After heading to Bear Mountain, CA for the first time in years, I thought a review of the resort was in order.  Let me preface this post by saying, good snow in SoCal is hard to come by.  With 85 degree weather in the dead of winter (yes, its true) SoCal is known for its beaches - NOT its mountains!  Well, you wouldn’t think so, anyway.

Last weekend when I competed in the Burton AM Series, I got the opportunity to ride at Bear Mountain Resort (part of Big Bear) and I just have to say, I was quite impressed!  It was a park rider’s heaven, and combined with the 50 degree, ride-in-your-T-shirt weather, a perfect day.

Big Bear contains two separate hills - Bear Mountain and Snow Summit - and with the price of one ticket you get to ride at both.  Typically, Bear Mountain is known as more of a “snowboarder’s resort,” while Snow Summit is the side for skiiers (though neither side discriminates!)  Bear Mountain is only open during the day, while you can ride Snow Summit at night, so combine the two and make one long day!

I only had the chance to hit up Bear Mountain, so I’ll talk about that resort in this post.  I had my hesitations about heading to Big Bear - It hadn’t snowed in days, and I had just ridden at Vail a few weeks prior (quite the difference).  But I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised.  Bear Mountain is about as close to LA as a mountain can get, and the resort definitely knows it’s assets.  See, at most mountains, you can usually find a terrain park or two, maybe even a halfpipe, but Bear Mountain (since, admittedly, it doesn’t have the best free terrain) is basically one huge park.  I love sunshine, and I love riding the park when the sun shines just enough to soften your landing, so Bear Mountain was like a dream for me.

The mountain has 12 lifts and several runs, however, you would probably be able to hit up every run in only half a day.  There isn’t a ton of variety, however, they have more jumps and jibs than I’ve ever seen on one single mountain, and even a half and susperpipe.  The one thing I didn’t really like about the mountain is that there wasn’t much order to placement of things - jumps and jibs were randomly sprinkled throughout the hill, parks aren’t marked off, and no one called drop.  At one point, it took my 6 times to actually get a solid run through the park I was riding because people kept cutting me off or stopping in front of the lip…  So frustrating!   I definitely saw more than one accident throughout the course of the day because people weren’t as careful here as they are at other mountains.  I’m sure if you go on a weekday, though, things wouldn’t be quite as bad.

As for cost… not bad at all, in the grand spectrum of what you get.  Lift tickets run $53 for a full day, $30 at night, and a hot dog was only about 3 bucks! (Take that, 12 dollar hot dog I bought at Vail!)  And don’t forget, you can ride free on your birthday!

Being a great, but relatively close, weekend getaway for most So-Californians, Big Bear has a great town with a ton of stuff to do.  I didn’t stay in the town so I won’t go into too much detail, but if you’re planning on riding a few days in a row I’d recommend you check it out.

Have you been to Big Bear?  Tell us what you thought!  And check out my pics below, from the drive up.  Great view!

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