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On Monday Liz and I both had off work so with her free Snow Valley tickets from a Ralphs promotion we drove up for the day. The cool thing about Snow Valley is that it’s on the way to Big Bear, but is about 30 minutes less drive time each way through those winding mountain roads. It’s promoted as being “140 turns closer to skiing!”

You can actually see Big Bear Lake from the chairlift, it was beautiful in the distance:

The day was gorgeous - blue skies with no clouds, and a temp around mid 40’s. And it was a Monday, so there was NOBODY on the mountain! I think there were maybe 30 cars in the entire parking lot.

Snow Valley was actually a pleasant surprise - I have driven past it countless times en route to Snow Summit, and I always thought it was some rinky-dink tubing/sledding resort. Not so! There’s actually 14 different chairs, and at the very top (~7800 ft. elevation) there are some black diamond runs. The resort even has a varied and large terrain park, with features including little kickers, tabletops, giant tires to jump over, and tons of rails & fun boxes. (No halfpipe though.) Here I am on the approach:

Here’s Liz going off the edge of the rainbow rail:

They had just gotten 6 inches of snow on Sunday, but there were high winds creating a lot of icy conditions in spite of the runs being groomed. It really didn’t soften up until after 1:30pm, with the sun beating down.

Because it was Monday, and it was so empty, Snow Valley only opened Chair 1. So unfortunately we didn’t experience the full mountain, only about 3-4 of the runs available. We couldn’t get to the back/top runs that almost looked like they were in a little bowl.

We got a lot of runs in though, and were the second-to-last people off the hill at the end of the day! (We were dawdling around in the park taking pictures of each other on the little jumps.) For free tickets, even though we had limited run/chairlift access, it was totally worth it. I got in one more day this season, and got to practice hitting the tabletops without a ton of people in the park.

Liz and I both really enjoyed the day - we want to go back another time when it’s fully open. Lift tickets are only $52 (weekends) and you can usually find some discounts through one of the resort’s promotional partners. Check them out sometime!