Kirkwood, over Carson Pass
Forty minutes up Highway 88 — longer when it is snowing, which is often the point. Kirkwood sits at the top of Carson Pass, high enough that it holds snow when lower mountains are struggling, and the pass is kept open through the winter.
It is the closest big mountain to the resort and the only one you can reach in winter without a detour.
Bear Valley, and why it is far in winter
Bear Valley is on Highway 4, seventy-five trails and nine lifts, and in summer it is about an hour away over Ebbetts Pass.
In winter it is not. Ebbetts closes — the gate goes on the high section from roughly December to May — and the short way closes with it. Getting to Bear Valley in February means going around, which is most of a day. Worth knowing before you book a cabin here for a Bear Valley weekend.
Hope Valley, on a snowmobile
Twenty minutes up 88 is Hope Valley, and the staging ground for it is the Hope Valley Sno-Park, on Blue Lakes Road two and a half miles off the highway. It is snowmobiles, cross-country skis and snowshoes — the Alpine County Winter Recreation Area.
The routes out of it, per the Carson Pass winter guide:
- Blue Lakes Road — 11.5 miles, groomed
- Willow Creek — 8.5 miles, ungroomed
- Forestdale Road — 3.5 miles, ungroomed
- Tamarack Lake — 1.0 mile, groomed
Rated easy to moderate. The Sno-Park has a vault toilet and no drinking water.
You need a Sno-Park permit, and it is a California State Parks pass, not a forest one: $15 a day or $40 for the season, required November 1 to May 30. The seasonal pass is good at Sno-Parks in Oregon, Washington and Idaho too. Buy it before you drive up — there is no booth at the trailhead.
Two nearby Sno-Parks do not allow snowmobiles at all: Meiss Meadow and the one at the Carson Pass summit. Those are for skis and snowshoes.
From here
Nothing above is at the resort. The cabins are open year-round and the river runs all winter, and what the snow changes is which direction you can drive: 88 over Carson Pass stays open, 4 over Ebbetts does not.
- Kirkwood — conditions, lifts and passes
- Bear Valley — 75 trails, 9 lifts, on Highway 4
- Hope Valley Sno-Park — Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest
- Carson Pass winter snowmobiling — the route mileages above
Before any winter drive, road and river conditions has the live gate status for both passes.
