Lake Tahoe

The beautiful, bright blue, mile-high holiday paradise of Lake Tahoe, straddling the border of California and Nevada in the United States, is the second largest alpine lake in the world. The lake, perched atop the Sierra Nevada, is surrounded on all sides by world-class ski resorts, magnificent golf courses, first-class hotels and casinos, which cater for millions of holidaymakers every year.Although the area's scenery and facilities draw visitors on holiday year-round, it is as a skiing and snowboarding destination that Lake Tahoe really thrives. Recently most of the popular resorts, with appealing names like Alpine Meadows, Heavenly and Squaw Valley, have undergone extensions and face-lifts. The comfortable resorts, bolstered by the fact that Lake Tahoe guarantees 300 days of sunshine a year, 33 feet (10m) of annual snowfall, unrivalled scenery and more than 17,500 acres of terrain to explore, make it nearly irresistible for anyone contemplating a winter sports holiday in California.For a holiday at Lake Tahoe, visitors can fly in to the nearby Reno/Tahoe Airport, or drive on all-weather highways from Reno, Sacramento, San Francisco and Los Angeles in just a few hours, for a dose of fun in the pure mountain air.