When we visited Lake Tahoe this year in 2020, we rented paddleboards for three days and kept them on top of our Honda Civic.
Thank you to SUP Tahoe for giving us great-quality standup paddle boards to easily store on top of the car! If you don’t have any paddleboards of your own, we recommend renting paddle boards that you can launch yourself compared to renting onsite at a beach. By renting the paddleboards once through a shop like SUP Tahoe, we were able to launch wherever we wanted and avoid time constraints and any extra fees had we chose to do multiple onsite rentals.
Sand Harbor, Incline Village, NV
If you’re looking for the single perfect spot for launching your paddleboard, then Sand Harbor will be your best bet. We ended up going to this beach on our last day in Tahoe, but we almost wish we went here first. Early bird gets the worm when it comes to Sand Harbor’s parking lot, so wake up early and get ready before the sun does!
To get a parking spot, we suggest parking as close as possible to the entrance of the beach so it’s easy to carry your boards/kayak to the water’s edge. The beach gets utterly packed in a matter of minutes, so carefully navigate to an open spot on the shore and avoid stepping on or hitting any poor soul with your board.
Once you land on the water, you’ll glide across some of the calmest waters in Tahoe. With Sand Harbor’s close proximity to Tahoe’s famed Bonsai Rock, it’s no wonder that this launch site stands atop as a fan favorite.
Pack a beach chair, bring your lunch, and settle down on one of the many rocks around the Bonsai Rock area. If you’re up for some extra distance, you can paddle further down to Secret Cove to escape the crowds and get a workout in.
Baldwin Beach, South Lake Tahoe, CA
If you’re new to paddle boarding or kayaking, Baldwin Beach is a great place to start off . The parking lot sits right next to the beach, so it’s extremely easy to carry your board/kayak over to the shore. Other lots may have stairs or larger distances water, which isn’t exactly ideal for those who can’t singlehandedly carry a board or kayak with ease.
Make sure to get here no later than 10 AM to find parking since the lot gets packed when afternoon hits.
Zephyr Cove, Stateline, NV
Once you hit the waters, you’ll find that they are clear and calm in the morning. When the boats come out, the water can get a little/quite choppy if you decide to paddle away from the beach and ride further north to Emerald Bay.
Please avoid stopping at any land marked as private property on the way to Emerald Bay. It’s about two miles from Baldwin Beach, so make sure to bring a snack or two. Once you see the bay, stay on the left side and avoid the boat routes as you enter. There’s a small beach that you can pull up to and enjoy the view, but we opted to float in the water and relax before we headed back downt to Baldwin.
We ended up here on our second day due to other places being packed to the brim and closed to any new parking. We were pleasantly surprised by the amount of parking here even though we had woken up later than usual.
Launching the paddle boards was a bit of a challenge as the beach is pretty thin and it’s hard to pass other people who are already set up, but we found a spot in between a couple tents to launch easily. On the water, it’s pretty calm until you decide to go further out where you may hit choppier waters due to boats passing by. If you’re not confident in your swimming ability and/or balance, please make sure to equip your life jacket at all times.
Similar to the area around Bonsai Rock, you can stop by a few rocks to climb and settle on to relax. Zephyr Cove’s shore is mighty long and the current flows strongly south, so it’s a bit difficult to paddle north to reach a few potential destinations, such as Cave Rock.
Tips
For any place you decide to launch from, be prepared to stay all day. You never know if you’ll love the place so much that you’ll want to stay all day. There aren’t really any options for leaving to eat and coming back to a parking spot since a lot of these places either fill up to max capacity in the morning or don’t allow you to come back in later on (they completely close the parking lot to cars once it fills up in the early AM).
To restate, you should probably arrive at these spots as early as possible to ensure that you have easy access and are able to launch where you want. When paddle boarding or kayaking, you’ll want to bring plenty of water, food, and sunscreen in a dry pack. You might have so much fun that you don’t even realize how many hours you’ve spent out on the water.
More information
South Lake Tahoe – https://tahoesouth.com/
North Lake Tahoe – https://www.gotahoenorth.com/
SUP Tahoe (Paddle Board Rentals) – https://supsouthlaketahoe.com/
