In 1975, the first episodes of Saturday Night Live premiered, Jaws hit the big screen, and Tahoe Cross Country began grooming Nordic trails. It now maintains 50 kilometers of them, and combined with summertime hiking, biking, and trail-running, provides over 20,000 folks a year with an affordable, and sometimes even free, connection to nature.

But since its inception, the organization, more familiarly known as Tahoe XC, has been operating out of the Highlands Community Center — built as the clubhouse to a nine-hole golf course near Burton Creek that was started but never finished. 

The growing need for a new lodge was first identified by an outside study back in the late ’90s, and since then the dream has never been too far from mind. In 2015, opportunity struck when a historic Rubicon Bay home, originally built in 1937 for an upper-crust family, changed hands. 

The new buyer wanted to build a modern house on the land, but didn’t want the old home simply torn down. He saw its historical value and wanted to donate it and see the structure rebuilt elsewhere in Tahoe. 

“He approached a couple different organizations about it,” said Sue Irelan, Tahoe XC board member and finance chair for the lodge project. “When he approached the TCPUD, they said they didn’t have a need for it, but then thought about us. They asked us if we were ready to take on a project of this nature, to save the structure and have it become a centerpiece of the community. Our ski area and our nonprofit stepped up and said, ‘yes, we are ready to take this on.’”

Talks ensued and the generous donation was made, marking the start of a long and unique process. First, the building had to be deconstructed. Next, all of the locally milled beams, hand-adzed (cut with a special type of axe) wall paneling, redwood end-grain flooring, and other historically interconnected materials had to be catalogued. Then they had to be moved to a storage facility while fundraising efforts were implemented to meet goals.

Reconstruction efforts will come in three phases. 

Phase 1 began this past June 1 with the groundbreaking of the trailhead relocation portion of the project, consisting of building new parking, new facilities, signage, and lights. This will allow trails to start at the new lodge site adjacent to North Tahoe High School (some parking will even be shared), which will be on flatter ground.

“The current lodge sits at the bottom of a hill,” said Molly Casper, Tahoe XC’s marketing and communications director, “which presents issues. Especially for beginners and for lessons, it’s tough having to start by going uphill. And being right next to the high school will also enhance the community in ways I don’t think we even yet foresee.”

Phase 2 will represent the bulk of the project’s slated time and budget — the actual rebuilding of the 1937 home at the new site. The completed edifice will include roughly 80% original material and 20% new. At the left wing of the house, an annex will be added for ski waxing and equipment storage. 

Phase 3 will consist of moving in and completing the things necessary to open up a new era for the old stalwart.

More than just a ski resort
Tahoe XC’s ski operations function as a public benefit corporation that subsidize their sister organization, the nonprofit Tahoe Cross Country Ski Education Association (TCCSEA), which fosters myriad community programs. 

There is the on-property yurt that serves as a designated snow-science school; the nature camp in the summertime for young children; Las Chicas, the bilingual mountain biking and cross-country skiing program for middle school-aged Latinas. Then there is the free skiing offered to anyone under 19 or over 70, the free skiing for schools, and the free family ski day for any family with a K-5th grader in the Tahoe Truckee Unified School District — just call on up, set it up, and come on out for a lesson and a ski.

These programs are vital cogs in Tahoe XC’s mission to offer connection to nature that creates forever-stewards for the environment. 

Perhaps the most vital piece in the mission is Strider Gliders, the cross-country ski program that started back in 1999. The affordable K-5th grade lessons are renown and run entirely by volunteer coaches — firemen, doctors, teachers, retired professional athletes — a lot of them former Strider Gliders themselves. 

One such Strider Glider graduate, J.C. Schoonmaker, a member of the U.S. Nordic Ski Team and competitor in the 2022 Olympics, will even stop by when he’s back in town to lead a ski or a trail run. 

“The program model has always been to start out as a Strider Glider and come back as a coach,” said Casper.

Tahoe XC is also dog-friendly, performs trail workdays, and serves as a community gathering place. 

“It’s not uncommon to see teenagers interacting and recreating on the same trails as people in their 90s,” Casper said. “We have this incredible ‘cosm’ of age groups where people join together. We aim to increase access to snow sports and open space in our area, and the new lodge will help us do that.” 

Renewal
Once completed, with an array of solar panels and other measures that go so far as reusing the topsoil and cut lumber from the construction site, Tahoe XC’s new lodge will be net-zero — producing as much renewable energy as it uses. 

“We get asked all the time, ‘Why would you go through all the hassle of rebuilding an old house instead of just building something new?’” noted Casper, answering: “‘Well, because it fits with our ethos of adaptive re-use.’” 

The original house was built by the Pennoyers, an Oakland family who’d made its fortune in dry goods. In 1917, Paul, son of Albert, honeymooned in Tahoe with his wife, Frances, daughter of none other than banking magnate J.P. Morgan. The newlyweds were entranced by the lake’s serene grandeur, so much so that 18 years later they returned, buying land in Rubicon Bay and setting about to build a summer home. By early July 1937, it was ready for move-in, and for the next 75 years it served as a place of merriment and good times for the family. 

The edifice was given the moniker Paradise Flat. But for those who viewed it from the waters of the lake, it perhaps represented a sort of paradise-out-of-reach: so close, but the ability to walk through its doors so far away.

That all changes soon. When Tahoe XC’s new lodge opens up, the summer home for the daughter of J.P. Morgan will become a year-round homebase for outdoor recreation and community connection — serving as a place of merriment and good times for all.