Spooner Lake and the Flume Trail

Spooner Lake And Backcountry Unit Of Lake Tahoe Nevada State Park; The Flume Trail Above Lake Tahoe Is A Nationally Known Mountain Bike Ride · Glenbrook, Nevada

Spooner Lake and Backcountry is the high, forested eastern unit of Lake Tahoe Nevada State Park, set on the crest above the lake's east shore where US 50 and NV 28 meet near Spooner Summit. The small Spooner Lake, at about 7,000 feet, has an easy loop walk through aspens and meadow, picnic grounds and a trailhead for a large roadless backcountry of pine forest, Marlette Lake and the Tahoe Rim Trail. It is best known for the Flume Trail, one of the most famous mountain-bike rides in the United States: after a long climb to Marlette Lake, a narrow singletrack follows the line of a 19th-century water flume along a steep slope roughly 1,500 feet above Lake Tahoe, with deep blue water below the handlebars, before dropping to the shore near Incline Village. That flume system once carried water to the Comstock mines at Virginia City. Most visitors here are riders and hikers rather than sightseers; there is no beach, and Sand Harbor on the shore below is a separate unit.

NV 28 near US 50 (Spooner Summit), Glenbrook, Nevada, 89413, United States

NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED. The typical pattern: the Spooner Lake day-use area is open daily from about 8 am to around dusk, with longer hours in summer and shorter in winter, and the entrance may be unstaffed with self-pay. The backcountry is open all year, but snow closes the Flume Trail to bikes from roughly November until June or later. The bike shuttle and rentals at Tunnel Creek run in summer and early autumn only, on their own schedule. The traps that ruin a day are starting the Flume at noon into thunderstorms and heat, arriving on a summer weekend to a full parking lot, missing the last shuttle, finding the upper trail still snowbound in June, and finishing at dusk after the gate has closed. Confirm current times before relying on them.

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