The terrain parks of Big Bear Mountain Resort have been luring our sideways-standing brethren since snowboarding was in its infancy. Like a mythical siren to sailors, it’s a temptation of good times that’s hard to resist. The warm, sunny weather, consistently dialed-in park and deck/parking-lot vibes are like no other resort. A perpetual spring-break-like atmosphere makes it easy to see why one would become a transplant, as I did myself, roughly 20 years ago in 2005.
I distinctly recall riding Bear the first winter it became known as “The Park.” It just so happened that Clayton Shoemaker and some other OGs were doing a shoot for Bear’s first full-length video, The Park: The Movie, that day. The feature was a large jump over the Test Center, a round building located mid-mountain. Watching the jump from the chairlift, I was completely blown away. The place felt like a real-life video game.
I didn’t realize at the time that the Test Center jump was for a private shoot and not open to the public. Nonetheless, it wouldn’t have mattered if I did, as my mind was already made up. I knew I had to move to this resort that not only had a huge top-to-bottom park, but a damn jump over a building! I needed to get amongst it and grab a piece of the juice that Bear has. It’s had its claws in me ever since.
For a rider from the Midwest like Blake Lamb, the option to leave the frigid February temps of home to hot lap in the Southern California sunshine is a no-brainer. Unfortunately, it does come with one caveat: There’s typically not enough snow in the streets to leave the park. How are you supposed to work on that banger video part you’ve been stacking all winter for?
I was already fortunate to have Blake and some of the Dinosaurs Will Die (DWD) team, along with the Pay the Rent crew, out at Bear to film for an episode of Sunday in the Park. Looking at the weather forecast, I realized we might have the perfect storm of this heavy crew plus some white stuff in town to work with. Turns out we were to have the snowiest February since at least the year 2000, almost a whole quarter century before.
Spots that had been looked at for years but never touched finally came to fruition. Justus Hines said he wanted to give this bump-to-bar ollie a squeeze. The run-in zone was completely plowed dry, and time was of the essence. Just to get there, Justus had to navigate a 2-foot-wide path while being yanked by the winch—the type of run-in that over the years we have affectionately labeled the “Trail of Tears.” Stuss popped just high enough off the snow-covered stair lip to clear the top bar, but not too high to knock himself out on the ceiling. There was no more than 2 inches to spare on the top and bottom as he blasted through this concrete-and-steel birthing canal. The running joke with the crew was that Justus was the older team manager. Truth be told, the kid is back after an injury and riding stronger than ever.
Another untouched spot was Ryan Pluche’s gap to ledge. In a stroke of luck, the recent snowfall had collapsed the fence before the ledge, creating a perfect height to gap out from. The spot was not short on consequence: On one side he had a one-story-high drop onto a forklift, and on the other side a barbed-wire fence to cushion his fall. Ryan did it perfectly a few times and then took off his shirt to hit it in his undershirt strictly for theatrics. With every spot that Ryan stepped to last February, he impressed me more. A rider for the everyday man, he is quite the all-terrain killer, whether he’s jibbing in the streets of Big Bear or charging big-mountain Alaska. Ryan’s working-class bravado shines through in everything he does.
Mike Gray was perhaps the only rider of the crew who lives in town. Having a home-court advantage to what spots are around, he is also a repeat offender on this kink ledge. Most kink ledges are flat on top, so the beveled top of this one makes going sideways on it kinda jacked. You have to precariously balance on a concrete bevel that wants nothing more in the world than to toss you off of it. It didn’t seem to bother Mike at all.
Benny Kaufman managed to hurt his ribs pretty good using Fisher-Price My First Bolt Cutters to unsuccessfully remove a lock—a somewhat freak accident, but sometimes something as simple as setting up the spot can take you out. The injury didn’t stop him, though. After dropping in on a tiered roof for speed, Bunsen handled a pretty sketchy spiked fence 50-50 to sizable drop into a no-man’s-land of trees. Definitely not what I would consider a safe landing, but he handled it in just a few tries.
As a cherry on top, we managed to link with Lucas Magoon, who was out filming for the next installment of the Goon Gear videos. Nobody brings the raw energy to the sesh quite like Gooner. To see how hyped he gets, barking and stomping when anyone gets a clip, is infectious. “Rack ’em and stack ’em” indeed!
The magnetic pull of BBMR’s park scene is a strong one. If you haven’t been to experience the park yet, perhaps you need to check it off your bucket list. If you’re thinking of making a street-filming trip to Big Bear, just know that it really isn’t the easiest place to clip up. But you might just get lucky like the crew did last February, when all the pieces of the puzzle came together.
