A sail on Lake Tahoe has been on my bucket list since the day I first laid eyes on it, and come hell or high water, I decided I was going to someday charter a boat there. North America’s largest and deepest alpine lake, Tahoe sits at 6,225ft above sea level and straddles the state boundaries of California and Nevada. It’s big, beautiful and cold, trailing only Lake Superior in depth and volume.
nd volume. It’s also one of the clearest, purest and sunniest lakes you’ll ever see, with clarity that rivals bottled water, being 99.9 percent pure. Indeed, many communities around Tahoe are exempt from having to provide filtration before pumping it into homes as drinking water, and many residents eschew bottled water, preferring instead to fill up straight from the tap. In the high, dry climate the sun shines an incredible 75 percent of the time.
Alas, stifling my plans in the summer of 2020 was a one-two punch of the pandemic and apocalyptic wildfires. California instituted strict Covid-19 stay at home orders. Few businesses were open, and by the end of wildfire season—the most severe in modern history—over 10,000 fires had ripped through the Golden State burning 10 million acres. The smoke and smelly haze lingered for months—most every event was canceled for the
