Snow Forest Ski Area

Snow Forest Ski Area in Big Bear Lake, California, sat on the north-facing hill just south of the village, at the south end of Pine Knot Boulevard. Skiing there began with the town's park district. Judge Clifford Lynn, who formed the district in 1934, put in a toboggan run and a sling lift for skiers in 1938, then spent more than a decade raising money for a 3,000-foot single chair. It was finished in 1949, the first chairlift in the Big Bear area. Lynn died that year before it ran, and the hill went by the Lynn Lift for the next fourteen years.

In 1963 two brothers who worked in the aerospace industry, Dan and Dave Platus, bought the Lynn Lift area for $75,000 and renamed it Snow Forest. They turned the old sling lift into rope tows, added snowmaking, and opened that December. The county's old sling lift slope, known as Little Siberia, became part of the area. Snow Forest closed in 1973 and sat idle for the rest of the decade, then reopened in 1979.

Bob Boothe joined as a partner and general manager in 1980 and bought the area from the brothers, adding Crystal Ridge Hill on Highway 18 just west of the village. In 1981 the Lynn chair came down and a 3,000-foot triple chair with a 600-foot rise went up in its place. The 1981 trail map split the operation into three hills, Lynn Lift Hill, Little Siberia Hill and Crystal Ridge Hill, with runs named Powder Puff, Arctic Alley and Mercury. By the mid 1980s the main hill had added Parachute, Comet, Inland Alley, Dynamite and Snow Bowl, served by a chair, a Poma and surface lifts.

Thin winters and limited snowmaking ended it. Snow Forest closed for good in the spring of 1992, and the Forest Service pulled the permit so no one else could take it over. In 2009 the Forest Service proposed turning the old slope into a day-use area for hiking, snowshoeing and sledding, but the project was cancelled.