed as we kept Presto close, standing aside for them.)  Some locals apparently groom Old County Road for skate skiing occasionally.  Between that grooming and the connecting snowmobile traffic, you effectively get a basic, but free, groomed trail network. We did the following route on fishscales, but it was so well packed most of the way we could just as easily have skated, except for the last bit off trail on the ridgeline.  I don't know how reliable that grooming is, though.

Getting There:

Head to Tahoe City, then east along the lake on CA 28.  Just east of town you'll pass Burton Creek and Tahoe Cross Country Ski Area.  Just over a hill as CA 28 returns to the lakeside, you'll see Old County road leading inland on the north side of the lake.  Follow this road to a dead-end, about half a mile up the road at an intersection with Beverly Dr.  There isn't much parking here, so try to be nice to the locals and not clog up the area.  The road side at the dead end seems to be legal parking though.   Based on some branching trails I saw on our route and trails on Opencycle maps, it looks like there are alternative trailheads off Fulton Crescent Drive or Nightengale Drive to the north east.

Route:

We headed up north Old County Road past at least two sizeable feeder snowmobile trails coming the east, then we hit an intersection with a snowmobile route climbing to the southwest.  We left Old County Road and followed the more steeply climbing snowmobile route.  We climbed steadily on this wide, well packed trail for about 1.5 miles until we reached an open ridge on the shoulder of Mt. Watson.  We broke trail up this ridge for about half a mile, enjoying a nice view south over Lake Tahoe.  We reached a small low knob just as the trees were thickening again and declared victory for the day.  Had we gotten an earlier start we likely could have made it all the way up Mt. Watson, adding a  few miles and almost a thousand more feet of climb.  Had we stayed on the snowmobile trail, I think we would have come to an intersection and chosen to climb up to Watson Lake or head east to reconnect with Old County Road.  I'm just interpreting the OHV trails on OpenCylce Map though... so no promises that it doesn't go anywhere but the fiberboard freeway and hordes of snowmobilers.  We will be coming back to grab the peak sometime.

Caltopo Map: http://caltopo.com/m/EMRC