MACKENZIE
Donner Lake from McGlashan Point

California 100 · a trip

Truckee, at altitude

three mountain courses and a lake to jump in

2 nights · fly RNO · 40m to the first tee · 3h 25m from SF by car · green fees $761–934 a head · 1 of 3 played

Donner Lake from McGlashan Point · J.smith · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
directions ↗

At 6,000 feet the ball goes about ten percent farther, so every carry you do not trust at home you trust here, and for one weekend you are the long hitter you remember being. Coyote Moon is the course people come back for: granite outcrops, ponderosa pine, no houses, no road noise, a 250-foot drop on the 13th. Old Greenwood is Nicklaus at his most generous, wide and pretty with the mountains behind every green; Gray's Crossing is its sister across town, Peter Jacobsen and Jim Hardy, a little firmer and a little cheaper. Either is the Sunday round. The rest of the weekend is the lake: Donner is ten minutes from all three courses, cold and clear, and a swim after a round at altitude is the best thing in this list. Truckee's old town does dinner well and does not care how you played.

RNO#31#44#49
RNO ✈ then #31 → #44 → #49 · the dashed line is the order, not the roadmap National Geographic, Esri, Garmin, HERE, UNEP-WCMC, USGS, NASA, ESA, METI, NRCAN, GEBCO, NOAA

the courses

  1. #31Old GreenwoodTruckee · $303–364 · B value · 3h 25m from SF · 23 mi from RNOto play
  2. #44Coyote MoonTruckee · $165–225 · A- value · 3h 25m from SF · 3 mi from #31played
  3. #49Gray's CrossingTruckee · $293–345 · B+ value · 3h 25m from SF · 3 mi from #44to play
Old Greenwood from above · Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics

#31 Old Greenwood

Coyote Moon from above · Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics

#44 Coyote Moon

Gray's Crossing from above · Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics

#49 Gray's Crossing

the rest of the weekend

Commercial Row, old Truckee
Commercial Row, old Truckeeliannadavis · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

the logistics

airport
RNO Reno-Tahoe, 40m — the one time Reno is the right airport; from SF it is 3h 25m up I-80 and most people drive
sleep
Truckee — the lodging at Old Greenwood, or a rental off Donner Lake
when
late May to mid-October; snow closes all three. July and August are the sure months. Book summer times early — the season is short and everyone from the Bay knows it.
  1. Fri · drive up after lunch to beat the Friday wall at Auburn, dinner on Commercial Row in old Truckee
  2. Sat · Coyote Moon in the morning — the only one of the three with no houses on it — then Donner Lake for the afternoon
  3. Sun · Old Greenwood or Gray's Crossing (they are the same club; pick by tee time), Kings Beach on the north shore for lunch, home by dark