A Trio Of Resorts Give Los Angelenos Nearby Lift-Served Mountain Biking
Extreme sports have long been the choice of the young and feeling-young in Southern California, so it makes sense that nearby ski and snowboard mountain emphasize downhill mountain biking.
A pair of L.A. favorites -- Snow Summit and Snow Valley -- crank up lifts to haul MTB riders to the top in the warm weather. A third, Mountain High, hopes to open its park this summer. Speedsters and tricksters get a wide choice of steeps and straightlines, banks and jumps, rock gardens and berms. New and leisure riders can find plenty of wanderings down gentle slopes.
Lift tickets available online or on site; Snow Summit and Snow Valley are interchangeable. Some base facilities open up for summer. Lift-served networks also link into cross-country trails around surrounding area.
Snow Summit has long been a mecca for MTB. It hosted top competitions in the 1990s and is now working to restore its legacy. Majority of trails feature machine-built berms, rollers, jumps and drops. Three chairlifts spin daily for lapping the mountain's 1,200 vertical feet and 10 trails. Ikon Pass gives ticket discount.
One of the most popular trails is 1.6-mile Miracle Mile. The black route begins at the top of Chair 2, and dives down 1,000 vertical feet on all the steep stuff from top to bottom. Local knowledge helps. For newbies and cruisers, Going Green provides of scenic tour of the local forests for three miles and less than 1,000 feet of drop.
The newest member of the Big Bear troika, Snow Valley's MTB park leans toward the green-and-blue crowd. A modest 860 feet of vertical and 3,800-foot descent contain 13 trails. One chairlift runs Friday afternoons and all day Saturdays and Sundays.
The first trail cut on the mountain, blue-rated Bandit descends nearly a mile from top to lower mountain intersection. It's a smooth single-track with wide berms and occasional jumps. Riders then catch Crazy Horse for a choppy mile with a few features and switchbacks near the bottom.
For hotshots, there's Pro Jumpline that divides into two sections for more than a mile of fall-line with huge gaps to clear. For beginners, Greenhorn winds its way along contours for 2.4 miles from top to bottom.
Closest to the L.A. Basin, Mountain High hopes to open the first phase of its mountain bike park later this summer. The Initial trail map has seven miles of riding with a 4-1-1 breakdown of beginner to expert at Mountain High West. The Blue Express chair will haul riders to the top. Mountain High also plans a skills park near the base area for riders to hone their jumping, banking and dropping abilities.
