Let’s Go, It’s On With the Snow

More rain than snow fell in the local mountains over the weekend, but the cold spell that followed allowed resort operators to fire up their snow makers and let the white stuff fly.

As a result, Mountain High in Wrightwood opened for skiing and snowboarding Monday morning, with three lifts servicing three mostly intermediate trails, including a few areas with jumps, rails and “fun boxes” for the freestyle crowd.

“People are ready to go,” spokesman John McColly said Monday morning, reporting a 10 a.m. base temperature of 25 degrees at the San Gabriel Mountains facility. “Our season-pass line is out the door and down the block.”

In the San Bernardino Mountains, Big Bear Mountain will open today, with the high-speed quad chair Claim Jumper servicing a top-to-bottom run covering 1,300 vertical feet.

About a foot of man-made snow covers the run and, barring a warm front, more terrain will be open by Saturday.

Nearby Snow Summit also will open today, with East Mountain Express servicing intermediate and advanced terrain on the full width of Miracle Mile.

Down the road at Snow Valley in Running Springs, a Friday opener is planned, with about one-third of the ski area’s terrain expected to be open.

The smaller local resorts, which rely almost exclusively on natural snow, are still playing the waiting game. The weekend storm was much more generous to resorts in the Lake Tahoe area and across the Sierra Nevada at Mammoth Mountain.

At Mammoth, about 10,000 visitors rode the slopes Friday, during the onset of a storm that dropped 18 to 24 inches of light powder.

“Snow conditions are awesome right now and we have 100% of our lifts operating,” said Joani Lynch, director of marketing at Mammoth. “We are rolling and we are stoked.”

Not as stoked as they are at Utah’s Snowbird, which on Monday reported receiving a record 100 inches in 100 hours. Utah Olympic venues Park City Mountain Resort and Deer Valley Resort also received their first significant snowfalls.