The rise and fall of Lassen Park Ski Area

For decades families learned to ski on a small hill inside a national park, in the shadow of a volcano. The National Park Service tells how Lassen Park Ski Area grew from a single poma lift above the park highway to a chairlift, rope tows and a two-story A-frame chalet, and how it was closed and erased from the slope after its last season in 1994.

A "SKI Lassen" patch. Image from the National Park Service's page.

How it began

Winter use of the park's Southwest Area has a long history. Competitions hosted by the Mt. Lassen Ski Club beginning in 1932 built interest in winter sports. In the 1940s the park and a private landowner opened competing ski areas near Sulphur Works, and the 1960 Winter Olympics in nearby Squaw Valley brought a record number of skiers to the park. By the mid-1960s major redevelopment was under way. Its most notable part was a permanent winter-use building, the Lassen Chalet, a two-story A-frame with a tall glass wall that gave warming skiers a view of the lower ski hill.

The chalet and the slopes

The chalet was the heart of the ski area. Inside, the park concessioner ran food service, a gift shop, equipment rental, a ski school and a ski shop. In 1972 rangers began snowshoe tours from the chalet, which proved so popular that they continue. In 1978 use rose after the Mount Shasta Ski Bowl closed because of irreparable avalanche damage. The concessioner then offered a poma lift, two rope tows, six marked runs, rentals and a ski school, with lift tickets at $5.50, rentals at $7 and free beginner lessons. In 1982 a triple chairlift named Bumpass Heaven allowed operation seven days a week, and for three years the area saw record attendance.

A map of the Lassen ski area. Image from the National Park Service's page.

Decline and closure

In the late 1980s inadequate snowfall limited operation, and a new ski area opened on Mount Shasta in the winter of 1985-86. By 1990 annual downhill skier totals had dropped to less than a third of what they had been five years earlier. The concessioner announced that the area would not open after the 1994 season. The building, too, was a burden: it developed a myriad of problems that eventually made it too costly to maintain.

What replaced it

The park removed the chairlift foundations in 1999 and restored the former ski area to its pre-development condition in 2003. The chalet was condemned and demolished in 2005. More than 50 concrete lift foundations that once supported the poma tow and the chairlift were removed along with dirt access roads. The year-round Kohm Yah-mah-nee Visitor Center, which opened in 2008, is the starting point for ranger-led snowshoe walks and winter education programs. Some visitors find it very different from the chalet they remember, and people still look up the slope for the faint outline of the old runs. Every winter the Southwest Area still welcomes thousands of skiers, sledders, snowshoers and snow-play visitors.

Sources

• National Park Service, "Lassen Park Ski Area" (https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/lassen-ski-area.htm); the page's timeline gives some years twice or differently from its text (the lift's start, the chalet's building), so those years are left out; a photograph credited to an individual photographer and a second map are left out; rewritten in hubnx's own words.