Snow Summit's Torchlight Parade Is a Real Glow Show

The New Year's Eve event has been a mountain-shimmery holiday sight for well over a half century.

What to Know

  • Monday, Dec. 31
  • 7 p.m. to midnight
  • Some 200 skiers and snowboarders will join

Pause and point a source of illumination, say a flashlight or a flickering bulb, in the direction of some snow.

Would you say that the surface of the cold stuff glitters? Shimmers? Kind of does a combo thing, a sort of glimmer?

It's quite the sight, however you choose to describe it, and it is one often seen by people visiting higher elevation destinations in the wintertime.

But there are few glimmer-tastic experiences to match the traditional torchlight parade, the down-the-mountain procession seen at many ski resorts around the holidays.

Specifically, and most usually, and highly festively, on New Year's Eve.

Snow Summit near Big Bear will honor this long-running, resort-based tradition, as it has for the last 54 years, with a Torchlight Parade on Monday, Dec. 31. 

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Around "... 200+ skiers and snowboarders" are expected to "... light up the night as they make their way down the mountain in the dark," all to create a magical snake-y line of lovely glow.

Described as a "spellbinding spectacle of light," the Torchlight Parade isn't a midnight thing, or even one that happens later in the evening; it'll all begin right around 7:45, giving spectators time to return to whatever at-home celebration they've got planned.

But if you haven't got plans back at home, be sure to stick around for more merriment. Look for a live performance by Digital Underground, a bubbly toast, a bounce house, a photo booth, and other celebratory stuff to glimmer and shimmer around the mountain-pretty location.

The fun'll keep fun-ing on, right through to midnight.

And, yep, the lifts'll be running earlier in the day, at Snow Summit, if you want to arrive in the morning for some schussing, before the illuminating eveningtime to-do.

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