Season Pass Regrets & Safety Lessons at Bear Creek Resort (PA Snowboarding Review)
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Bear Creek is not too far away from Spring Mountain Adventures. It’s still not where Blue Mountain is at, so their season also starts late and ends early, due to the close proximity of Philadelphia and civilization. I have had quite a bit of ups & downs at this mountain. This is a bit of a doozy. I’m not going to lie, but to be fair, I will give it three out of five stars.
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Lots of parking, and it’s free.
Passes
Bear Creek is more expensive than Spring Mountain but not as expensive as Blue Mountain. I did buy a season pass from them for the Winter 2023/2024 season, but hindsight is 20/20.
At this point, I fully feel like no season pass you fully pay for is ever worth it. Even at Big SNOW, I paid for it, and as soon as I did, I started going less because of circumstances outside of my control. Which is my whole point!! You never know what external circumstances are outside of your control. These passes run a pretty penny! Blue Mountain is even more expensive, and those epic passes, just no. Unless you HAVE the money, you can afford it easily, and get your time in for the season, I don’t feel season passes are ever truly worth it.
The season pass here, at the time, cost me $500. I would have had to go riding at least 10 times in the season to make it worth it. Which could have been easily doable if their season started in early December, which in 2023/2024 it did not. It didn’t start until late January, and then ended in early March. Also, because I sustained an injury on the property due to their negligence, TWICE, I had to end my season early.
Just not worth it.
Vibe
The overall vibe differs depending on where you are and who you interact with. Some people who work here are abrasive. Others are very kind and go above and beyond to help you. The right side of the mountain is a lot more on top of safety and just an overall chill vibe. The left side of the mountain, closer to the terrain park, is a lot more lax, busier, not paying attention, and just not my cup of tea. It just so happens that every time I rode on the left side of the mountain, I had an issue. And I came back after my first initial injury because they made me believe it was MY FAULT and it was ALL IN MY HEAD. It clearly was not and it happened again! Same spot and all! At that point, it’s not my fault, and yet once again, they wanted to pin the blame on me and make me feel psychotic. Do yourself a favor, if you have an issue here, lawyer up immediately. I tried to handle it like an adult professionally, but they ganged up on me more than once.
Snow & Slopes
They don’t call the East Coast "Ice Coast” for no reason! But Blue Mountain will always have BETTER conditions than what you will get here. It costs a few more extra bucks to go to Blue and have a great day there, than have a subpar day here. That being said, it does have decent coverage when they are open. But it is a lot icier.
I will say, I enjoyed my time here when I spent it on the right side of the mountain. It was totally a blast! I felt free! I felt alive! I felt in love!
Also, I feel like it really leveled up my riding, when I rode here, because I was mainly alone. So when I sustained an injury, no one was there to help me or do anything, I had to fend for myself. So through this experience, I did learn, it is better to ride with others than being alone. Sometimes when you don’t have the friends to go with, desperate times call for desperate measures. Life is too short to wait on others for what you want to do. I wouldn’t trust going with a stranger I found on Facebook. Like I said at the top of this page, I started alone, and then I went to Blue Mountain alone. I have ridden at Blue alone many times! Green AND blue trails! Also at Blue Mountain, I found it was easier for random strangers to look out for me than a random mom & pop mountain that no one has ever heard of.
That’s why I have such mixed feelings about this place.
I had a good amount of good and bad times here.
The Issues I Had
I covered most of the issues I had up until this point as detached from the issue as possible. Whenever I get too close to the subject, I start to feel a lot of emotions.
Essentially, after falling in love with the right side of the mountain, I decided to start tackling the left side. I was having a great day! But things, unfortunately, took a turn for the worse.
Going up B Lift, towards Kodak, is where I hit the majority of the issues. During a very busy Friday, I got stuck on their unloading dock for the first time in all my snowboarding sessions! Indoors, outdoors, other mountains, never had an issue with a ski lift or ski lift attendant before, and yet, here I was.
The ski lift attendant wasn’t paying attention when I tried to yank my board and it got stuck on the unloading dock. It threw me so hard forward, as I fell onto all fours. The ski lift kept going and the chair pushed me down and tore my rotator cuff in the process. If I didn’t have a helmet on, I would have been decapitated. There was a huge scratch down my snowboard, which shouldn’t have happened because I had just gotten it newly waxed and maintained THAT MORNING! I was riding all day without problem on the other side of the mountain.
It gets better!
They called for ski patrol to come check me out, and they forgot about me. When they finally got to me, they pushed the blame onto me. The ski lift attendant on duty left, and a new guy took his place, and he kept shoveling snow onto the dock repeatedly after that. After talking with many people in this industry, I learned that if there’s not enough snow, that incident happens all too often and it MOST FREQUENTLY HAPPENS at mom & pop resorts.
I made it down the mountain on my own and cried. I came back a week later to kind of get proof, see what could have happened, but also, to really ask if it was all in my head or not.
It wasn’t.
I went up B Lift once more and again a new ski lift attendant wasn’t paying attention. A little girl got stuck and fell on the dock RIGHT WHERE I WAS the week prior. The parents were off the dock and weren’t paying attention to her. She looked at me terrified. What was I supposed to do?! Hit her in the face with my snowboard?! No! Absolutely not! I lifted it above her head, she was safe and sound, her parents didn’t have a care in the world, but I got yelled at because I didn’t trigger the emergency brake. Gee, sir, maybe it was because I saved a child’s life?! But I really shouldn’t have had TWO back to back experiences of negligence on B Lift.
So tell me again, was it my fault?
The ride attendant after that was quick to act and get me down safely, while I was slightly dangling in mid-air. I give him props for making it up after that. But really, now, really?!
I debated whether to lawyer up or not, but I was really trying to settle things myself like an adult and get my money back at least.
Oh of course not!
They ganged up on me three to one, and pinned the blame on me. They gave me 10 passes to use for the 2024/2025 season, but really, would anyone in their right mind really feel comfortable coming back to a place after all those issues?!
Like I said, that’s why I have mixed feelings, and why I will give them three stars. There are others who worked here who were so much kinder and amazing than some of the others I dealt with. I don’t want to lump them all together.
I wish I could say those were the only issues I had though.
Have you ever heard of the burnt toast theory? Butterfly effect? Everything happens for a reason?
It’s basically stating that if you are running late, or have some sort of delay, like a burnt toast, it means life, the universe, God, whoever you believe in, is protecting you from something else.
I truly believe in that now. I actually wasn’t supposed to be snowboarding on either day. I don’t think I was meant to purchase a Bear Creek season pass at all, when I reflect about it!
From the beginning, I always had multiple issues. Running late, a tree in my path, getting pulled over RANDOMLY (never happens), nose bleeds that I NEVER HAVE, just loads of inconveniences and issues that I never deal with. I cannot explain them in any other way other than, I was not meant to be here AT ALL.
The first injury that happened on that one particular day, I was supposed to have gone tubing with my niece but she couldn’t make it. So I went snowboarding, but there was a HUGE tubing accident that SAME DAY AT THE SAME TIME AS MY ACCIDENT!!!! That’s why the ski patrol forgot about me because they were attending to the others, though they should have enough patrollers for every situation that may arise!
It gets better!
On the day, I was coming up to talk to the one guy about everything that had happened, the day I got ganged up on by three to one, I had not one minor inconvenience but THREE. Three trees fell directly into my path trying to block me from going there. I got there late! I had to wait for them to clear the road.
Get this, when I walked out of that meeting, it was a crappy meeting, the second I touched their doors, alarms started blaring. Everyone looked around and at me, they all stared at me. Huddling together like a, “You can’t sit here clique,” I didn’t do anything. Those doors were fine an hour prior. But something out there did NOT want me at Bear Creek.
And so I’m biased against it. I took the loss. I learned my lesson. I just watch from afar now because I truly believe in due time what the universe/God/life was protecting me from, will show itself! Truly!
Refreshments & Lodge
Everything is expensive, it looks nice, compared to some other locations, but the food is average. The only thing that was to die for were the fries!
I know they have a hotel, but with all my experiences, I just wouldn’t come back.
Gift Shop
I quite enjoyed the gift shop at Bear Creek! Most of the stickers were somehow free, and the others were dirt cheap! Like I mentioned in Blue Mountain’s review, I love to have mountain-specific stickers or adventure-specific stickers on and in my scrapbook.
Even despite all the issues I had, I still want to talk about it with my journal and commemorate the good and bad. I wanted to reflect on my experience as a whole and having stickers from the location itself helps me tell a story.
Overall
Scrapbooking & journaling in my Passion Planner Daily. Use my link to get $15 off your first order at Passion Planner.
You live and you learn. Go at your own risk! But I wouldn’t come back, and I seriously considered it, but after going to Gore, another mom & pop in upstate New York, many times at Blue Mountain, and also Mountain Creek Resort Vernon NJ–I KNOW what a legit and quality mountain feels like and is supposed to be like. If you want cheap, you get cheap. If you want quality, you’re going to pay a pretty penny.
