Historic Los Angeles Ski Area Mt. Waterman Is Back on the Market for $3.2 Million

A small, historic ski area just outside downtown Los Angeles is back on the market after plans that, in part, included the creation of a private membership club didn’t materialize. 

The saga began in 2024, when Angeles Mountain Partners (AMP) announced in a release that it had acquired the ski area and would add an “extremely limited” program called the Waterman100, with private powder days and helipad access. 

While Joshua Shelton, the co-founder of AMP, confirmed to POWDER at the time that public access wasn’t going away, it would have been limited during some powder days under the plan. The membership program’s website remains live.

But, as first reported by SFGate last week, the proposed transformation of Mt. Waterman—a longtime Los Angeles fixture that’s been around for nearly nine decades—wasn’t the entire story, according to the listing agent who represents the sellers, Marc Ramirez. The sale was never finalized and he told the news outlet that AMP “were a little gung-ho and did a marketing plan before it closed escrow.”

(Within around a month of the 2024 release, Shelton had told the LA Times that AMP had entered a purchase agreement but that the sale hadn’t closed.)

Now, at a price of $3,275,000, Mt. Waterman is for sale again.

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Several reasons led to the original purchase falling through, from a Pineapple Express that hit Mt. Waterman to the death of one of the sellers, Ramirez told POWDER. He also pointed to the length of the Forest Service approval process.

Mt. Waterman is located in the Angeles National Forest and operates under a Special Use Permit (SUP), a common arrangement for Western ski areas. The Forest Service must approve buyers by reviewing a prospective ski area operator’s finances and ability before they can take over.

In a statement shared with SFGate, Justin Seastrand, natural resource specialist for Angeles National Forest, said his agency is committed to the ski area. 

“We are always standing by more than willing to work with potential buyers as well as current owners to efficiently process a sale and meet our requirements for a new permit,” he said.

Seastrand said the Forest Service never issued a permit to AMP “because they were never able to close the sale and therefore were unable to present us with legal documents to verify their ownership.”

Explaining in an email why AMP opted out, Shelton also noted the seller’s death and the Pineapple Express.

Ramirez said the storm and a landslide damaged the ski area’s access road, parking lot, and Chair 1. Images Shelton shared showed the lift’s lower terminal surrounded by boulders, with an errant tree trunk beneath the bullwheel.

The storm was “the last dagger in this particular transaction,” said Ramirez.

Shelton said that in addition to the storm damage, there were issues with “outdated diesel power systems” at Mt. Waterman that didn’t “meet current-day certification and environmental standards.” According to him, the ski area’s “maintenance work and records” also did not meet AMP’s standards. 

“We really wanted to move forward and were willing to accept a certain amount of risk,” Shelton wrote. “But too many things were not as represented and we were unable to come to terms with the sellers on a sell price that reflected the true condition of the assets.”

Ultimately, after the storm, Ramirez said, “[AMP] came and asked the sellers for a major haircut that they weren’t willing to do.”

It marks the closure of a chapter for Mt. Waterman, surrounded by chatter about private access.

The release and website AMP shared in 2024 highlighted the Waterman100, which included exclusive access to dedicated parts of the mountain on “Powder Days”—bluebird post-storm days.

A business plan for the program, which wasn’t finalized and had previously been shared with the LA Times, set the entry cost at $100,000, with the price increasing as more people joined. One advertised draw of signing up was heli-access, with plans to fly members in when heavy snowfall clogged roads.

Shelton was quoted in the 2024 release, saying: “We can’t control the weather, but we can manage how many people gain access to the absolute best conditions our resort will have to offer, and that’s an honor we reserve for the Waterman100.”

The concept raised questions with the Forest Service.

“I’m pretty confident we would not allow … any kind of exclusive use,” said Seastrand in 2024, per the LA Times.

During our recent exchange, though, Shelton took issue with the idea that AMP was trying to turn Mt. Waterman into a private club. It was “unfounded” and “has never been said anywhere, not once ever,” he wrote. 

“Our goal was to take it from the private club that it is now and develop the hill into an all-season mountain resort that included a powder club,” Shelton continued, apparently nodding to Mt. Waterman’s sporadic history with public access. 

According to Mt. Waterman’s website (which was created by the current owners and sellers), the ski area dates back to 1939. The same family owned it until the 1990s. 

In 2001, Mt. Waterman closed for several years before an ownership group assembled by Rick Metcalf, who died last year, bought it. The ski area reopened in February 2008. Since then, Mt. Waterman has opened to the public but on an irregular basis, “which a lot of people were frustrated with,” noted Ramirez. 

“It was just kind of a fly-by-night thing,” he said.

Shelton said that the Waterman100 was “one of the many ways we hoped to bring the public back to the mountain in a meaningful way.” In 2024, AMP said club funds could bankroll improvements to Mt. Waterman. The Waterman100 website proposed a new lift, a mountain coaster, cabins, and more.

Pending the ongoing sale, another buyer could now bring their vision to Mt. Waterman. 

Chair 1 remains inoperable, according to Ramirez. Still, he said the sellers are willing to provide a concession for a new buyer and hinted that talks are already underway with interested parties.

“The million-dollar question is: do we fix a 1970 chair, or do we go ahead and, you know, scrap it and put in a brand new state-of-the-art chair?” Ramirez said. “That will be seen.”

One potential upgrade for Mt. Waterman that would make it more viable is snowmaking, which the ski area doesn’t currently have. A new owner could install snow guns with Forest Service approval.

“Somebody who is going to buy it and run it as a lucrative business—that’s definitely a key component,” Ramirez said.

As for the road, he speculated it’s six months away from opening, but said the timeline is unclear and public access remains barred. 

Ramirez aims to find someone who can operate Mt. Waterman year-round, leaning into off-season activities like mountain biking and weddings while still preserving what the humble collection of lifts was all about in the first place: skiing. 

He also has a personal connection to the ski area. He said he was Mt. Waterman’s first snowboard instructor in the 1990s and still works for the ski area in various capacities. His focus is now the real estate end.

“If we can find the right group to come along, that will, you know, open it to the public, is my whole goal,” he said.

The 2026/27 print issue of POWDER Magazine is here. Click here to have a copy shipped to your front door. Copies can also be found on newsstands at major retailers like Barnes & Noble, Target, Walmart, and more.

Related: The Story Behind POWDER Magazine’s 2026/27 Cover