A slopeside retreat at Sugar Bowl receives a tasteful makeover that brings it into the modern era

The exterior of the home was re-shingled, while new windows and a large sliding door were added to the front façade

You know that late ’70s, early ’80s ski retreat vibe because you’ve seen it—and probably recently, as the Tahoe area is full of old mountain cabins that could stand to swap out their dated aesthetics for a more refined look. A desire to bring one such dusty cabin into this millennium was the driving force behind a recent Sugar Bowl renovation, designed inside and out by Obata Noblin Office and executed by Mt. Lincoln Construction.

Max Obata, principal and co-founder of San Francisco’s Obata Noblin Office, explains that his firm was already working on a home in the community when he learned that incoming neighbors were looking for an architect. Their ski house had one unit on the ground floor, topped by another that took the upper two floors, all done in a style that peaked several decades ago.

“This family bought it and wanted to combine it into a single continuous home—and calm down the aesthetics a bit,” Obata says. “There was a lot of shag carpeting and other loud textures and colors. It just felt very much of a specific time period and they wanted to bring in more of a timeless quality. To us, that meant getting back to a simple, natural material palette of stone and wood, and then focusing on views to the mountain, while maintaining the classic look of the exterior.”

Before the renovation, the staircase was fully enclosed. The design team at Obata Noblin Office reimagined it to feel more open and inviting, enhancing sight lines between rooms and framing views of the surrounding landscape

Obata says they wanted to make as few “incisions” from the outside as possible, but they needed to completely gut the structure to accomplish their desired updates to the home’s circulation and program. They started with the central staircase, which came to them broken up into two sets of stairs. Obata describes it as disjointed and “not a pleasant place to be”—an issue in a not-huge three-story home. 

The solution was a monolithic oak space basking in natural light. Obata, whose team also executed the interior design, calls the staircase the real heart of the project, but it can probably also be thought of as the trunk of a warm and inviting tree, with living spaces branching off in organic ways. There’s a generous main level, two children’s rooms upstairs, a new pantry and a hot tub on the deck. 

“We crammed everything we could into those two floors,” Obata says of the upper levels.

Still, at its roots—to continue the arboreal metaphor—the house has a singular focus: skiing. 

Obata says it was important for the design to be functional for the family, who would come up for a week at a time to ski, snowshoe and enjoy all the other outdoor activities in the area. Their mudroom features ample lockers and under-seat boot dryers, so the family can slip back in without fuss and know the mess they bring with them, along with anything that melts onto the stone floor, is confined to a single space. 

Keeping the outdoor gear isolated allows the other rooms to feel warmer and cozier, Obata says, which is a major plus for this snowy locale.

“In the winter, it’s a completely snowbound village,” he says. “What that means is when you get to Sugar Bowl, you drop off your car in a parking lot near the main road, and then you take a 15-minute gondola ride with all your bags into the village, and you’re completely snowbound from there.”

To simplify and streamline the build, Obata’s team chose white oak for a base look on the millwork, stairs and flooring. The versatile wood can hold stain to bring out various characteristics and “be what you need it to be,” he says.

The material palette was kept simple: white oak, dark stone, cream plaster and a few muted tones that allow the artwork to remain the focal point of each room

Stone, too, was chosen for its numerous applications—as well as for its beauty. The lightly veined pietra cardosa stone adds a rich, bluish, dark gray throughout the house, including the kitchen island, the hearthstone around the fireplaces and the bathroom floors. The cool-to-neutral color tones extend to the furniture, a conscious choice that allows the family’s colorful artwork and photographs to truly pop. 

This project also came with some time constraints. The clients didn’t want it to be a long process, Obata says, and the build season—at least the easy part of it—is limited to about five months, from June to October.

“It’s really difficult to get work done in the winter, unless you’re pulling in building materials via snowcat or snowmobile,” Obata says. “You have to have a pretty adventurous contractor.”

Enter Chris Tennant, president of Mt. Lincoln Construction. Adventurous he may be, but another quality—experience—can be even more of an asset once the snow starts falling. Mt. Lincoln Construction has worked in Sugar Bowl for about 30 years. In that time, the company has built, remodeled or helped to maintain “a really high” percentage of the homes in the village.

“Interestingly, this was one of the few houses we’d really never touched,” he says. “That was exciting.”

The new ski room accommodates a variety of ski equipment and jackets

As the community is billed as the only roadless snowbound village in North America, Tennant agrees that the natural selling point for winter-loving families can make construction difficult; but it’s something his construction company has taken pride in doing for decades. They have a couple of snowmobiles and a utility terrain vehicle with tracks, along with bucket sleds ordered from the Midwest and some homemade trailers that employ snowboards to move efficiently over the terrain. Tennant says Sugar Bowl will help when they have especially large packages of materials to transport.

For this cabin remodel, Tennant says his team ran up against the “thrash season,” when there’s just enough early-winter snow to make driving difficult for a standard truck, but not enough to fully cover the mud and make a smooth surface for sleds. 

“We ended up right at that point. The drywall delivery was just behind a big storm. The road was a whole sheet of basically 6 inches of frozen snow and ice,” says Tennant. 

They ended up coordinating 20 or 30 guys to carefully guide their sleds and hand-carry the drywall sheets for up to half a mile.  

The contrast between the existing darker-stained structural posts and beams highlights the distinction between the original and new wood throughout the home

“We got it there before it really shut down,” Tennant says. “A lot of other things went pretty smooth, for the most part, aside from the normal workings of Sugar Bowl in the snow.”

Happily, the effort was worth it. Tennant particularly remembers the staircase and white oak paneling, dubbing it “outstanding in both design and craftsmanship” and crediting his carpenters for their “incredible job making that come together and making it a highlight of the house.” He also notes the plasterwork around the fireplaces and in a bathroom, which he says brings a necessary modern interior touch to offset the traditional exterior.

“They kept the form on the outside, which really respected that classic Sugar Bowl look, but then took the inside and … gave it that updated, modern touch and completely transformed the interior,” he says.

Of course, as welcoming as this home is for its new owners, the best part may be leaving it shortly after they arrive to enjoy a day on the slopes. 

“It’s the pretty ultimate ski-in, ski-out experience there,” Tennant says. “The owners themselves were always so excited about the skiing aspect of their home and what it allows them to do.”

Award: Ski Retreat

Building Design: Obata Noblin Office

Builder: Mt. Lincoln Construction

Interior Design: Obata Noblin Office

Landscape Design: NA

Square Feet: 3,400