Los Angeles Guide: Kids' Ski Lessons at Big Bear Mountain Resort!
Last year, I signed my son up for a private education course but he quickly became bored with it. This year, I tried a group lesson at Big Bear Mountain Resort and it was a great success! Many other kids were taking the lesson and they all seemed to be having a blast.
👉 Here's the application process:
- Search for Big Bear Mountain Resort and go to their official website.
- Click on the menu and select Ski/Snowboard lessons.
- Scroll down to find the group lessons for different age groups and single or double board settings. I picked the 5-7 year old double board group lesson, and since there were no lessons available at Big Bear Lake that day, we went to the nearby Snow Summit resort.
⚠️ Important points to note:
- Each class is three hours long and the instructor will provide water for the students. However, there are no snacks provided, so make sure you eat a meal before attending class.
- If you don't have a season pass or ski gear, it's recommended to add on a lift ticket and rental equipment as doing so with the group lesson will be cheaper than buying them separately.
- Make sure you wear a ski helmet and not a bicycle helmet!
👉 Upon arrival at the ski resort:
- If the SSBase is full, drivers can use their hazard lights to drop the kids off.
- Facing the ski resort, the leftmost building is the ski school. We took a 1pm class and checked in at 12:15.
- After checking in, the instructor will bring the kids to get fitted for ski equipment and parents can spend their time elsewhere before returning 15 minutes before the end of class.
⚠️ Important points to note:
- Only kids between the ages of 5-12 can check in and rent equipment at this location.
- The instructor will ask if the student has any skiing experience, so be honest about your child's abilities. After warming up, the class will be divided into groups. Beginners will focus on skiing on a special area called "figure 1" which is quite small and includes a conveyor belt system to make it easy to move up the slope. More experienced students will head directly to lift chair to hit the ski slopes.
In my son's group, there was a little girl who claimed to be an experienced skier when she had only played with snow before. She couldn't keep up with the group and almost got lost, but the instructor found her in the end, it was a bit scary! However, the advantage of taking a lesson from an instructor on the mountain is that you can avoid the lift lines and quickly move on to the next run of the lesson.
The drawback of taking group lessons is that progress is generally slow since it is not a tailored experience, but my son was still ecstatic because he had several new friends to ski with.