Sledding in Big Bear

The purpose of the trip to Big Bear was to play with a sled. (It's called a sled, not a sledge. A sledge is a really big hammer, and when you go into a shop, and ask for a sledge for them [pointing at your 5 year old twins, who smile back sweetly] they think something's wrong.

It's quite hard to find a good place for sledding. If it's really good, then someone's made it into a ski slope, and if it's not, it tends to have trees, buildings, rocks, roads, cliffs, or something else inconvenient in the way.

The first day we found a place in the woods, without too many of those impediments.

For the second day, we asked around a bit more, and found a closed road. I tested it first, and found it to be sufficiently uneventful.

Then we put Daniel on the sledge, at the top of short, not especially steep bit that ended with a flat bit. He went down the hill, went over the flat bit, and kept going. We ran after him, shouting things like "Shit" and "Oh shit" and "Daniel jump off", while onlookers leapt out of the way and looked surprised. The problem with this road is that there is something of a steep drop on the right hand side. Where we were there was a ridge which gave some protection (you can see it on the video earlier). But later on it was much reduced, and he went over this, and about 10 feet down the much steeper hill, which fortunately had fresh snow and therefore wasn't conducive to speedy sledging. I stopped by crashing into a snowboarder and knocking him over (he was possibly feeling pleased that he'd managed to avoid Daniel; but he took it well) and we helped Daniel to get back up.

A friend of the snowboarder (who had a sled) said "I've been trying to do that all day".

Dan seemed rather unfazed by it all. He claimed not to have been worried, but he didn't go on the sled on his own for a while. After that, we found a better slope, with a longer stop before the barrier, and we took turns being 'in goal'.

Update: A commenter asked where this was.

The first video was taken in the woods. On the map, here, we parked on the 18, and went into the woods. We looked for places that other people were parked with sleds. Parking was a little tricky - there was a bit of a layby, and we walked through the wood for a while to find a good spot.

The second day was somewhere around the center of this map. It was on a gated road, that led up the side of the mountain. When we got home and looked at the map, I think we were looking for here.