For the first time ever, Lake Tahoe’s Heavenly Mountain is opening its gondola to mountain bikers looking for a quicker way to hit the trail.

The Tahoe Area Mountain Bike Association, Heavenly, the Tahoe Fund, and the Forest Service, which partnered on the project, hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Sunday for the new access and the opening of the Panorama Trail.

A local nonprofit, TAMBA, builds and maintains multi-use trails throughout the Tahoe area, while the Tahoe Fund, another nonprofit, supports environmental projects, including recreation.

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The Heavenly Gondola officially opened its doors on Monday to bikers who can ride to the mid-station, unload, and ride the Panorama Trail via the Mid-Station Connector Trail and access regional routes including the Tahoe Rim Trail and Van Sickle Trail. Alongside standard mountain bikes, class one e-bikes are allowed on the gondola.

“This epic trail offers amazing lake views,” said Drew Bray, executive director of Tahoe Area Mountain Bike Association (TAMBA), per the Tahoe Daily Tribune. 

Day access starts at $39 in addition to a Gondola sightseeing ticket or Epic Pass, and includes unlimited Gondola uploads. Next winter Epic Pass holders can also get a rest-of-season pass for $70, while Northstar Bike Park pass holders can ride for free.

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Owned by the same parent company as Heavenly, Vail Resorts, Northstar’s considered the premier bike park in the region. Boreal Mountain also offers lift-served mountain biking.

Outside the resorts, Lake Tahoe is home to a vast network of earn-your-laps mountain biking, which the new gondola access at Heavenly feeds into. 

According to TAMBA, construction on the Panorama Trail began in 2020, with the Forest Service machine-building the primary trail corridor. Since then, TAMBA and other organizations have worked to host volunteers, who “played a critical role in finishing trail tread, building sustainable trail features, and preparing the trails for public use.”