Whale Beach at sunset

Whale Beach is one of our favorites, and the name is honest: the big granite boulders in the shallows really do look like a pod of whales surfacing.

The way down

On a Saturday evening in late March, Helena wanted to walk down with Marley, so I rode. From near the Chimney Beach parking lot it's about two miles and 350 feet down to the water, and I was at the lake by six.

An hour on the beach

We spent an hour on the beach. It was a lovely, warm evening for March, and Marley swam a lot. There's a vein of carnelian near that beach, and the stones you see are orange and amber and polished smooth.

I put the drone up at seven to get the beach from above, then flew it in low over the whale rocks. From up there the clear water and the shape of the shore make sense in a way they don't from the sand. A few minutes later, with the sun going down, Helena and I took a couple of sunset selfies.

The way back up

Then the ride back up. I was at the top by 7:37: 4.2 miles all in, about 370 feet of climbing, and only 25 minutes of it actually moving.

The whales, imagined

Afterwards I took a real photo of the rocks from that evening and let an AI video tool imagine what the name suggests. In the clip the rocks turn into humpback whales, and then the camera sinks into the lake with them and goes under water, where whales are swimming. That is obviously not Lake Tahoe, and it's not that deep right there. The lake does get pretty deep, just with no whales that we know of. That clip is made with AI. The rocks, the light and the evening were real.

The rocks, the light and the evening were real.

What I learned: some places earn their names. And an hour like that is worth the ride back up.

The photo spread

Near the lake on Whale Beach.