Highlands View Road

The site for the Ritz-Carlton Lake Tahoe resort, a 172-room, 5-star luxury mountain retreat at Northstar California, was designed to nestle in the alpine landscape at a remote location to offer visitors and guests a one-of-a-kind getaway experience. So when it came time for the Q&D team to build the resort, they also had to build a new 4.5-mile road at 8,500 feet in elevation to access its serene location while protecting the native environment and meeting a challenging schedule. The roadway has an average grade of 10% and a vertical gain of 665 feet.

“Sharing the road took on a new meaning that summer,” says Q&D Vice President Jeff Bean. “Throughout construction of the road and the Ritz, access had to remain open at all times and not just to our own construction crews. We worked closely with our client and the Northstar team to develop a plan that worked for everyone – including visitors and summer maintenance crews.”

In addition to providing breathtaking views of the Sierra Nevada, Highlands View Road features two precast concrete bridges, and four precast concrete tunnels, each set into place using cranes. Crews placed over 130,000 feet of rock walls and retaining walls along the road to reduce erosion and add stability to the curves and slopes. Q&D’s utility crews set in place water mains along the entire 4.5-mile road in addition to all the communications conduits. The road’s structure required the movement of 181,000 cubic yards of earth and the placement of 40,000 tons of aggregate base covered with 15,000 tons of asphalt.