Bear Valley bouldering?

Hi! Cross-posting a question for you friendly NorCal folks: I’m going to be sending Xmas week in a Bear Valley airbnb with my three sons. I don’t ride lifts to ski anymore so I’m only bringing my skate skis. But the weather could be nice for bouldering? I’m wondering about that stretch of route 4 between Arnold and Bear Valley. I drove it a few times a couple years ago when I was down for my son’s HS graduation and it looked from the road like there was a lot of high quality rock but there was still feet of snow on the ground. I’m always happy to blindly explore, but if anyone knows of particularly good spots to park and find some easy problems, I’d love to hear your recommendations. I tried searching on here but found nothing under Bear Valley. Maybe I need a better search term. Or maybe it’s locals only lol. Thanks in advance.

Dave Hatchett's guidebook "Bouldering Lake Tahoe Outlying Areas Edition" has some coverage of Bear Valley.

Might be snowy up there.

Nice, thanks! I’ll check it out.

https://www.mountainproject.com/area/106825571/hells-kitchen

Right next to Highway 4, subject to snow of course.

Thanks for that. Hell’s Kitchen was the search term I needed. 

I can email you some topos if you like, I have two different books that have that area. Also if you're potentially interested in climbing roped on quartzite not far from there hit me up. Lots of easy climbs and it's a pretty good area for kids.

Have fun out there

Thanks Ricky. Appreciate that. Any idea where the snow line currently is on highway 4?

Colden Dark wrote:

Thanks Ricky. Appreciate that. Any idea where the snow line currently is on highway 4?

Regardless of current condition, there's another storm coming in this week/weekend with snow line at around 4000 feet. Looks like potentially about a foot of total snow expected Thursday-Saturday at Lake Alpine.  Good for the skiing.

If you want to boulder but get snowed out of Bear Valley bouldering, you could drive an hour down the hill to boulder at Columbia. The bouldering there is really good, and much lower elevation.