Kratka Ridge Ski Area

Kratka Ridge Ski Area sat on the Angeles Crest Highway in the San Gabriel Mountains, about 36 miles up the road from La Cañada Flintridge, California. The ridge itself got its name in 1925 from a Forest Service surveyor, who named it for two Pasadena brothers who had camped there with him. In 1950 members of the San Gorgonio Ski Club, led by Joe Diener, cleared the first runs on its north face.

A single chairlift went in for 1954. It climbed about 700 vertical feet up the center of the hill, and by 2001 it was one of the last single chairs still carrying skiers in the country. Beginners rode rope tows at the base until a double chair was added on the beginner slope in the 1980s. A painted trail map from about 1986 billed the hill as some of the finest skiing in Southern California and named its runs Exhibition, Rattlesnake, Pasadena, Chair Run, Log Chute, Easy Street, Pine Tree, Main Face, Christmas Bowl and Ridge Run, with Papa Bear, Mama Bear and Baby Bear on the beginner side and a heliport by the highway. There was no snowmaking, so the season depended on what fell.

By the mid 1990s the area was operating as Snowcrest, a snow park and ski area. In 1999 an investor group bought it along with Mt. Waterman next door and ran both as Angeles Crest Resorts. The ski terrain went back to the Kratka name, and Snowcrest stayed on the snow play and tubing area at the base.

The 2000-01 season was its last. A storm in February 2001 dropped about seven feet of snow, and an avalanche wiped out the single chair's base station. That December a fire burned the base lodge and bar. Neither was rebuilt. The towers and single chairs from 1954 still stand on the hill, and backcountry skiers climb the old runs in good snow years.