Bear Mountain, formerly Goldmine Mountain, is a ski area in Southern California. When its neighbor, Snow Summit, bought Bear Mountain in 2002, the new entity, Big Bear Mountain Resorts, comprised the two, with a single lift ticket usable at both. Snow Summit's Richard "Dick" Kun led the move to focus Bear Mountain upon the snowboarder, to draw her away from Snow Summit, and thereby attune it once more to the culture of the dedicated skier. Bear Mountain acquired the nickname, "The Park," because most of it comprises irregular terrain. The mountain contains one of the few Superpipes in Southern California. Given sufficient natural snow, its tree runs are open for skiing and snowboarding, unlike those at Snow Summit. Even that territory normally "out of bounds" off of Chair 8 has opened after heavy snow. Olympic Gold Medalist Shaun White frequented Bear Mountain while he was quite young, although he spent most of his time on the Snow Summit Westridge freestyle run. Bear Mountain popularized freestyle skiing and snowboarding with its establishment of the first freestyle park in the early 1990s. In the early 2000s, Transworld Snowboarding Magazine placed Bear Mountain among its Top 10 Parks. The movement of jibing continues to grow with the addition of the Red Bull Plaza and weekly film series called “Sunday in the Park.”
