'You have a bunch of hungover 20-year-olds': Locals sound off on Tahoe tourists

Gridlock traffic clogs a highway heading into South Lake Tahoe on a snowy day. Gridlock traffic clogs a highway heading into South Lake Tahoe on a snowy day. Photo: Marcin Wichary, Flickr Buy photo Photo: Marcin Wichary, Flickr Image 1 of / 9 Caption Close 'You have a bunch of hungover 20-year-olds': Locals sound off on Tahoe tourists 1 / 9 Back to Gallery

The southbound lane of North Upper Truckee Road in Tahoe often turns into a parking lot on a Sunday afternoon, especially during the winter ski season. The two-lane road is a popular bypass with tourists trying to avoid Highway 50 traffic on their return home after a weekend in the mountains.

Traffic has grown increasingly worse due to traffic apps like Waze directing motorists off main highways, and winter is especially bad because snow slows everything down.

Tahoe resident Aaron Maffitt is familiar with the nightmare that can unfold, as he lives on the road.

"On any given weekend, 40,000 to 80,000 people can be exiting South Lake Tahoe," he said. "My wife has had to stay at work and sleep over because she can't get home due to the traffic. We’ve had people in snow events who’ve had to abandon their cars and that causes the plows to not be able to clear the roads."

The worst, Maffit said, is when people get out of their cars and urinate in front yards.

"You have a bunch of hungover 20-year-olds who aren’t feeling well," he said.

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Straddling the California-Nevada border, the Lake Tahoe Basin is a renowned outdoor playground enjoyed by people from around the world. Tourists are drawn to its emerald forests, wild rivers and the impossibly blue lake forming a postcard-pretty setting in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. An estimated 24.4 million people enter the Tahoe Basin each year, according to a 2017 transportation study. The droves of tourists dwarf the population of some 70,000 year-round residents.

Tourism drives the local economy: The majority of residents work in a service industry that has turned Tahoe into a world-class travel destination with a $5.1 billion economy (most of that related to tourism).

“Most of our workforce is involved in tourism in some way," said Carol Chaplin president and CEO of the Lake Tahoe Visitors Authority. "It’s more than 80 percent, I think, who work in tourism. The whole point is Lake Tahoe is a national treasure. More than ever I think our visitors are driven by the outdoor recreation, clean air, clear skies, beautiful water and big mountains. We are in that situation where tourism is our bread-and-butter."

But while locals take advantage of the jobs in hotels and at restaurants that allow them to hit the slopes or go for a hike after work, some can't help but get annoyed with the tourists who clog highways, pour down ski slopes and pack beaches.

SFGATE recently asked Tahoe residents in the 40,000-member Facebook group I Love Lake Tahoe to sound off on tourist pet peeves. The post quickly grew and conversations became contentious. The thread was ultimately shut down by administrators because the group aims to foster a community that's inclusive and respective.

Among the most common complaints were tourists leaving trash at lake beaches and on hiking trails, not being bear smart, feeding wildlife, letting dogs off-leash, buying cases of plastic-bottle water when Tahoe tap water is great, and, in general, demonstrating arrogance.

Many comments revolved around visitors not knowing how to drive in winter conditions and hitting roads in blizzard conditions. "They try to drive here even when the National Weather Service, the CHP, and the NHP all say 'stay off the roads,'" wrote one commenter.

Another gripe was crowding grocery stores. "They bring their entire family into the grocery store to buy a couple items," shared another.

They rush "to get in line without being ready and [send] people in their group to run through the store to get the missing items so as to not lose their place in line," chimed in a local. "Then [they get] to the register only to have a discussion at that moment on who is going to pay. Then [they have] have 5-6 people pay the cashier separately. It sucks when you just got off work and realized you are missing one ingredient for your dinner and you get stuck behind this! ... This happens regularly."

Vacation rentals are another issue with visitors throwing parties in rentals tucked into quiet neighborhoods. "When you have people playing corn hole every day in the summer right next to your house…when it’s every weekend going on in your backyard, it's infuriating," a resident wrote.

Airbnb has made it easier for property owners to rent out their homes for short stints, and some say the number of long-term rentals available for permanent residents has decreased. El Dorado County, which includes South Lake Tahoe, passed a measure last year to limit short-term rentals in residential neighborhoods beginning in 2021. Measure T just barely passed and many argued it would result in a loss of tourist dollars. The city estimated that it could lose up to $3 million a year in tourist taxes.

"I think the change has really come about with the technology to allow people to rent their homes more easily, and the tourists really moved actively into what were traditionally residential neighborhoods," said Steve Teshara, CEO of the Lake Tahoe South Shore Chamber of Commerce that opposed Measure T. "People were purchasing properties with the idea they could rent homes. The issue is that Tahoe doesn’t belong to the residents. Tahoe belongs to everyone. The people who come and rent and have their vacations in the single family home neighborhoods, they need to be mindful. And locals need to understand this is a tourist destination. There’s a tradeoff."

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All of the issues aside, some locals say that residents cause just as many issues as tourists. "Of course there are obnoxious individuals, but without tourists we would have no roads, no schools, no ski resorts. The list goes on," Lisa Sinizer wrote on the I Love Lake Tahoe page. "I find almost everything people complain about as a tourist problem, is just as likely being done by a local. You have no idea if that trash thrower, that speeder or that noisy partier is a local or a tourist unless you talk to them."

Ken Curtzwiler, who has written weekly column under the name Ski Bum for the Tahoe Mountain News, shares a similar sentiment and likes to remind locals, "We were all tourists at one time."

Curtzwiler hitchhiked to Tahoe in the 1970s and never left. He worked as a bartender for 20 years and now has a construction company with most of his jobs coming from people with vacation homes. Making a living off the tourism industry in Tahoe, he's able to ski on average 130 days a year.

"Locals cause more problems than tourists do," he said. "It’s like everybody complains about the way they drive, but locals cause more accidents than tourists do. They’re not in more accidents, but they cause them. They cut them off. They’re honking at them. They’re telling them to put their chains on."

He doesn't have any data to back up this claim, but says living in the region and observing the interactions between tourists and locals — and writing about them in his column — has made him an expert.

He believes the bigger problem is coming from people — both locals and residents — pushing for growth and expansion with everything from more resorts to big-box stores. In the 1980s, the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency put a three-year stop on building developments and he'd like to see a similar moratorium in coming years.

"I think our town right now and its infrastructure can not handle the amount of people who are here today," he said. "I think we need to put a stop to our growth of infrastructure and focus on maintenance of existing infrastructure and that way we can give a better quality of living to the residents living here and a better product to tourists coming here."

Amy Graff is a digital editor with SFGATE. Email her:agraff@sfgate.com.