Every winter of her life, Kathleen Annice has skied at Homewood, a low-key ski area on Lake Tahoe’s West Shore. Her family lived walking distance from the slopes. As a baby, she rode on her parents’ shoulders in a backpack while they skied the beginner slopes. At age 3, she started ski school. Her local student ID card unlocked deals that are now hard to believe, such as $5 lift tickets. Now, Annice is 34 and a mom, and she has been teaching her daughter how to ski at Homewood — or she was, until this year.

No one is skiing at Homewood now. The ski resort’s owner shut down the lifts this season after a bitter fight over public access at the beloved resort reached a stalemate.

Homewood’s owner now says they’re committed to keeping the resort public. But the fight cost the ski resort money, and in the fall, the ski resort’s financial investors withdrew funding that was essential to operate this winter. Homewood is not sure when it will reopen, according to Andy Buckley, the ski resort’s vice president of operations.

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Homewood’s closure is the latest move in a long-standing debate over the future of the ski area, and in some ways, the entire Lake Tahoe region. The stakes boil down to who gets access to one of Lake Tahoe’s most loved places. Is Tahoe for the wealthy elite who can afford six-figure membership fees and slopeside mansions? Or is there still an affordable place for the person driving their family up to Tahoe for the day to teach their kids how to ski?

“The community has really been waiting for the restoration of Homewood to take place,” Annice said. “We love the mountain, we want to see it open … We still keep buying tickets and passes to try to support it. But now, it’s at a standstill.”

Historically, Homewood has been a holdout in Lake Tahoe for an old school kind of skiing experience, before Tahoe became a chessboard for large ski resort corporations to make moves on. Homewood was welcoming and affordable without the ego of Palisades or the fancy airs of Northstar, epitomized by its long-running slogan, “Smile! You’re at Homewood!” Even on the busiest powder days — when videos of crowded lift lines elsewhere tend to go viral — Homewood’s gentle slopes and quiet woods, even the old fixed-grip chairlifts that inch uphill and rattle over the lift towers, made for a meditative skiing experience.

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Ski lift at Homewood Resort Lake Tahoe Calif., Jan. 9, 2011

“It’s the heart of the West Shore,” said Jonas Hoffman, another lifelong skier at Homewood and a West Shore resident. Hoffman owns a nearby plumbing company with his family. He grew up skiing at Homewood and, more recently, he has been teaching his daughters how to ski there. “It’s not a rat race to get there. And once you’re on the hill, you’re not waiting in line a whole lot.”

That uncrowded, unrushed atmosphere made Homewood feel special, Buckley agreed. It also meant the ski resort was dealing with a serious financial loss. Since 2010, Homewood has seen its business volume decline by about 60% to 70%, according to Buckley.

Over the last decade, Tahoe and its........

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