Saturday was my latest ever first day of the season. SoCal has missed out on natural snow so far this season, and the Big Bear snowmaking got sufficient terrain open to my standards about 3 weeks later than normal, interrupted by a downpour of rain Christmas Day and another day of drizzle Jan. 2.
The drive up passed through the area burned by the Old Fire in late October:
Farther up around 4,000 feet it appeared that Route 330 was used to defend against the fire, with everything west of the road burned:
At this elevation almost everthing burned from here to the foothills of Mt. Baldy 20 miles west. The fire also burned over the 6,000 foot ridgeline in the background, destroying many homes east of Lake Arrowhead.
I arrived at Snow Summit at 8:30AM and started skiing a bit after 9:00AM after the shuttle from the auxilairy Brownie parking lot. It was already too warm for a hat or normal gloves and I dumped my sweater by 10:00AM. There are some aspects of "urban skiing" at Big Bear, such as Summit Run, the easiest top-to-bottom run:
Fortunately there are many more spacious routes down the mountain.
Many runs have nice views of the lake
and there wouldn't be any skiing here most of the time without the extensive snowmaking provided by it.
Wall (under the chair) and Olympic are Snow Summit's steepest runs
and currently illustrate the contrast with and without snowmaking. Olympic does have snowmaking coverage and should be open the next time we get sustained cold weather. In the current weather pattern of 40F days and 20F nights snowmaking is used to maintain the 80% of terrain now open.
The steepest pitches are only about 200 vertical, so the main challenge here is in the famous terrain parks. Here's Adam last February practicing what he learned at SMS:
After an early lunch and a few more runs I took the shuttle bus to Bear Mt. at 1:00PM after skiing 15,400 vertical at Snow Summit. Snow Summit purchased Bear in summer 2002 and upgraded snowmaking /grooming to their standards. Most of Bear is now devoted to terrain park features but there are long cruisers on the isolated Silver and Bear peaks. Here's a view of Bear Peak:
Note the nicely spaced trees in Bow Canyon at left. It's great skiing in there but with average natural snowfall of about 6 feet per season plus our warm weather I've been there only once in March 1993.
Snow Summit grooms intensively and there was not a mogul to be found on either mountain. This picture near top of Bear Peak shows what we would skiing on without the grooming:
Despite the warm weather the sun is low in January and there was only slushy snow near the base areas. There was a hardpack subsurface but you could hold an edge and make turns nearly anywhere. Some of the local people called it icy but there were only a few isolated frozen granular spots.
From the top of Bear Peak (SoCal's highes lift at 8,800) there is a nice view of San Gorgonio, SoCal's answer to Tuckerman's, where I made late season grueling hike and ski expeditions in the early 1980's:
1: San Gorgonio Mt. 11,502 feet
2: North Face, skied May 3, 1981
3: Big Draw, skied June 1, 1980, similar to but longer than Cornice at Mammoth
4: Jepson Peak, 11,200 feet
5: Little Draw, skied May 25, 1983, similar to Paranoid at Mammoth
6: Charlton Peak (with trees) 10,800 feet, skied May 30, 1982
The glacial cirque is about 1,500 vertical. The climb from the 7,700 foot trailhead to over 11,000 feet took me 7 hours, so I gave up this pastime when the trailhead was relocated lower and nearly 3 miles farther from the mountain in the late 1980's. So close, yet so far away!
I finished skiing another 12,800 vertical at Bear Mt. by 4:05PM but it took 40 minutes for me to get back to my car with 2 shuttle buses. Here's a view of Bear Mt. from across the lake:
You can only see the 3 isolated peaks in the picture. The upper mountain terrain between them is undeveloped. Most runs are out of view on the lower mountain and have the park features. You are forced to the bottom of the mountain to switch peaks and thus the 2 high speed lifts in the base area had 10 minute lines.
Here's Snow Summit just after the lights were turned on for night skiing:
As you can see nearly as much terrain as possible has been developed here. The runs on the left side of the pictures are wide open cruisers with not much traffic. The top to bottom run at far right is the Westridge terrain park. Only the runs down the middle and the beginner area at the base are congested. Snow Summit is 1,200 vertical in total.
A final profile picture of Snow Summit's lights illustrates the intermediate pitch of the runs:
The drive up passed through the area burned by the Old Fire in late October:
Farther up around 4,000 feet it appeared that Route 330 was used to defend against the fire, with everything west of the road burned:
At this elevation almost everthing burned from here to the foothills of Mt. Baldy 20 miles west. The fire also burned over the 6,000 foot ridgeline in the background, destroying many homes east of Lake Arrowhead.
I arrived at Snow Summit at 8:30AM and started skiing a bit after 9:00AM after the shuttle from the auxilairy Brownie parking lot. It was already too warm for a hat or normal gloves and I dumped my sweater by 10:00AM. There are some aspects of "urban skiing" at Big Bear, such as Summit Run, the easiest top-to-bottom run:
Fortunately there are many more spacious routes down the mountain.
Many runs have nice views of the lake
and there wouldn't be any skiing here most of the time without the extensive snowmaking provided by it.
Wall (under the chair) and Olympic are Snow Summit's steepest runs
and currently illustrate the contrast with and without snowmaking. Olympic does have snowmaking coverage and should be open the next time we get sustained cold weather. In the current weather pattern of 40F days and 20F nights snowmaking is used to maintain the 80% of terrain now open.
The steepest pitches are only about 200 vertical, so the main challenge here is in the famous terrain parks. Here's Adam last February practicing what he learned at SMS:
After an early lunch and a few more runs I took the shuttle bus to Bear Mt. at 1:00PM after skiing 15,400 vertical at Snow Summit. Snow Summit purchased Bear in summer 2002 and upgraded snowmaking /grooming to their standards. Most of Bear is now devoted to terrain park features but there are long cruisers on the isolated Silver and Bear peaks. Here's a view of Bear Peak:
Note the nicely spaced trees in Bow Canyon at left. It's great skiing in there but with average natural snowfall of about 6 feet per season plus our warm weather I've been there only once in March 1993.
Snow Summit grooms intensively and there was not a mogul to be found on either mountain. This picture near top of Bear Peak shows what we would skiing on without the grooming:
Despite the warm weather the sun is low in January and there was only slushy snow near the base areas. There was a hardpack subsurface but you could hold an edge and make turns nearly anywhere. Some of the local people called it icy but there were only a few isolated frozen granular spots.
From the top of Bear Peak (SoCal's highes lift at 8,800) there is a nice view of San Gorgonio, SoCal's answer to Tuckerman's, where I made late season grueling hike and ski expeditions in the early 1980's:
1: San Gorgonio Mt. 11,502 feet
2: North Face, skied May 3, 1981
3: Big Draw, skied June 1, 1980, similar to but longer than Cornice at Mammoth
4: Jepson Peak, 11,200 feet
5: Little Draw, skied May 25, 1983, similar to Paranoid at Mammoth
6: Charlton Peak (with trees) 10,800 feet, skied May 30, 1982
The glacial cirque is about 1,500 vertical. The climb from the 7,700 foot trailhead to over 11,000 feet took me 7 hours, so I gave up this pastime when the trailhead was relocated lower and nearly 3 miles farther from the mountain in the late 1980's. So close, yet so far away!
I finished skiing another 12,800 vertical at Bear Mt. by 4:05PM but it took 40 minutes for me to get back to my car with 2 shuttle buses. Here's a view of Bear Mt. from across the lake:
You can only see the 3 isolated peaks in the picture. The upper mountain terrain between them is undeveloped. Most runs are out of view on the lower mountain and have the park features. You are forced to the bottom of the mountain to switch peaks and thus the 2 high speed lifts in the base area had 10 minute lines.
Here's Snow Summit just after the lights were turned on for night skiing:
As you can see nearly as much terrain as possible has been developed here. The runs on the left side of the pictures are wide open cruisers with not much traffic. The top to bottom run at far right is the Westridge terrain park. Only the runs down the middle and the beginner area at the base are congested. Snow Summit is 1,200 vertical in total.
A final profile picture of Snow Summit's lights illustrates the intermediate pitch of the runs: