Ever tried finding a parking place on a bluebird winter day at Tahoe? The obvious spots can be as packed as your neighborhood mall during the Christmas season. But there are ways around the crowds, starting with the plowed parking areas at 19 Sno-Park locations in the Sierra Nevada, most of them in the Tahoe Basin.
Sno-Parks offer easy access to areas where you can sled, ski and snowshoe on public lands without paying an admission fee. Some are merely places to ditch your vehicle while you bushwhack into the woods, but many offer access to groomed cross-country ski and snowshoe trails, snowmobile trails and sledding hills for families.
Daily permits or seasonal permits are available online, and you can also buy them from vendors in Tahoe and along the Interstate 80 and Highway 50 corridors. Rover is allowed to romp at any Sno-Park area, although technically, he must remain leashed.
Taking a trip north? Your California Sno-Park permit is also valid in Oregon, Washington and Idaho.