Podcast #209: Ski Big Bear, Pennsylvania Owner Ron Schmalzle and GM Lori Phillips

Who

Ron Schmalzle, President, Co-Owner, and General Manager of Ski Big Bear operator Recreation Management Corp; and Lori Phillips, General Manager of Ski Big Bear at Masthope Mountain, Pennsylvania

Recorded on

April 22, 2025

About Ski Big Bear

Click here for a mountain stats overview

Owned by: Property owners of Masthope Mountain Community; operated by Recreation Management Corporation

Located in: Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania

Year founded: 1976 as “Masthope Mountain”; changed name to “Ski Big Bear” in 1993

Pass affiliations:

* Indy Pass – 2 days, select blackouts

* Indy+ Pass – 2 days, no blackouts

Closest neighboring ski areas: Villa Roma (:44), Holiday Mountain (:52), Shawnee Mountain (1:04)

Base elevation: 550 feet

Summit elevation: 1,200 feet

Vertical drop: 650 feet

Skiable acres: 26

Average annual snowfall: 50 inches

Trail count: 18 (1 expert, 5 advanced, 6 intermediate, 6 beginner)

Lift count: 7 (4 doubles, 3 carpets – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Ski Big Bear’s lift fleet)

Why I interviewed them

This isn’t really why I interviewed them, but have you ever noticed how the internet ruined everything? Sure, it made our lives easier, but it made our world worse. Yes I can now pay my credit card bill four seconds before it’s due and reconnect with my best friend Bill who moved away after fourth grade. But it also turns out that Bill believes seahorses are a hoax and that Jesus spoke English because the internet socializes bad ideas in a way that the 45 people who Bill knew in 1986 would have shut down by saying “Bill you’re an idiot.”

Bill, fortunately, is not real. Nor, as far as I’m aware, is a seahorse hoax narrative (though I’d like to start one). But here’s something that is real: When Schmalzle renamed Masthope Mountain to “Ski Big Bear” in 1993, in honor of the region’s endemic black bears, he had little reason to believe anyone, anywhere, would ever confuse his 550-vertical-foot Pennsylvania ski area with Big Bear Mountain, California, a 39-hour, 2,697-mile drive west.

Well, no one used the internet in 1993 except weird proto-gamers and genius movie programmers like the fat evil dude in Jurassic Park. Honestly I didn’t even think the “Information Superhighway” was real until I figured email out sometime in 1996. Like time travel or a human changing into a cat, I thought the internet was some Hollywood gimmick, imagined because wouldn’t it be cool if we could?

Well, we can. The internet is real, and it follows us around like oxygen, the invisible scaffolding of existence. And it tricks us into being dumb by making us feel smart. So much information, so immediately and insistently, that we lack a motive to fact check. Thus, a skier in Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania (let’s call him “Bill 2”), can Google “Big Bear season pass” and end up with an Ikon Pass, believing this is his season pass not just to the bump five miles up the road, but a mid-winter vacation passport to Sugarbush, Copper Mountain, and Snowbird.

Well Bill 2 I’m sorry but you are as dumb as my imaginary friend Bill 1 from elementary school. Because your Ikon Pass will not work at Ski Big Bear, Pennsylvania. And I’m sorry Bill 3 who lives in Riverside, California, but your Ski Big Bear, Pennsylvania season pass will not work at Big Bear Mountain Resort in California.

At this point, you’re probably wondering if I have nothing better to do but sit around