I'm in Pasadena, CA where I attended a meeting for a couple days but also did some skiing. Pasadena is 40 min. from LA, considerably more in rush hr., but if you head east in the morning there is no traffic and you can be in the parking lot at Mt. Baldy in one hour flat. I did this on Wed. 2/3. You head east on I-210, exit on Mt. Baldy road, drive through a pretty suburban neighborhood and then Up - Up - Up. More than 4000 ft. to the 6000 ft level into a different world of snow and ice above the LA basin. I'd heard about it for years and once drove up for a look-see in summer. It's a box canyon with near vertical walls, reminiscent of Little Cottonwood. It's been there since the 1930s, almost forgotten: too steep for the average LA skier and too little snow. Some years they never open. When they have a big year people flock there. 2100 vertical feet, serious steeps, trees, 800 acres in bounds.
http://www.mtbaldy.com/mountain-info.htm So far, this is a big year. It was great skiing. Spring conditions on south and east facing slopes and firm but chalky, very edgeable snow on (the steeper) north facing slopes. On big western mountains it is easy to get desensitized and deceived. But, if you stop and the snow rolls and sluffs past you for 30 - 60 seconds, you know it's steep.
This is just the beginning. The real name of the mountain is Mt. San Antonio and it tops out just under 9000 feet. The range is the San Gabriels, one of the most precipitous in the US. In winter the desert side is much colder than the Pacific side and holds snow to much lower elevation. There is a backcountry hut on that side built in the 1930s and operated by the Sierra Club,
http://angeles.sierraclub.org/lodges/sanantonioskihut.htmlStaying and skiing there is a rite of passage for So Cal backcountry skiers. In a big year it is possible to ski a 6000 vertical foot descent to the floor of the Mojave Desert.
If this were on the east coast, no serious skier would go anywhere else, which would of course ruin it.
