Big Bear MTB Guide: Snow Summit Bike Park, California

Southern California's only lift-served gravity park sits at 8,200 feet above a high-desert lake. Snow Summit's Chair 1 and Chair 2 unlock more than ten miles of downhill from beginner flow to double-black tech, June through October.

By the IMPT Travel desk · Published 2026-05-30

Snow Summit's chairlift tops out at 8,200 feet, the highest lift-served bike park in Southern California and a thin-air anomaly two hours from the Pacific. From the upper terminal, riders drop more than 1,200 vertical feet through Jeffrey pine and bare granite back to the village on the south shore of Big Bear Lake. The park is the only gravity-fed, lift-accessed mountain bike operation in the region, which makes it the de facto summer training ground for a coastline of riders who otherwise would be shuttling forest roads in 35-degree heat.

Trails: from Going Green to 10-ply

Snow Summit advertises just over ten miles of dedicated downhill trail spread across roughly eleven graded runs, plus a Skill Builder Park near the base for first-timers and a 26-mile cross-country network on the backside known as Skyline.

The natural starting point is Going Green, a green-rated top-to-bottom flow trail that descends nearly four miles and 1,277 vertical feet through mellow rollers, wide berms and lake-view switchbacks. Small Wonder and the lower Skill Builder lines reinforce the basics. Stepping up to blue, Turtle Trail and Blue Steel open the door to bigger tabletops and machine-built berms, while Average Joe's and the Dual Slalom course give intermediate riders a taste of race-line cornering.

The black-diamond inventory is where Snow Summit earns its reputation. Miracle Mile and Westridge deliver classic technical Californian downhill: loose-over-hard, exposed rock rolls and committing fall-line chutes. Party Wave adds bigger jumps. At the top of the hierarchy, the double-black 10-ply drops 1,016 feet in only 1.2 miles, the steepest sustained gradient on the mountain and the trail that filters expert riders from everybody else.

Lifts, season and the high-desert weather window

Lift service runs from Chair 1 and Chair 2, both of which have been retrofitted with bike racks. Snow Summit Bike Park traditionally opens on the first weekend of June and runs daily through to the end of October, weather permitting; the 2025 season opened on 6 June. The neighbouring Snow Valley Bike Park, also operated by Big Bear Mountain Resort, opens earlier (April in 2025) but runs on weekends only and caters to a slightly more old-school cross-country crowd.

July and early August are the peak crowd window but also the hottest. September and October typically deliver the most reliable trail conditions: cooler air at 8,000 feet, lower dust and far shorter lift lines, which makes the shoulder season the strongest pick for a focused riding trip.

Events and the racing calendar

Snow Summit is not on the UCI World Cup or Crankworx circuit, and there is no current Enduro World Series round at the resort. The racing on the hill is domestic but serious: the resort hosts the Summit Series grassroots race nights through summer and the Monster Pro Downhill, a US national-level downhill event that ran in early August in 2025. Visiting riders chasing race weekends should target those windows.

Getting there: Los Angeles, Ontario and the case for ground transit

Big Bear Lake sits in the San Bernardino Mountains roughly 100 miles east of central Los Angeles. The fastest way in is to drive Highway 330 to Highway 18 via Running Springs, which Visit California and route planners put at around two hours from downtown LA in light traffic and closer to three hours on a Friday afternoon. Ontario International Airport (ONT) is the closest major airport, about 75 minutes by road; Los Angeles International (LAX) adds another hour of freeway.

For travellers keen to avoid a rental car, the lower-carbon route is Metrolink from LA Union Station to San Bernardino, then Mountain Transit's Off-the-Mountain bus up to Big Bear. Total journey time runs about three to three and a half hours, fares typically sit at $10-$22 and the resort's own free village shuttle then links lodging to the bike park base. It is one of the few lift-served bike parks in North America genuinely reachable by scheduled public transport.

Shoulder season versus peak

Peak summer brings reliable lift uptime but also weekend bottlenecks at Chair 1 and afternoon thunderstorms on the high ridge. Mid-week trips in July or any visit in September or October cut crowding sharply. By late October the resort begins prepping for ski operations, so the final park weekends can be cut short by the first storm cycle off the Pacific.

Where to base

Most riders stay in Big Bear Lake village within a few minutes of the Snow Summit base area, where bike-friendly cabins, mid-range hotels and short-term rentals dominate. The quieter east end around Big Bear City offers cheaper lodging at the cost of a short drive or shuttle hop to the lifts. Either side of the lake puts riders within ten minutes of the chair and within walking distance of post-ride food and a bike-wash bay.

POV run down Miracle Mile, one of Snow Summit's signature black-diamond downhill trails.