"Host of the 1960 Winter Olympics and North Lake’s crown jewel, Palisades Tahoe is one superlative after another. Boasting one of the longest ski seasons in the country (November to mid-May), it’s California’s largest ski resort with 6,000 skiable acres across two mountains, the 9,050-foot Palisades and 8,637-foot Alpine Meadows with its hike-to back bowls. Both valleys will be newly connected this season by a game-changing 2.4-mile gondola. The majority of the resort is famously heaven on earth for extreme skiers who come to rip KT-22 and off-piste terrain, the one place, according to U.S. Hall of Fame big-mountain skier Kristen Ulmer “where every born-to-ski skier, at some point or other, wants to move to [and] make it as a 'professional' skier."