Lake Cascade has long been part of the Tamarack experience. Guests have launched boats from nearby access points, spent summer afternoons on the water, and taken in the lake’s sweeping views from ski runs, fairways, and Village patios. But this summer marks a significant evolution in that relationship. With the opening of its 100-slip public marina, expanded beach, and new waterfront amenities, Tamarack has brought the lake to the heart of the resort experience.

“Of all our assets, the mountain may be the most iconic, and the golf course may be the most refined, but the lake has always been the most elusive,” said Tamarack Resort President Scott Turlington. “And now, finally, it is happening.”

The marina isn’t a departure from Tamarack’s story—it’s the next chapter. More than a new amenity, it represents the completion of a vision that has connected the resort’s three defining experiences: skiing, golf, and life on the water. As America’s only ski, golf, and lake resort, Tamarack now offers guests and homeowners the opportunity to move seamlessly from mountain adventures to championship golf to afternoons spent exploring the shores of Lake Cascade, all without leaving the resort.”

Life is Better at the Lake

The marina is still technically getting its sea legs—it opened Memorial Day weekend, but by any measure, it is complete. Experience on-water fuel service dockside, one of a kind on all of Lake Cascade. Find a retail and rental operation on the beach, offering everything from kayaks and paddleboards to surf boats, ski boats, pontoons, and personal watercraft. Enjoy food and beverage from Mountain Bites food truck, swim in a designated area, and enjoy hours of beach volleyball just steps from the water.

The lake has always been part of the Tamarack story—the marina simply brings that story to the heart of the resort with a full lakefront operation and one hundred seasonal boat slips along a series of newly built docks.

Erik Fisher, who oversees the marina alongside his role as sports school director, said the opening week made clear that guests were ready for exactly this. “People kept saying some version of the same thing,” Fisher said. “The lake was always there, and people could enjoy it, but it never felt fully connected to the resort. Now it feels like the lake belongs to the Tamarack experience.”

Perhaps best of all, the marina is not a gated amenity or privatized stretch of Lake Cascade. Instead, it is fully open to the public, the result of a long-term lease with the State of Idaho and approval from the Bureau of Reclamation. It was designed, in part, to enhance existing public access at Poison Creek, not to displace it. The lake isn’t walled off but made more accessible by Tamarack’s new infrastructure.

Swinging Into the Sunset

When your morning on the lake gives way to afternoon, you may find yourself at Osprey Meadows, originally designed and redesigned in 2024 by internationally acclaimed designer Robert Trent Jones II. It was already something to talk about—a par-73 layout stretching 7,447 yards from the tips, with ski-trail-rated tee boxes and a 19th “Gambler’s Hole” that lets players press their luck after the round is technically over. But now, there’s even more.

The most visible addition this season is a nine-hole putting course built onto the social green—already the largest of its kind in the region at roughly 23,000 square feet. The putting course gives families, beginners, and anyone who isn’t ready for a full round a genuine way into the game. It’s an on-ramp, and a well-designed one.

“The social green was always meant to be more than a warm-up space,” said Chris Peterson, director of golf at Osprey Meadows. “The putting course makes it a destination in its own right. We’re seeing people out there who’ve never touched a club, kids who just want to be on the grass, couples who want something fun before dinner. That’s exactly what we hoped for.”

The tournament calendar tells a different story about where Osprey Meadows sits in the regional golf conversation. This summer, the course hosts the U.S. Amateur Qualifier, the Idaho Women’s Amateur, the Rocky Mountain PGA Pro-Am, and both the PNGA Senior and Super Senior Amateur—the schedule of a course that earned a seat at the table.

Peterson is measured about what that means. “A year ago, we were making the case that Osprey Meadows deserved to be mentioned alongside the best courses in the region,” he said. “This summer, the people who sanction those tournaments are making the case for us.”

For anyone who hasn’t made the trip, Tamarack is offering Golfer Appreciation Days with preferred pricing, a gesture toward the same community-access ethos that shaped the marina. Bad weather? Try the Osprey Meadows Golf Simulator, which allows golfers to practice even when the course is closed for the season.

Increasingly, Tamarack’s message is that all of this—the mountain, the lake, the golf course—is meant to be shared.

For the Record

While there’s no shortage of visual cues that hint at Tamarack’s evolving status, the past 18 months have also produced something impossible to argue with: a sustained run of outside recognition that, taken together, solidifies their rise.

Travel + Leisure named Tamarack a Top Resort in the United States in its 2025 World’s Best Awards. The Wall Street Journal put it on its Top 100 Ski Resorts list. Condé Nast Traveler ranked it 26th among the top 30 ski resorts in America. Powder Magazine went further, naming it the No. 1 Up and Coming Ski Resort in the country.

Then there’s The Reserve. Tamarack’s flagship restaurant has now been voted the No. 1 Ski Restaurant in the United States by USA Today 10 Best readers for three consecutive years—2023, 2024, and 2025.

Osprey Meadows has its own stack of hardware. Golfweek named it the No. 1 Course You Can Play in Idaho, placed it among the Top 100 Resort Courses in the country, and recognized it among the Top 200 Residential Courses in the United States—three separate lists, three separate acknowledgments that the redesign delivered what it promised.

“We’re not a resort that’s been discovered,” said Kara Finley, Tamarack’s CFO and COO. “We’re a resort that’s been built—carefully, over a long time. What’s gratifying about this stretch is that the people whose job it is to pay attention are starting to see it the same way we do.”

All Connected

Tamarack has long promised that the single property was capable of holding an entire vacation with something for everyone—4,400 acres in the mountains near McCall, 90 miles north of Boise, with a walkable village at the center and enough terrain, in every season, to keep a family busy without a lot of daily travel time.

That promise has always been mostly true, but this summer, the addition of the marina closes the last open loop. A morning on the mountain gives way to lunch in the village, which gives way to an afternoon on the water—and none of those transitions require a shuttle, a reservation at a distant facility, or any particular planning.

“I keep describing it as a full day,” said Fisher. “You wake up, you have the mountain above you and the lake below you, and now both of them are actually yours. That’s what’s different this year. It’s not that things have gotten better—it’s that the whole thing is finally connected.”

A(nother) Reason to Go

Tamarack’s summer calendar runs from the low-key to the full production. On the quieter end: yoga sessions at the marina and at Mid-Mountain Lodge, Nine & Dine golf evenings at Osprey Meadows that turn a back-nine into a social occasion, and weekend BBQs and live music down at the marina, in the village, or up at Mid-Mountain Lodge, that don’t require any planning beyond showing up. On the larger end, the Osprey Meadows tournament calendar—the U.S. Amateur Qualifier, Idaho Women’s Amateur, Rocky Mountain PGA Pro-Am, PNGA Senior, and Super Senior Amateur—gives the summer a backbone of competitive golf that draws visitors who might not otherwise make the trip.

Then there are the festivals, which have become their own argument for a summer visit. Events like Art & Wine, Oktoberfest, and Bikes, Brews & Bluegrass help turn the resort weekend into something to put on a calendar, adding texture across a whole summer. Whether the draw is a tournament tee time, a festival wristband, or simply a Wednesday morning yoga class with a view of the lake, Tamarack in summer is a place with things happening—and now, finally, a lakefront to happen around.

Adding It All Up

The version of Tamarack as a place where the mountain, golf course, and lake complement and coexist, where a family could arrive on a Friday and not run out of resort for a week and a half, where the memories being made aren’t incidental to the trip but the whole point of it is no longer imaginary.

Finley has been watching this property take shape long enough to know the difference between a resort that’s growing and one that’s grown. “What we’ve always been building toward,” she said, “is a place where people don’t just vacation—they come back. Where the friendships you make here last longer than the trip, and the time you spend with your family actually feels like a reprieve. That’s harder to build than a marina or a golf course, but you need the marina and the golf course to get there.”

Together, Tamarack’s three pillars—ski, golf, lake—make the argument that Tamarack has finished becoming what it set out to be—not a resort with potential, but one with a record.

90 miles north of Boise, on a July morning, the boats are heading out.