My California - Bear Mountain Round 2

derekrichardson (67)adminin SoCal Steemit • 2 years ago

For this weeks Show Us Your California contest by @socalsteemit I head back up to Big Bear again for another awesome day of snowboarding at...

Bear Mountain!!

So if you've been following my blog at all you already know that I've been doing lots of snowboarding this winter. And the season still isn't over! On this trip I headed back up to Big Bear for another great day of snowboarding at Bear Mountain. You can check out my first trip to Bear Mountain here. The week before this Big Bear got a nice snowstorm so the coverage is still really good and the snow quality was actually probably the best of any of my trips to Big Bear so far this season!

I got up there early and was able to get on the lifts right after they opened. The early morning is always the best. Getting on that nice smooth freshly groomed corduroy snow. I started off riding chair 9 aka Bear Mountain Express which is the biggest and most popular lift on the mountain. It accesses a lot of intermediate runs as well as a lot of the freestyle terrain parks, but there are a few steep runs up there like "Rip's Run", "Gambler", and "Showtime". So I spent the morning doing some laps on those before they got too crowded and tracked out.

Arriving at the base of the mountain

Bear Mountain trail map

Riding up chair 9

Views from chair 9

Looking off the backside of the mountain at the San Gorgonio range

The top of chair 9

Looking down "Gambler"

Watching a few of the freestylers catch some air

After warming up with some runs on chair 9 I moved on to chair 4 which is probably my favorite chair at Bear Mountain. There is not a lot of options there, it's pretty much just doing laps on "Exhibition" with the optional "Ripcord" variant. But I really like it because the runs there are steep and fast and the chair is never crowded.

Selfie on chair 4

Riding up chair 4

Views from "Exhibition"

The bottom of chair 4

Riding chair 4

I spent most of the day just bombing lap after lap on chair 4. Then to finish up my day I headed over chair 6 and rode it up to chair 8 which is the highest chair at Bear Mountain giving it the best views. Chair 8 is even more limited than chair 4 as it only has one run. But "Geronimo" is the longest and steepest run in Big Bear so I had to get up there and blast a bunch of runs down it!

The bottom of chair 6

Small pond of water for snowmaking along chair 6

Another snowmaking pond along chair 6

The bottom of chair 8

Riding up chair 8

Selfie on chair 8

Views from "Geronimo"

Selfie from "Geronimo"

Looking down the lower part of "Geronimo"

Back at the base of the mountain

After tearing up a bunch of runs on chair 8 I called it a day. It was a great day, great snow and perfect weather. Couldn't have been much better really. And as with most of my Big Bear trips this season I've made a bit of a habit of heading over to the north shore of Big Bear lake after I finish for a nice short relaxing walk along the shoreline before making the drive back home.