There was nothing but dirt and dry, brown chaparral rolled under the skis and snowboards hanging from the chairlift at Big Bear Mountain Resort on Friday, as desperate adventure seekers joked that they should rename the area “Big Bare.”
Temperatures are so unseasonably high that they have left the beautiful array of artificial snowmakers below idle, their fans wandering idly in the hot air.
“The word I’ve been using is ‘abyss,'” said Cameron Miniutti, 29, who was riding in a light cotton shirt, with the hot sun shining through his ski goggles. [to a season] I have seen it.”
Similarly dark panoramas can be found at ski resorts across the American West so far this year, but especially in California, where a wet November gave way to one of the driest ski resorts in recent memory.
People visit Big Bear Village on Sunday, with no snow in sight.
As of Friday, the state had only 12% snow that’s normal for this time of year, and only 3% of what water managers hope for in an average year, according to the California Department of Water.
That’s why water managers – and surfers – are hoping for a Christmas miracle as a massive storm surge heads toward California this week. Torrential rains may threaten coastal towns with flooding and bad traffic, but they promise sweet relief for snow-killed thrill seekers from Lake Tahoe to the San Bernardino Mountains in Southern California.
Mammoth Mountain, California’s longest commercial ski resort, could see up to 7 feet of snow this week, according to On the Snow, a website that tracks conditions at ski resorts.
Resorts north of Lake Tahoe could see 5 feet, and even Big Bear could get 3 feet, assuming temperatures stay below freezing, according to the website.
That’s important to everyone, even non-skiers, because about a third of the water California relies on each year for drinking, farming and fighting wildfires accumulates as snow on the mountains during the winter and slowly melts in the spring and summer, when the state can be bone dry.
Many California ski areas have been forced to delay openings this year, and even those that have found lifs spinning have had to confine skiers to only a few runs, often on man-made snow.
That was the case at Big Bear, where a thin line of artificial snow snakes from the 8,440-foot summit of the Bear Mountain Express chairlift to the base at just over 7,000 feet. While crews were hard at work carving fake snow from rocks and bare ground on Friday, skiers and boarders were being mugged by cars on the 405 Freeway.
“It’s crazy,” Miniutti said, “I mean, I can’t even imagine what this weekend is like.”
And the range of skills people crowd on the same path creates its own, unique type of “obstacle course,” Miniutti said.
You have to focus on not hitting the people in front of you – many of whom are complete beginners, falling on the ice for no good reason – while praying that the best skiers you can hear running behind you will somehow avoid cutting you down.
People skied and snowboarded at Big Bear Mountain Resort on man-made snow on Sunday.
“There are, like the best snowboarders in the world and people on their first day next to each other,” Miniutti said.
But under these conditions, Miniutti had nothing but praise from the mountain staff for keeping it open even though the weather seemed impossible.
“I’m still having a blast,” he said, “it’s worth showing up.”
Devon James, 24, of Pasadena, felt the same way. She had warm long sleeves, which she started wearing after ditching the short sleeves last week and getting “cut.”
Single-day lift tickets at Big Bear cost more than $150 this season. At fancier resorts, like Mammoth Mountain, they can easily climb over $200 a day. So serious skiers are buying season passes for well under $1,000 at many mountains across the country and around the world.
But that means they feel compelled to get in their days, no matter the circumstances.
“I mean, that’s the whole game, right,” laughed James. “I should get at least eight or nine days to go back.”
Skiers and snowboarders roam the empty slopes at Big Bear Mountain Resort.
Miniutti, who is originally from Massachusetts, and learned to ski in the cold, snowy hills of New England, still prefers the alpine experience on the West Coast.
Even though it’s officially winter in Big Bear, he likes to jump in his car at the end of the day and drive home to Los Angeles, where it’s always 70 degrees and sunny.
“I really can’t get over that,” she said, “I’m not complaining.”
