Where to stay in Lake Tahoe: the best areas and hotels

South Lake Tahoe is the biggest town on the lake and the easiest place to start. Its hub is Heavenly Village, a pedestrian cluster of shops, restaurants and bars around the base of the Heavenly Gondola, which whisks skiers and sightseers up the mountain for one of the best views in California. Walk a few minutes east and you cross into Nevada, where the casino towers of Stateline keep going all night.

Hotels here suit all sorts. There are suite and condo resorts with kitchens right beside the gondola, handy for families and ski groups, and stylish mid-priced places across the road. The lake and its beaches are about half a mile away. In ski season and high summer the village hums; if you want silence and stars, look to the north shore.

A few minutes west of the village, the hotels move down to the water. This stretch of shore has what the gondola end lacks: sand outside the door. In summer you can step from your room to a private beach, hire a boat from one of the marinas on either side and finish the day with a drink at a beach bar.

The choice runs from a rustic lodge where every room faces the lake to a five-star resort with a full spa and a shuttle to the slopes. Heavenly is still close for winter skiing, and the casinos are about a mile off. Couples do especially well here. Book early for July and August, when lake-view rooms are the first to go.

Truckee is a proper mountain town, a few miles north of the lake, with a historic main street of wooden shopfronts, good restaurants and trains still rumbling through. It sits between the big north-shore ski areas, which makes it a clever base for skiing more than one of them, and it is only about 35 minutes from Reno airport.

Up the road, Northstar is a self-contained resort with a village, an ice rink and long, well-groomed runs that families love. The smartest hotel on the whole lake is here, mid-mountain, with ski-in, ski-out access, a spa and outdoor pools steaming in the snow. Down in town the options are simpler: boutique lodges aimed at outdoor types and comfortable hotels with breakfast included.

Olympic Valley earned its name in 1960, when the Winter Olympics came to what is now Palisades Tahoe. The mountain remains the one that expert skiers talk about, a great wall of granite and steep bowls at the head of a quiet meadow valley, with the lake about a ten-minute drive away.

You stay here for the skiing, and you stay close. The village at the base has condo-style lodging with hot tubs and ski storage a few steps from the lifts, there is a ski-in, ski-out lodge with a rooftop hot tub, and a large resort and spa sits a little way down the valley. In summer the lifts carry hikers instead, and it is wonderfully peaceful.

The north shore is Tahoe with the volume turned down. Tahoe City, where the Truckee River flows out of the lake, is a small, friendly town with a marina, a lakeside park and a handful of good places to eat. Further east, Kings Beach has one of the lake's best stretches of sand, shallow and sunny, with the mountains lined up across the water.

Places to stay are small and unfussy: a motel-style inn steps from the beach park, a hotel built around the local ski and bike scene with gear to rent, and beachfront suites with fireplaces and kitchens. The ski resorts are 15 to 20 minutes away. Come here if your idea of nightlife is a campfire.