Bear Mountain’s New Red Bull Plaza

Words: Laura Austin
Photos: Huggy & Mike Yoshida

Last night we were lucky enough to get an exclusive first look at Bear Mountain’s new Red Bull Plaza. And no we didn’t just look at it, be we got to watch the likes of Forest Bailey, Chris Bradshaw, Lucas Magoon, Daniel Brown, Will Bateman, Pat Lynch, Brett Wilkinson, and Big Mike take full advantage of this urban style setup under a full moon the night before it opened to the public. Let’s just say you are going to want to check this thing out for yourself.

Nestled off to the side of Bear’s chair 9 is what we would consider the “street scene”. This area contains 13 different setups, 21 features all together, and infinite ways to hit them. The Red Bull Plaza includes a 30’ marble ledge, two 20’ concrete rails, three ledges, two banks, a kink building wall, building wall with a ledge attachment, four stair sets, two down rails, bleacher box, planter ledge box and a down-flat-down ledge wall. Forest Bailey was definitely taking advantage of what all the new setup had to offer. “It’s sick as a whole because you can choose tons of different lines and it’s basically like having a skatepark in the snow.”

This zone is definitely different from your typical resort experience. “It’s a place you can just come and hang out.” According to Bradshaw. “If there’s crowded liftlines you can just bring your backpack with some snacks and hang out and hike with all your buddies.” Which is definitely nice, you don’t have to worry about people on the lift, or a peanut gallery at the base watching your every move.

Clayton Shoemaker, Director of Youth Marketing and Park Development for Big Bear Mountain Resorts, said they had a plan for this setup over a year ago. They wanted to take all the Hot Dawgz & Hand Rails features and put them in one compact area for the public to enjoy. And thanks to Red Bull they were able to turn this vision into reality. “It isn’t just features in a straight line,” said Shoemaker. “There are ways to connect 3,4,5 features in a row. It’s a way to bring the urban feel, that the guys are out there filming on, to the mountain.”

Each year they plan to do more and eventually create a “mock city” as Shoemaker put it, with permanent features and all they have to do is come in and put snow around it. But without getting to far ahead of ourselves, The Red Bull Plaza is already changing the face of what mountains are capable of putting together. The public can now take the things they only see pros do in movies and try it within a well-maintained set up without worry about the cops busting them for trespassing.

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