If you stopped riding toward Marlette Lake last year because you heard the whole backcountry was closed for dam repairs, you're due for an update. The closure is real. It just hasn't worked the way the original announcement suggested, and it isn't the only dam project shaping what's open behind Incline Village right now.
There are two separate rehabilitation projects underway in the hills above town this season, on two different dams, with two different rules and two different finish dates. Mixing them up means either avoiding trails that are fine on a Saturday or expecting a reservoir to reopen a year before it will. Here's what each one actually restricts, and what that means for the next time you load a bike or a pack.
The Dam That Started It
Marlette Lake Dam is a 150-year-old earthen embankment, built in 1873 and raised in 1959, part of the Marlette Lake Water System that still supplies Carson City and Storey County. A 2017 inspection by the Nevada Division of Water Resources found seepage in the embankment, and a 2024 FEMA assessment concluded that a magnitude 6.5 earthquake or larger could cause the dam to fail, with enough force to damage State Route 28 below. That finding, not routine maintenance, is why the lake has been drawn down roughly 20 feet and why the Nevada Division of State Parks has kept a construction zone around it through this year. The project is funded through the FEMA Pre-Disaster Mitigation Fund, with an earlier cost estimate near $20 million, and it's aimed at final construction completion in October 2026.
The Schedule Nobody Updated
When the closures were first announced in the spring of 2025, the framing was simple: these trails are closed through 2026. North Canyon Road, the Marlette Lake and Marlette Creek trails, Hobart Road, Snow Valley Peak Road, the North Canyon Campground. Full stop, for the duration.
That's not the rule anymore. The construction-season update Nevada State Parks issued for 2026 describes something narrower: trail closures in effect only during active construction hours, 5 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday. Trails are open on weekends, though the agency notes that scheduling can shift depending on what the crews need to do. Law enforcement patrols the closed sections during weekday hours, so this isn't a rule to test on a Tuesday, but it also means a Saturday ride into that country isn't the workaround it sounds like. It's simply the schedule.
A Second, Separate Dam a Few Miles Away
The confusion gets worse because Marlette isn't the only active dam project in the same state park. Preparation work has also started on Hobart Reservoir Dam, part of the same water system, with a scope that includes seismic upgrades, spillway improvements, a new access bridge, and replaced discharge piping. It runs on a different clock entirely.
| Marlette Lake Dam | Hobart Reservoir Dam | |
|---|---|---|
| Water body status | Drawn down roughly 20 feet, closed for the duration | Closed to fishing and recreation for the entire 2026 summer season |
| Trail schedule | Closed 5 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday. Open weekends | Same weekday construction-hour window applies to surrounding roads and trails |
| Target completion | October 2026 | July 2027 |
| Exempted routes | Tahoe Rim Trail and Capital to Tahoe Trail remain open throughout | Same two trails remain open throughout |
Practically, that means even once Marlette wraps up this fall, Hobart stays off the table for fishing and recreation for another summer after that. Anyone circling back next June expecting the whole backcountry to be clear again is going to find one reservoir open and the other still fenced off.
What This Means for the Classic Spooner-to-Incline Ride
The 14-mile point-to-point Flume Trail ride, shuttle up to Spooner Lake, descend back to Incline Village, is the reason most people bike out this way at all. Flume Trail Bikes, the shop behind Tunnel Creek Cafe that Max Jones and Patti McMullan have run since 1999, has had to rework its own offerings around the closure rather than shut down for the season.
For most of this summer, their classic point-to-point shuttle ran weekends only, with the shop explicitly noting that midweek access to the Marlette Flume was routed through their alternate 431 shuttle instead. As of their own August update, the daily point-to-point run is back to seven days a week. On weekdays when the middle section is inaccessible, their fallback route sends riders out the Incline Flume Trail toward the Marlette Flume viewpoint and back the way they came, rather than continuing through to Spooner. It's an out-and-back instead of a loop, and it's a reasonable trade if you're riding on a Tuesday afternoon rather than a Saturday morning.
One thing that isn't coming back this year regardless of the day: the swim at the top. Marlette Lake, drawn down for the repair, isn't the dip it's been in past seasons. If cooling off at the lake was part of the appeal, plan on the East Shore trail or Sand Harbor instead until the project finishes.
Quick reference for planning a ride this season:
- Weekdays: expect the out-and-back to the Marlette Flume viewpoint, not the full loop. Closed sections are patrolled.
- Weekends: the classic 14-mile Spooner-to-Incline point-to-point should be fully open, subject to the state park's note that schedules can shift.
- Any day: no swimming at Marlette Lake this season. Hobart Reservoir is closed to recreation through summer 2027.
- Tahoe Rim Trail and the Capital to Tahoe Trail are open throughout, on any day, regardless of either project's schedule.
The Payoff Waiting on the Other Side of the Construction Fences
The same agency currently managing this weekday closure has also spent the past several months drafting something bigger: a Spooner Lake and Backcountry Master Plan that will guide how this entire network gets built out over the next decade. Public comment on the draft closed July 19, 2026, with Nevada State Parks aiming to finalize it later this summer.
The plan proposes roughly 10 miles of new singletrack designed to connect existing destinations, Marlette Lake, Hobart Reservoir, the Flume Trail, the Tahoe Rim Trail, without forcing riders through the tedious service-road climbs that currently link them. Some of that work is already visible. TAMBA has already built the Tunnel Creek Bypass, a singletrack alternative to the old three-mile sandy logging-road descent that used to be the least fun part of finishing the Flume ride. The draft plan formalizes that kind of improvement rather than treating it as a one-off.
The same planning process is also responding to a problem that predates any dam project: heat-mapping done for the master plan found that Monkey Rock, once a minor side trail, now draws visitation approaching that of the Spooner Lake Visitor Center itself, largely driven by social media. Rather than reacting trail by trail, the draft proposes adding roughly 977 acres to designated Wild Areas by retiring old disturbed roads, protecting the sense of remoteness that keeps people coming back to Spooner in the first place.
None of this changes what's closed on a Tuesday in September. But it's worth knowing that the disruption running through this construction season is happening alongside a planning process that will shape the trails your kids or grandkids ride out here for years past this one.
Living in a place like this means the small print, the trailhead schedule, the dam timeline, the shop that reroutes its shuttle around a construction fence, is part of daily life here as much as the lake itself. It's the same kind of ground-level knowledge that matters when you're weighing a purchase, a sale, or just deciding whether this is still the community you want to be part of. If you're thinking through any of that, I'm happy to talk it through. Heather Bacon offers a free consultation for exactly those conversations, no obligation, just a local perspective on the place you already call home.
