Billowing smoke and falling ash blotted out the sun in Wrightwood, California on Tuesday, September 10. It was so dark that crickets began chirping in the early afternoon and drivers had to flick on their headlights. What had started as a small brush fire in the Angeles National Forest three days beforehand, the Bridge Fire exploded—by Wednesday, September 11, it would consume 47,904 acres.
The blaze crept up the hills of Wrightwood and began burning grassy hillsides within the beloved Mountain High ski area, a local resort famous for its easily accessible after-work night skiing for Los Angelinos. Luckily for Mountain High, the resort’s tenacious snow cannon operators jumped into action and began spraying trees and buildings with water. According to an update on Wednesday afternoon, the employees and firefighters prevented the loss of any resort buildings.
BRIDGE FIRE UPDATE
Fire raced through the area yesterday but GREAT NEWS! All the main lifts & buildings survived with little to no damage. THANK YOU to the fire fighters & employees for their hard work! Our hearts go out to the Wrightwood community, WE ARE WITH YOU.— Mountain High (@mthigh)
“When the fire got close, they fired up all the guns and were able to get the trees wet and keep the fire off the buildings,” Dennis Nadalin, who runs video production for Mountain High, told me.
Mountain High has invested millions of dollars in snowmaking equipment, Nadalin said, and its new taller towers were instrumental in protecting the resort’s buildings.
“Our snowmaking crew is top-notch, probably one of the best in the world,” Nadalin said. “They have been making snow up here since the sixties.”
Videos posted on X on Tuesday night showed flames billowing near the ski area’s chairlifts and structures.
This is some of the most intense fire video I’ve ever seen. A California ski resort burned to the ground on a livestream. resort in Wrightwood, CA has been consumed by the .
— Gage Goulding – KPRC 2 (@GageGoulding)
Approximately out of the Wrightwood area on Tuesday after the fire destroyed 40 homes, according to ABC. Nadalin said he had to relocate several times due to approaching flames. He was evacuated from his home in Highland after a different fire, called the Line Fire, ignited. He relocated to Wrightwood, but then he had to move back to Highland due to encroaching flames from the Bridge Fire.
The entire city of Wrightwood, California, is under an evacuation order as webcam footage from Mountain High Ski Resort shows the burning through the resort.
Multiple fast-moving wildfires are beginning to impact communities across Southern California.
— Colin McCarthy (@US_Stormwatch)
Nadalin told me he was relieved to learn that Mountain High’s structures were saved—it’s a place he’s skied since the early seventies. “The fact that the ski area exists in a place where you could actually see Los Angeles, Catalina Island, and the High Sierra all at once is really pretty incredible,” Nadalin told me.
Located two hours north of Los Angeles, the resort is something of a melting pot. Its night skiing draws a commuter crowd that can ski and ride after work. Its mix of gentle terrain and steep slopes draws skiers and snowboarders of diverse abilities. And it’s a great place to learn. When I lived in Oceanside, California, I would ski at Mountain High after work, and I loved to see the mountain’s diverse clientele: beginners getting on snow for the first time, semi-professional park riders hitting rails and jumps, and seemingly everyone in-between. I even wrote a feature on the Southern California ski scene for .
Nadalin credits the mountain’s quick response to firefighting to its innovative infrastructure. “Mountain High has always been an early adopter kind of place,” he said. “Growing up in Wrightwood and having a season pass since the early seventies, I’ve seen a lot of changes, a lot of improvements. Over the years, the snowmaking system has evolved into these big pipes and these big fan guns that are permanently mounted on the hill, where all they have to do is just turn a switch to get them going. That’s one of the reasons that the resort got saved—the snowmaking system is so good and so thorough.”
The mountain operations employees will soon begin running safety checks to assess any damage to individual lifts, but it seems that a majority of its infrastructure was left unharmed. The Bridge Fire is currently zero percent contained.
These conflagrations sparked after an immense heat wave brought record-breaking 110-degree temperatures to the Los Angeles Basin. High winds and dry vegetation sat waiting for a spark. In the case of the 35,000-acre Line Fire, outside of Big Bear, California, an arsonist provided the ignition source. San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department arrested 34-year-old Norco man Justin Wayne Halstenberg on Tuesday on suspicion of arson.