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Great après-skiSnow-sure resortTop facilitiesGreat après-skiSnow-sure resortTop facilitiesGreat après-skiSnow-sure resortTop facilitiesGreat après-skiBig Bear Mountain Resort is where Southern California comes to ski. It sits high in the San Bernardino Mountains, a range that climbs straight out of the desert in this corner of the United States, within reach of Los Angeles. The resort is really two ski areas, Bear Mountain and Snow Summit, about 4km apart on the southern shore of Big Bear Lake and linked by a free shuttle, so a single pass covers both. Your base is the lakeside town of Big Bear Lake, an unhurried, outdoorsy place where it's a short hop from the water up to the lifts.
The terrain of each plays to different moods and abilities. Snow Summit is for cruisers, with rolling, groomed runs that wind down through the pines. It’s ideal if you're finding your feet, with a few steep pitches for when you want to push on. Bear Mountain, the higher of the two, is a freestyle heartland and the place where Southern California park riding grew up. Its parks are loaded with jumps and rails of every size, and it's home to the area's halfpipes. Up top there's proper terrain, too, with a variety of tree runs and Big Bear’s signature Geronimo run, which is a long, winding descent looping down off the summit. Bear Mountain drops about 500m and Snow Summit around 370m, and between the two areas you have around 175 hectares of marked runs. Lifts usually start spinning in December and keep going into April, with conditions backed by snowmaking that covers both mountains top to bottom.
Off the slopes, you'll spend most of your time in The Village, Big Bear Lake's walkable lakeside downtown. Timber-fronted storefronts line the streets, full of independent shops, art galleries, and old-fashioned sweet shops, and the dining scene here does a proper world tour, with Italian, Thai, Nepalese and ramen all within a few blocks. A free trolley runs around town and out to the mountains, so you can leave the car behind, and breweries, coffee houses and outdoor fire pits are on hand once the lifts close. Activities like snow tubing, forest snowshoeing and ziplining through the pines are good fun in the snow whether or not you ski, and the Snow Summit Sky Chair will carry you up for the lake views.
Check out Big Bear Mountain Resort ski deals to start planning your trip.
Big Bear Mountain Resort is where Southern California comes to ski. It sits high in the San Bernardino Mountains, a range that climbs straight out of the desert in this corner of the United States, within reach of Los Angeles. The resort is really two ski areas, Bear Mountain and Snow Summit, about 4km apart on the southern shore of Big Bear Lake and linked by a free shuttle, so a single pass covers both. Your base is the lakeside town of Big Bear Lake, an unhurried, outdoorsy place where it's a short hop from the water up to the lifts.
The terrain of each plays to different moods and abilities. Snow Summit is for cruisers, with rolling, groomed runs that wind down through the pines. It’s ideal if you're finding your feet, with a few steep pitches for when you want to push on. Bear Mountain, the higher of the two, is a freestyle heartland and the place where Southern California park riding grew up. Its parks are loaded with jumps and rails of every size, and it's home to the area's halfpipes. Up top there's proper terrain, too, with a variety of tree runs and Big Bear’s signature Geronimo run, which is a long, winding descent looping down off the summit. Bear Mountain drops about 500m and Snow Summit around 370m, and between the two areas you have around 175 hectares of marked runs. Lifts usually start spinning in December and keep going into April, with conditions backed by snowmaking that covers both mountains top to bottom.
Off the slopes, you'll spend most of your time in The Village, Big Bear Lake's walkable lakeside downtown. Timber-fronted storefronts line the streets, full of independent shops, art galleries, and old-fashioned sweet shops, and the dining scene here does a proper world tour, with Italian, Thai, Nepalese and ramen all within a few blocks. A free trolley runs around town and out to the mountains, so you can leave the car behind, and breweries, coffee houses and outdoor fire pits are on hand once the lifts close. Activities like snow tubing, forest snowshoeing and ziplining through the pines are good fun in the snow whether or not you ski, and the Snow Summit Sky Chair will carry you up for the lake views.
Check out Big Bear Mountain Resort ski deals to start planning your trip.
Skiing Big Bear means splitting your time across two mountains, each with its own feel. Snow Summit is the all-rounder, with well-groomed trails threading through the trees and a layout that's easy to find your way around, and most of it suits beginners and intermediates nicely. Bear Mountain sits higher and rides differently. Three linked peaks give it the more varied terrain of the two, running from wide, open cruising to steeper, tree-lined pitches up top, and it's where you'll find the resort's parks, halfpipes and natural features. With one ticket covering both and a free shuttle between them, you can switch from the groomed trails on one mountain to the parks on the other without thinking twice.
Both mountains have an efficient lift system. Express chairs run from the base areas to the top, a handful of slower fixed chairs fill in the terrain between, and beginners get their own magic carpets near the bottom. Bear Mountain added a new six-seater, Midway, for the 2024/25 season, speeding up the climb to its mid-mountain runs. Wherever you ski here, it’s worth knowing that the base sits at around 2,100m and the highest terrain on Bear Mountain climbs to nearly 2,700m. So if you've flown in from lower ground, drink plenty of water and ease into your first day while your body adjusts.
Important for international visitors: If you've skied in Europe, the grading here takes a moment to get your head around. Green circles are the beginner runs, much like European greens and the easiest blues. Blue squares are the intermediate runs, but they cover a broad span, taking in plenty that a European skier would file under red. Black diamonds are the advanced runs, and double black diamonds are expert-only. There's no separate red grade here, so it's worth treating blue squares as a wider band than you're used to and picking your first few accordingly.
Snow Summit is the natural home for beginners at Big Bear. Down at the base, a dedicated learning area served by magic carpets gives first-timers a comfortable space to build confidence, well away from fast traffic. A cluster of gentle green runs sits right alongside, ready for when you want to take those early turns onto the open hill. The slopes here are wide, well-groomed and mellow, so your first turns feel achievable and relaxed.
As your confidence builds, several long green and easy blue runs open up higher on the mountain. You can link your turns down wide, forgiving pistes, picking up a little speed and covering real ground, with the difficulty building gently as you go. If you'd like a hand, Snow Summit's ski school runs adult group and private lessons to get you started.
WeSki insider tip: Once the learning area feels easy, ride Chair 1 to the top and follow Summit Run all the way down. It's the gentlest top-to-bottom route on the mountain, so you get that first full descent with nothing too steep to catch you out.
Intermediates get the most out of Snow Summit's upper mountain, where blue runs weave through the pine forest with views reaching out across the desert beyond. Runs like Miracle Mile and Westridge give you real length to settle into a rhythm, and lapping them top to bottom is what an intermediate day here is built on, long enough to find your flow and string turns together without a break.
When you fancy a change of pace, the blue runs over at Bear Mountain ride quite differently. They're more open and rolling, shaped by the same hand that built the parks, so you'll find natural rollers, gentle banks and small rises to carry your speed over. Confident intermediates can dip into the smaller park features too, an easy way to try freestyle without committing to the big jumps.
WeSki insider tip: Snow Summit's runs all funnel back to one base, so there's no route to plan. Ride an express chair, work through the blues, and you'll quickly find which ski gentle and which throw in a steeper pitch.
It's worth being upfront: Big Bear isn't a destination for experts chasing big, steep, technical descents, and the modest vertical means you won't fill a week on the black runs alone. There's still proper advanced terrain to get into, though. Bear Mountain holds Geronimo, Southern California's highest lift-served run, a long, fast descent from 8,805 feet that's steep up top. Over at Snow Summit, the bowls off Chair 6 serve up short, punchy blacks like The Wall and Olympic, which don't run long but carry enough bite to keep an advanced skier honest.
For advanced riders, though, the real challenge here is freestyle. Bear Mountain built North America's first terrain park back in 1992 and has been a centre of park riding ever since, with features that climb from small boxes all the way up to pro-sized jumps and halfpipes. If your idea of advanced skiing leans towards airtime and rail slides rather than steep pitches, this is where Big Bear earns its name.
WeSki insider tip: Most visitors head straight for Geronimo, but ask a local and they'll point you to Rip's Run, a steep, tree-lined black on Bear Mountain that rewards picking a smart line down through the trees.
Snowboarding runs deep at Big Bear. This is one of the homes of Californian snowboarding, and the resort has sat at the centre of the sport's progression for decades. Snow Summit hosted the very first Winter X Games back in 1997, and that spirit still carries through both mountains today.
On the snow, the two mountains ride quite differently. Bear Mountain is rolling and playful, with natural banks, side hits and rollers that practically ask you to pop off them, plus tree runs and long fall-line descents like Claim Jumper where you can open up and carve. Snow Summit leans into wide, well-groomed pistes that hold an edge, ideal for laying down big carves or simply cruising and linking turns at speed.
True off-piste inside the resort boundary is modest. The terrain between the trails is fairly gentle, but after a natural snowfall you'll find soft pockets and tree lines worth poking into between the marked runs. It's a fun bonus on a powder day rather than the reason you'd come.The real off-piste lies beyond the resort, in the San Bernardino National Forest that surrounds it.
South of Big Bear, the San Gorgonio Wilderness rises to 3,500m at Mount San Gorgonio, Southern California's highest peak, and its high gullies and chutes draw ski tourers once the big winter storms fill them in, with the snow often best from late winter into spring. It's serious terrain, so treat it that way. The San Gorgonio Wilderness needs a permit even for a day trip. There's no daily avalanche forecast for the San Bernardino Mountains, so solid avalanche skills, the right kit and either real local knowledge or a guide are necessary.
Both Bear Mountain and Snow Summit run their own ski and snowboard schools, with group lessons, private lessons and first-timer packages for all ages. Lessons come from certified instructors with a warm, patient style that puts nervous first-timers and rusty returners at ease. Where Big Bear stands out is in how it teaches freestyle.
Beginners can skip the usual downhill drills and learn on the Skill Builder Park, with a terrain-based course of low rails, boxes and rollers built as scaled-down versions of these features. From there, the coaching runs all the way up to Bear Mountain's Airbag Training Camp, where adults practise jumps and tricks landing on a giant airbag before taking them to real snow. Big Bear also works with a dedicated adaptive programme that runs one-to-one lessons, making skiing and riding accessible to people with disabilities.
Terrain parks are Big Bear's calling card. Bear Mountain has built its identity around freestyle, with a big share of the mountain given over to more than a dozen parks, arranged as a progression you can work up at your own pace. You can start on mellow boxes and small rollers, move through medium jump and rail lines, and top out in zones built around pro-sized kickers, rails and a superpipe that regularly sees competition riders. One of them is Outlaw, the park that kicked it all off in the early 90s and still runs its original banks, berms and snake-run gap.
There's a real culture around all this. Bear Mountain's long-running "Sunday in the Park" web series films locals and pros sessioning the latest builds, and that reputation pulls riders in from well beyond California. Over at Snow Summit, a smaller, more laid-back park gives you a gentler place to warm up before taking on Bear's bigger lines.
Big Bear makes family life on the mountain easy, and a lot of that comes down to its easygoing feel. The two ski areas are compact and close together, so you're never far from the kids, the base, or a warm café, and a single ticket plus the shuttle lets everyone ski to their own level and still meet up for lunch. With a proper lakeside town just down the hill, full of shops, restaurants and rest-day activities, it's a holiday that works whether your family lives to ski or just fancies a few days in the snow.
For the newest skiers, Snow Summit's gentle learning area is the place to start, with dedicated beginner zones and patient instructors easing them in. Children's programmes run from around age four, with half-day and full-day options that free parents up to get their own laps in. Once the kids are skiing confidently, the whole resort opens up: Snow Summit's long, forgiving blues are ideal for building mileage together, and Bear Mountain's terrain parks, with their gentle progression from tiny features upward, will keep more adventurous kids busy for hours. Teenagers after a bit of independence can take the shuttle between the two mountains and explore on their own.
Beyond the slopes, the tubing hill is a family favourite, with no skill needed to fly down it. The town keeps rest days easy, with the Alpine Slide at Magic Mountain, Big Bear Alpine Zoo, and a lakeshore to stroll when everyone wants to slow down. Dining is easy with kids in tow, too. Alongside the Village's international spots, you'll find pizza, burgers and casual diners, with enough variety to keep fussy eaters and adventurous ones equally happy.
Big Bear has plenty going on beyond the slopes, and it's worth building into your trip rather than saving for a day off. The lakeside setting and the surrounding San Bernardino Mountains make a fine backdrop for everything from snow tubing to mountain drives, with options for every energy level. Whether you don't ski at all or just want to mix things up, there's no shortage of ways to fill a day.
Big Bear Lake's dining scene is varied and refreshingly unpretentious, with a solid mix of cuisines packed into the village and the streets around it, from American comfort food to Mexican and Italian. On the mountain, eating runs to base-lodge cafés and grills at both Bear Mountain and Snow Summit, handy for a quick lunch between runs.
WeSki insider tip: Don't miss the breakfast burritos from the local spots on Village Drive. They're a Big Bear tradition, and the perfect fuel before a morning on the mountain.
Après-ski at Big Bear is a relaxed, social affair. When the lifts stop, people drift onto the decks at the base areas for a cold beer, swapping stories from the day with boots still on. It's all craft beer, burgers and easy conversation, the unhurried end to a day on the snow.
Later on, the action shifts into the village, where the bars and brewpubs come alive. The scene stays mellow, with live music at weekends, trivia nights and a crowd that's happy to keep things low-key. If you fancy a bigger night, a few spots run later, with Murray's serving food into the small hours and a club night going if you're after it.
Accommodation in Big Bear clusters around the town of Big Bear Lake, which sits between the two ski areas. You'll find a mix of lakeside cabins, vacation rentals, hotels and lodges. The cabin rental market is particularly strong, with options ranging from cosy A-frames for couples to large family homes. Most accommodation is in or near the village, within a short drive or shuttle ride of both Bear Mountain and Snow Summit.
There's no true slopeside accommodation at Big Bear, so you'll drive, shuttle or get dropped at the base areas each day. The free shuttle between the two mountains and the main parking areas keeps that simple.
A single Big Bear Mountain Resort lift pass covers both Bear Mountain and Snow Summit, so one ticket gives you the run of both mountains, around 175 hectares of terrain in all, with the free shuttle linking the two. Tickets come as single days or as multi-day passes for a longer stay.
Check for multi-day pass options when booking your Big Bear Mountain Resort ski holiday through WeSki to find the best fit for your trip.
You'll find rental shops at both the Bear Mountain and Snow Summit base areas, plus several more in the town of Big Bear Lake. They cover the full range, from standard ski, snowboard and boot packages to higher-performance kit if you want it. Booking online before you arrive is the easy way to go, so your gear's sized up and ready to collect when you get there. And if you'd rather take your time over the fit and any adjustments, the town shops are a good place to do it at your own pace.
Getting around Big Bear is straightforward, and you don't need your own car to manage it. A free shuttle links Bear Mountain and Snow Summit through the ski day, running every half hour or so on busier dates, and the Big Bear Trolley connects the town and its accommodation with both base areas. Taxis and ride-hailing apps such as Uber and Lyft operate locally too, though they can be thinner on the ground at the busiest times.
The town spreads along the lakeshore rather than sitting in one compact, walkable centre, so expect a few kilometres between your accommodation, the slopes and the restaurants. Parking at the base areas is free on most days, with paid parking on peak and holiday dates and free remote lots as a backup.
Big Bear sits in the San Bernardino Mountains east of Los Angeles, around 180km away and roughly two and a half hours by road. Flying in from overseas, your main gateways are Los Angeles International (LAX) and Ontario International (ONT). Ontario is the closer of the two, about 100km from Big Bear. You can also fly into Palm Springs International (PSP), off to the southeast, around 135km away by the desert-side approach.
WeSki provides car rentals from the airport as well as private transfers to Big Bear Mountain Resort. Add them to your Big Bear Mountain Resort ski holiday package for seamless door-to-door travel.
Yes, Big Bear is a solid choice for beginners. Snow Summit's learning area is well designed, with gentle terrain and magic carpets, and the ski school runs structured programmes for first-timers. The resort's compact size means beginners won't feel overwhelmed, and there's plenty of forgiving green and easy-blue terrain to progress onto. It's one of the easier places in Southern California to pick up skiing or snowboarding.
They're quite different trips. Mammoth is a full-scale destination resort, with over 1,400 hectares of terrain, a big vertical drop and heavy natural snowfall, and it's really a week-long trip. Big Bear is compact and far closer to LA, which suits a shorter ski trip. Mammoth has much more terrain for intermediates and experts, while Big Bear's terrain parks are among the best known in California. For families or anyone after an easy, accessible introduction to skiing, Big Bear is a great choice.
Big Bear does get natural snow, typically around 2.5 metres a season, but it leans heavily on snowmaking to keep cover consistent through the winter. Snowmaking reaches across the developed terrain on both mountains, which is what keeps the season reliable. Conditions are generally at their best from December through March, and while natural powder days do happen, at this elevation they're more the exception than the rule.
For families, beginners and freestyle riders, Big Bear is well worth the trip. It's easy to reach, easy to get around, and the relaxed lakeside town means there's plenty to do off the snow too. Experienced skiers chasing a week of steep terrain may find it small on its own, but for most visitors it's a fun, low-stress holiday, with terrain parks that are a real draw for anyone into freestyle.
If you're used to the European colour system, the North American ratings take a little adjusting to. Green circles mark beginner runs, much like European greens and the easiest blues. Blue squares are the intermediate runs, but they cover a wider band than European blues, taking in plenty that a European skier would call red. Black diamonds are advanced, and double black diamonds are expert-only. There's no separate red grade here, so it's worth treating blue squares as a broad category and easing into them.
They're two separate ski areas under the same ownership, linked by a free shuttle. Snow Summit is the more traditional mountain, with groomed runs for all abilities and a classic resort feel. Bear Mountain is the freestyle side, home to the terrain parks, a superpipe and a strong snowboarding scene. A single lift ticket covers both, so you can easily ski the two in a day.
Yes, weekends can get busy, Saturdays especially. Big Bear's closeness to Los Angeles means it draws a big day-trip crowd when the snow's good, so lift queues, parking and the access road can all feel full. Midweek tends to be quieter if your dates are flexible.
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