Why Live By The Beach, When You Can Have Your Very Own Ski Resort In LA For $2.3M?

Los Angeles has premium and accessible nature in spades: Beaches. Mountains. Deserts. Of course, powdery slopes are just a hop and a skip away in the form of the Mount Waterman ski resort.

The skiing spot sits thousands of feet atop the San Gabriel Mountains, a straight shot on Highway 2 through La Cañada Flintridge. It offers three chair lifts, some 150 acres of skiable terrains for shredders of different levels, a website that is very much stuck in time — and a history as colorful as it is idiosyncratic.

All this can be yours for a price of about $2.3 million. Waterman was put on the block earlier this month, after stretches of closures in recent years.

According to the property's listing agent, a potential "lucky buyer" has been identified out of a "couple dozens of offers" to be the new owner of the beloved spot. Soon, the property will enter escrow, which could still take some time to finalize.

"I have so many offers, if this person so much blinks, we're just going to move on to the next [offer]," said Marc Ramirez with Pacific West Business Properties, Inc.

Mount Waterman ski resort in the olden days.

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Courtesy Ingrid P. Wicken

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California Ski Library

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A beloved 'best-kept secret'

At just 50 miles from downtown, Waterman is L.A.'s closest — and arguably the most under-the-radar — ski resort.

"I've been telling people about Waterman all my life," says Gary Mull, owner of the ski and snowboard repair shop, Gary's Sharper Edge, in Burbank. "I always say, 'Have you heard of Mount Baldy?' Everybody says yes. I go, 'Have you heard of Mount Waterman?' Everyone says no.'"

Ingrid P. Wicken, founder of the California Ski Library in Norco, says it's not an overstatement to call the resort a "best-kept secret" of L.A.

"It's still got the small mom-and-pop feel," she said.

It's fair to call Mount Waterman a "best-kept" secret, some say.

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Courtesy Ingrid P. Wicken

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California Ski Library

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The resort's current owner Rick Metcalf bought the place with his brother and friends in the mid-2000s, as they were Waterman diehards who didn't want to see their beloved old haunts closed down and forever lost.

"The current owners live in San Diego," said listing agent Ramirez, who himself is a Waterman diehard who was one of the first people to snowboard at the resort in the '90s. "They bought it to save it more than anything."

That sense of devotion is palpable in skiers who for generations have flocked to its slopes.

Mull, a lifelong Angeleno and Waterman skier, started skiing when he was a toddler. At 15, he skied at the resort for the very first time.

"We left so early, we thought it was going to be a little further away. We actually drove right past it in the dark," Mull said.

Since that day, he was hooked.

"Waterman is the kind of place where you can forget your wallet, forget your skis, forget your jacket and your lunch and somebody would take care of you," he said.

Like so many before him, Mull took his son to Waterman. He said he once asked the then 10-year-old what was his favorite place to ski?

His son laughed and told him, "Dad, we're famous here. Everybody knows us."

L.A.'s best-kept secret, Mount Waterman ski resort

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Courtesy Marc Ramirez

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But really, it's all about the skiing

Beyond the close-knit community, the resort's selling point remains the snow — particularly for skiers and snowboarders looking for a challenge.

Mauricio Tassara grew up in Eagle Rock and frequented Waterman with his dad and siblings when he was young. As a teenager, he would hit the slopes several times a week.

"When there was good snow — it was always natural snow — there was an extremely good amount of out of bounds and off run tree skiing," Tassara said.

He remembered going up the lifts, then hiking out of bounds to snowboard down the mountain thick with untouched snow all the way to Angeles Crest Highway. Then he and his siblings and friends would hitchhike back to the lifts.

"And we did that all day long," Tassara said. "We would get fresh tracks every run."

The man, the legend: Lynn Newcomb Jr.

Waterman had another draw, Tassara said — the "small mountain family-owned kind of feel" that remained for decades after the founding Newcomb family started the first rope tow in 1939. Two years later, they opened the first chairlift to the public.

Lynn Newcomb Jr.

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Courtesy Ingrid P. Wicken

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California Ski Library

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By the time current old-timers like Tassara and Mull were skiing Waterman, the resort was run by Lynn Newcomb Jr. Those many decades where Newcomb Jr. was at Waterman's helm are considered its golden era — where the resort was always open, and the snow was plentiful and good.

Newcomb passed away in 2011 and is still spoken about by the many who have met him with warm reverence.

Saul Traiger worked as a ski patroller at Waterman for more than a decade starting in the mid-1990s.

"When we were going up the lift at like 8 o'clock in the morning, we could see Lynn coming down. He had already been up there checking the snow conditions, making sure the runs were properly groomed," Traiger said. "I'd like to say for Lynn Newcomb Mount Waterman wasn't a business. It was an art form."

Live by the snow, die by the snow

But the very thing that has made Waterman possible is what has doomed its recent past. The resort doesn't use snowmaking, relying on nature alone for the powder that has kept its doors open.

"Their motto is snow from heaven, not from hoses," Mull said. "That's how it's been all through our history. It's either we pray for snow, because we don't have enough snow to open, and then once we get the weather, we pray that we have a road."

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Courtesy Marc Ramirez

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Case in point, the road to the resort was closed for weeks after the intense series of storm early this year. This winter season, the resort was open for just 12 days, according to real estate broker Ramirez.

That unpredictability might be one reason why Waterman has never gained the kind of mainstream traction as its counterparts.

"The snow is hit or miss. So if Waterman doesn't have snow, then [skiers] go to Mountain High or Snow Summit or Snow Valley," said Wicken with the California Ski Library.

How the pending sale might impact the resort's operations remains to be seen. In the meantime, there are the memories — lots and lots of fond memories.

"It's just a very cherished memory for me as a kid growing up in Southern California where I could go skiing in the morning and go surfing in the afternoon," said Tassara.