The Best Ski Pass Near L.A. Costs $499 and Blacks Out Saturdays

One test sets the order: what an adult pays this week, and what each price locks out.

Three season passes on sale to Los Angeles skiers right now cost exactly $499, and they buy three different winters. One is three mountains, Monday through Friday. One is a single mountain, every day it spins. The third can't be bought at all unless you already own a pass somewhere else.

We read the posted 26/27 pass tables at Mountain High in Wrightwood and at Big Bear Mountain Resort — which now sells Snow Summit, Bear Mountain and Snow Valley off one price sheet — on September 29, and priced every adult pass either operator is selling this week. Student, senior, military and nurse rates are out, and so are the crew deals that need four friends and a transcript. What's left is six passes between $499 and $739, two San Gabriel ski areas that wouldn't give up a number at all, and two price deadlines five weeks apart.

Both operators are running a clock, and the clocks disagree. Every price on Mountain High's three tables turns over on November 1. Big Bear's turn over on December 2. Land on the wrong side of your own resort's date and the identical pass costs $30 to $100 more for the identical winter.

1. BBMR Midweek — $499, and the blackout leaks

Here's the placement to argue about, and the leak is the argument. The Midweek pass costs $499, covers Snow Summit, Bear Mountain and Snow Valley from Monday through Friday, and blacks out all of December 21 to 25, December 28 to 31, January 1 and every Saturday and Sunday of the season. Then the same page gives the blackout back: Night Sessions come with the pass, including "Night Sessions that land on Saturdays and Sundays and the blackout period dates."

So the cheapest three-mountain pass in Southern California will put a skier on a lift on a Saturday, including the Saturday of Christmas week. Not in the morning: the pass rides the lights, and through the holiday stretch it opens up after 3 p.m. on any day a Night Session is running at Snow Summit or Snow Valley, both of which stay open until 8:30. Bear Mountain closes at 4 and is no help at that hour. On a blacked-out weekend day this is a night pass, and that is the honest limit of the loophole.

What the $499 leaves out is the part to weigh before buying. The Midweek pass carries no Friends & Family lift tickets at all, so it's a pass for one person and one person's calendar, and the discounts on rentals and lessons have to be applied by phone rather than online. It goes to $529 on December 2. If your week has one movable weekday in it, nothing else on this page comes close.

2. Snow Valley Anytime — $499, one mountain, and a day at the other two

The same $499, the opposite shape. The Snow Valley Anytime pass is unlimited at the Running Springs resort with "no blackout dates or restrictions," night sessions included, and it arrives with one complimentary Big Bear lift ticket the holder can use at Snow Summit or Bear Mountain for a same-day visit. It also carries five Friends & Family tickets at 25 percent off the window rate, which have to be booked online at least 24 hours ahead and can't be bought at the window.

The free day has the holidays carved out of it — not December 21 to 25, not December 28 to 31, not January 1 — and the rental discount is 15 percent at Snow Valley only, against 25 percent for the Midweek pass. This is the $499 for anyone who skis with other people, because the Midweek pass can't bring anybody at any price and this one brings five at a quarter off. It also goes to $529 on December 2.

3. Mountain High Slopetime — $499 through October 31, and you have to own a pass to buy it

This is the strangest product in Southern California skiing, and for the people who qualify it's the cheapest way to add a whole mountain. Mountain High will sell unlimited day-and-night access with no blackouts for $499 — but only to someone who can show a 2026/27 season pass at another Southern California resort worth "$499 Value or greater." Epic, Ikon and Power passes all count. The add-on runs September 8 through February 28, carries no other benefits at all, and goes to $599 on November 1.

Read the terms as posted and a Snow Valley Anytime pass at $499 is exactly the $499 of value the add-on asks for. Stack the two and $998 buys four mountains — Snow Valley, Snow Summit, Bear Mountain and Mountain High — with no blackout dates anywhere in the pile. That's $259 over Big Bear's own three-mountain pass, for a fourth mountain, a second operator and a second snow report. Mountain High's own pitch for the add-on is that it costs "the price of 3 lift tickets."

4. Mountain High Base Pass — $629, and $260 under its own regular price

One mountain, day or night, no restrictions, at 24510 State Highway 2 in Wrightwood. The Base Pass is $629 through October 31 and $679 from November 1, and the last column of the resort's own table puts the regular price at $889 — the number worth holding on to whenever a season-pass sale is described as a sale.

Eight buddy tickets come with it, at 30 percent off midweek and 20 percent off weekends and holidays. That's the thinnest discount book here, and it's why a perfectly good pass sits below three $499s: for $130 less, Big Bear's Midweek pass buys three mountains instead of one, and all it asks in return is that you ski on a weekday or after dark.

5. The Cali Pass — $729, and three of its four mountains aren't down the hill

The Cali Pass is $729 through October 31, $789 for the month of November and $899 after that. It is the Base Pass plus unlimited access at Bear Valley, China Peak and Dodge Ridge, plus three days at each of fourteen Powder Alliance resorts, under restrictions the page says vary by location and doesn't itemize. Ski California puts those three addresses in Bear Valley, Lakeshore and Pinecrest, which is to say none of them is a Saturday from Los Angeles.

What the extra $100 over the Base Pass really buys a local is the discount book: ten buddy tickets at 50 percent off midweek and 40 percent off weekends, up from eight at 30 and 20, plus 30 percent off lodging at China Peak and Bear Valley from Sunday through Thursday outside holidays. The College Cali Pass, advertised from $249 for a crew of four or more with a transcript, undercuts everything else here by $250, and the page can't keep its own deposit straight: the banner says "Just a $50 deposit secures the lowest price of the year through 10/31," while the bullet under it reads "$50 Deposit available through 4/30. $100 Deposit 5/1 - 10/31." Bring the $100.

6. BBMR Anytime — $739, and the resort's own math doesn't survive its own banner

The flagship, and the one most Angelenos will reach for: unlimited, no blackout dates, all three Big Bear mountains, night sessions included, $739 through December 1 and $839 on December 2. The Anytime page makes a break-even promise in print — ride five or more days this season, it says, and the pass "can pay for itself."

Across the top of every page on the same site runs a banner for BBMR Double Play: two undated lift tickets for $149, ages 5 to 79, no blackout dates, reserved through an Ikon Pass account by 9 a.m. on the day you turn up. That's $74.50 a day. Five packs is ten days for $745, so on the resort's own posted prices the pass overtakes the tickets somewhere around the tenth day, not the fifth, and a skier who tops out at six days pays $447 rather than $739.

Three caveats keep that arithmetic honest, and all three are the resort's: the reservation system is capacity-limited, a pack is non-transferable and can't be split between two people, and a reservation cancelled after 11:59 p.m. the night before costs a day. Two of Big Bear's three pass pages also make a weather argument for buying now, citing El Niño in the forecast. That's a sales line, not a snow report.

The two that wouldn't post a price, and the one that isn't a local pass

Mt. Baldy, whose own site sells it as "SoCal's Real Mountain, Real Close," will tell you almost everything about its 26/27 Annual Pass except the number. The page lists unlimited access to Chair 1, free parking — "the only way to park for FREE" — a Club Baldy membership good for discounts for up to six guests, a pass holder line at the bottom of Chair 1, a 75-year T-shirt, and an expiry of April 30, 2027, over a line that reads "Season length and conditions are not guaranteed." The price is drawn in by the store's checkout rather than printed in the page, and a ranking built on posted prices can't rank a figure that isn't posted. Baldy also sells what nobody else here does: a four-season pass covering 26/27 through 29/30, marked as a limited quantity, and a resident pass with the parking included.

Mt. Waterman, up the Angeles Crest Highway, has no 26/27 price to read at all: its site answered this desk with a server error on every attempt on September 29. L.A. Taco puts the drive up there at under 60 miles from Highland Park, Pasadena or Glendale. In March 2024 it reported that Waterman was opening to the public for the first time in four years, and quoted a commenter calling it "a leap-year ski resort."

The Ikon Pass is the third absence, and it's an absence by arithmetic. Big Bear sells Ikon alongside its own three passes and its comparison table prices it for ages 23 and up at $319 to $1,449 — the three Big Bear mountains with no blackout dates, plus 70-odd destinations worldwide. A spread that wide is a product line, not a price, and Ikon's own shop would not hand this desk a figure to quote.

What the six prices are actually telling you

Sorted by money, the list reads $499, $499, $499, $629, $729, $739 — a $240 spread across six passes, which is narrow enough that price alone decides almost nothing. Sorted by what an Angeleno can use on a Saturday in January, it comes apart: of the three cheapest, one is shut out of Saturday daylight and rides the lights instead, one is good all day at a single mountain, and one can't be bought by anybody who hasn't already spent $499 somewhere else.

The other thing all six have in common is that they're being sold for a season that hasn't started. Big Bear dates its winter access from March 5, 2026 to closing day in April 2027, so a 26/27 pass has been valid since last spring; new ones started going in the mail on September 28, the resort says it will keep selling them until the first week of December, and it puts its own opening day somewhere in November or December. Mountain High's tables, meanwhile, run to an $889 regular price that surfaces only after November 30, which is the number waiting for anybody who buys a pass once the lifts are already turning.

The first clock to run out is Mountain High's. On November 1 the Cali Pass goes from $729 to $789 and the Base Pass from $629 to $679, and the Slopetime add-on goes from $499 to $599, which is the biggest jump anybody can still get in front of. The last day to get in front of it is Halloween.