While Chris Wellhausen was shooting powder turns with Tom Burt and Jimi Tomer in Tahoe and Kurt Hoy was covering the grand opening party of Taos http://www.transworldsnowboarding.com/snow/photos/slideshow/0,26821,1704357,00.html for Snowboarders for Transworlds website this week I was keeping it real at, uh, Mountain High. Hey! Not everyone can cruise up to Tahoe at the drop of the dime so let's see how the rest of us are doing it! MH is often over shadowed in the media by the 800 lb Gorilla that is Bear Mountain. Don't bum out on me, I love Bear Mt. I am just saying there are other places in So Cal. In fact Mountain High gets more visits than any other So Cal resort. Why, you ask if other places garner more media attention? The answer my friends is the drive. The drive to Mountain High has 8 mellow corners while the drive to Big Bear has about 8,000 sharp corners.
From many places in So Cal it takes an hour less to get to Mt High. The park is not bad either, they got dozens of features. In fact I would say their park is in the top 20 in the nation. I go to resorts like Brighton, Jackson Hole and so on and often say this park sucks compared to what we got in So Cal. In fact the Richter Scale feature, triple jump line on Chisolm and the Cory Cronk signature rail are downright ballistic. So there you go. The resort is actually made up of three mountains. West is where the park(s) is and where the Mayhem happens. East is like an intermediate/expert cruiser/family mountain with a beginner area at the bottom and top. North is a beginner/intermediate specific area and also has a tubing area. The only park features are at the West resort, don't forget that.
There is damn fine free riding in the area between the East and West resorts as well with easy access back to the East resort. Shuttle busses serve all three mountains. Oh yea and night riding, 7 nights a weeks, all year at the West Resort. The biggest drawback is the crowd factor. The hill does not get too crowded cuz a lot of the riders are lurkers and just suck around the lower hill while the rippers take over (especially at West). The biggest problem can be parking. So on a holiday weekend or on a day with fresh snow, get there early, like 8 am or late, like 5 pm. A secret is that you can often park at the base of the West area, on the highway for a mere $5 paid to the USFS for an adventure pass. Other than that, the on hill crowds are similar to Bear or Mammoth; could be mayhem on weekends but tolerable to mellow on weekdays and my favorite, weeknights. There are a few places to eat on the hill or a million places in the LA metropolitan area. For nightlife, go find Chad Muska in Hollywood or go to the high desert and cook meth. My favorite aprs riding is at the Chino skatepark or Deep Creek Hot Springs with the naked hippies. Enjoy! Stats Web: mthigh.com Verticle rise: 1600 ft (at East) In bounds terrain: 290 acres Total acres: 515 acres Season: Oct/Nov-Late April Trails: 60 Lifts: 16
patience friends, it is worth it 
Kind of a trip to know you are in LA county 
Many people see snow for the first time ever up here 
May I get a beer, relax, it is not THAT crowded on the hill 
Sick features! See, I told you it was not THAT crowded on the hill 
big air
Nearby 10,800 foot tall Mt Baldy has INSANE riding, but that is another story 
High desert country folks 
James Sanders, in the park 
