Homewood Mountain Resort: Exciting Reopening in 2025
A lake does not remember the seasons. It reflects them. In the winter of 2024–25, Lake Tahoe mirrored a mountain gone quiet. The lifts at Homewood Mountain Resort did not run. Groomers did not scrape early morning furrows into the corduroy. The air, thin and crystalline, carried no laughter, no whoops of descending skiers or snowboarders. A ski area was closed. A community held its breath.
Homewood is not a large mountain. It is not high, nor glitzy. It lacks the acreage of Heavenly, the vertical of Squaw. But it has the view. From the summit, the lake stretches out so near it looks like it might swallow the resort whole. The skiing is west-facing and sun-softened. The trails meander. It is a place not for the epic but for the eternal.
In October 2024, JMA Ventures, the owners of Homewood, issued a press release that echoed through lodge rafters and local inboxes. The resort would not open for the season. The language was administrative – permitting delays, a gondola project, financing complications. The underlying fear was existential. Would the resort reopen at all? Would it be public? Would it still be Homewood?
The context: JMA’s long-term plan included turning Homewood into a semi-private resort, with luxury lodging and restricted access. For a mountain known for its laid-back feel and unpretentious terrain, the proposed change felt surgical. A lift replaced with a gondola. A parking lot with valet. Skiing, but curated.
The community responded not with outrage but with organization. Keep Homewood Public, a coalition of residents, second homeowners, and local skiers, formed quickly. They drafted petitions, attended planning meetings, and argued not just for snow, but for access. Their case was not economic, though it could have been. It was ethical. They argued for the right to glide downhill with a lake for a witness.
In January 2025, the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency approved revisions to the Master Plan. The gondola, yes, eventually. But also: guaranteed public access. The compromise, if it was one, preserved the soul of the place while allowing for its evolution. JMA Ventures, to their credit, committed to reopening the resort for the 2025–26 season.
During the closure, the mountain rested. Lifts were serviced, trails surveyed. The absence of skiers allowed the return of bears, deer, foxes, and the wind’s own music. Maintenance crews remained. There was no abandonment—only pause. Groomers stayed idle but functional. The lift cables held their tension.
What happens when a mountain sleeps is not unlike what happens when a person does. Subtle repairs. Dreams of motion. The expectation of waking.
Homewood will awaken in December 2025. Passes will be sold—including the “True Local Pass,” designed for year-round residents between Tahoe City and Rubicon. The resort will open with familiar lifts and trails. The gondola will come later. The soul, it seems, is arriving first.
To ski Homewood is to remember skiing as it once was: intimate, local, breathtaking. The view remains. The lake, unchanged. The fight to keep it public, resolved. Temporarily, perhaps. But resolved.
As noted in our earlier piece, “Homewood Mountain Resort: A Case Study in the Privatization of Public Powder” this mountain was nearly lost to a future it never asked for. Now, for at least another season, it remains what it has always been: a place to carve turns above the lake, with nothing but sky ahead.
