Lamoille, Nevada: A Visitor’s Guide to amenities, attractions and
history from The Complete Nevada Traveler
Guide to
Lamoille
Population: 545 (est. 1995)
Elevation: 5,700 feet
This charming village at the foot of the Ruby Mountains
is a little Shangri-la of family farms and country lanes that has become
a popular destination with travelers from around Elko County and around the
world
Lamoille, Nevada
Calendar of Annual Events
JUNE
Lamoille Country Fair
SEPTEMBER
Man-Mule Race, Lamoille to
Elko
Welcome to Lamoille
These businesses are pleased to welcome you
Dinner – Overnight Accomodations
PINE LODGE Dinner House & Hotel.
Can’t miss it. 775-753-6363. Welcome to Nevada’s One-of-a-kind dinner
house and 3-room hotel, open every afternoon at 3. Enjoy an elegant supper
in our unforgettable dining room and stay the night in comfort. Our rooms
range in size from big to huge, family groups a specialty. And yes, you can
feed the deer.
A brief History & Description of
Lamoille, Nevada
by
David W. Toll
This charming village
at the foot of the Ruby Mountains is a little Shangri-la of family farms
and country lanes that has become a popular destination with travelers from
around Elko County and around the world. The attractions are The Pine Lodge,
a long-established dinner house (and 3-room hotel) with an absolutely astonishing
display of game animals in the dining room–mounted moose heads are just
the beginning here. There are museum-quality diaramas with deer, mountain
lions, even enormous bears at your elbow as you nibble your entrecote.
Michael’s Ranch House is
just a memory now, and the two-story ranch house, once a reknowned Bed &
Breakfast (the hearty Sunday brunch was worth the drive from Elko) has become
simply a ranch house again.
Since beyond the memory
of man Lamoille’s long, quiet winters were the very model of rural isolation,
but with the establishment of Ruby Mountain Heli-Ski, and now with the very
elegant Red’s Ranch accepting guests, Lamoille in winter is a miniature
cosmopolis. Each morning just after daybreak, helicopters detach themselves
from a cow pasture near the entrance to Red’s Ranch and float up to the summits
of the Rubies, where they pause to set a small group of skiers and their
guides lightly down on the virgin powder snow. The view from there, of the
vast white wilderness, is magic enough. And the swift plunge down the
mountainside: pure ecstasy.
It’s also expensive, which
is why the apres-ski crowd tends to be well-heeled, and explains the
conversations about skiing in New Zealand, Africa and South America. One
group of skiers arrived from Texas, only to discover that one of them had
left his ski boots at home. So they telephoned the pilot of their jet at
the Elko airport and had him fly to Aspen to buy a pair. He was back with
the boots in four hours.
Ruby Mountain is one of
only two heli-ski operations in the west, and with 500 square miles of ski
terrain in the Rubies alone (and two other mountain ranges available), it
is by far the largest in the U.S. It attracts skiers from all over the world.
“It was the best skiing of our lives,” an earnest Marin County pediatrician
told me during a winter visit to Lamoille. “Every run in fresh snow. No lift
lines – no lifts, for that matter. It’s an indescribable sensation to be
the only skiers on the mountain.”
The scenic
Lamoille Canyon Road is one of the most beautiful in the west, one of Nevada’s
crown jewels, in fact: a smooth granite sluiceway created by slow flowing
glaciers, and provides a full summer’s day of picnicking, fishing, strolling
or serious hiking in the pines.
Campsites in the canyon
were washed out last spring when Lamoille Creek went on a flooding rampage,
but there are rest rooms at the upper end of the road, which is also the
trailhead for the Ruby Crest Trail.
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