As California braces for a historic “super” El Niño after years of drought, many die-hard skiers are looking to the mountains and hoping for snow.
Mammoth Lakes received 3 to 6 inches of snow in the last three days and plans to open the Mammoth Mountain Ski Area on Nov. 13, according to spokesperson Mike Imes.
Nevada’s Mt. Rose ski resort, with the area’s highest base elevation at 8,260 feet, plans to open early, according to SFGATE. It was supposed to open Nov. 20, but now it will be the first resort in the California-Nevada region to open for the 2026-27 winter season.
Closer to home, the historic Mt. Waterman ski resort, known for its steep slopes and black diamond runs, was listed for sale Wednesday for $3,275,000.
Make that relisted.
“The previous buyers had big dreams,” said listing agent Marc Ramirez of Pacific West Business Properties. But in the end, too many obstacles got in the way, including the government shutdown and the Pineapple Express storm in December 2025 that damaged one of the ski lifts.
In 2024, an investment group called Angeles Mountain Partners LLC (“AMP”) announced in a news release that it had acquired the historic property. The group planned to upgrade the resort by offering “country-club style” memberships, including helipad access when the Angeles Crest Highway is closed during prime skiing conditions.
Ramirez, who was born and raised in La Cañada Flintridge and worked at the resort in the 1990s, said the news release was premature.
“No one called to check if escrow had closed,” he said. “Because we’re on national forest land, they would need approval for a special use permit from the Forest Service. They didn’t get it. After the news release, the Forest Service called me and asked, ‘What is going on?’ ”
He added that the investment group also didn’t have the money to make the improvements it wanted for its vision of a private club with special privileges. These included updating the warming hut and clubhouse and adding a mountain bike park.
“I’m pretty confident we would not allow … any kind of exclusive use,” Justin Seastrand of the U.S. Forest Service told The Times in 2024 regarding their plans for an exclusive ski resort.
On Friday, however, Seastrand, who oversees public services in the Angeles National Forest, told SFGATE that the Forest Service is committed to the ski area. “Our 2023 permit was issued for 20 years and we are always standing by more than willing to work with potential buyers as well as current owners to efficiently process a sale and meet our requirements for a new permit,” he said in an email.
Now that the 20-year special use permit to operate an all-season resort is in place, Ramirez is optimistic about selling the 390-acre resort, which is located an hour from the city in the Angeles National Forest.
“We have the steepest skiing in Southern California,” Ramirez said, referring to the black diamond slopes. “We offer advanced skiing you can’t find unless you drive to Mammoth.” He says he’s received about 25 calls a day since the listing went live and is in serious talks with two potential buyers.
Ramirez, who once taught snowboarding at the resort and has held other jobs there, admits he feels emotionally attached to the property. “It’s important to find the right buyer because it’s a special place. You can ski and still be home for dinner,” he adds. “You can’t get that at Mammoth.”
The new listing, which is $1 million higher than when it first went on the market in 2024, highlights the new transferable 20-year permit to operate, three fully insured and certified chairlifts (Chair 1 was damaged during the Pineapple Express storm in December 2025) and two cabins.
In a statement,Angeles Mountain Partners said that despite receiving permit authorization from the Forest Service to operate Mt. Waterman, its “due diligence discovered too many undisclosed issues with the existing assets” to proceed. These included Chair 1, which was destroyed in a landslide, the death of one of the principals and “latent issues with the outdated diesel power systems that do not meet current-day certification and environmental standards, and maintenance work and records for the facility and the lifts that did not meet our standards.”
“We really wanted to move forward and were willing to accept a certain amount of risk, but too many things were not as represented and we were unable to come to terms with the sellers on a sell price that reflected the true condition of the assets. What is accurate is that AMP’s goal was to take it from the private club that it currently is, and develop the hill into an all-season mountain resort that included a powder club called the Waterman 100, just one of the many ways we hoped to bring the public back to the mountain in a meaningful way.”
