Sugar Bowl: Walt Disney's Mountain and California's First Chairlift
Near Tahoe City, California
High on Donner Summit, at the pass the Donner Party failed to cross and the transcontinental railroad had to tunnel through, a small ski area opened in December nineteen thirty-nine that quietly changed the course of California skiing.
Sugar Bowl was the vision of Hannes Schroll, an Austrian ski champion who had come to the United States and was running the Yosemite Ski School at Badger Pass. Schroll stood on the snowy ridgeline above Donner Summit and saw what he had left behind in the Alps, vertical drop, reliable snow, accessible terrain. He wanted to build a European-style mountain resort.
To raise money, he approached investors, including one with exceptional name recognition: Walt Disney. The two men had met when Disney vacationed at Badger Pass. When Schroll came to him a second time seeking capital, Disney wrote a check for two thousand five hundred dollars and became one of the resort's founding stockholders. In honor of the contribution, Schroll renamed one of the summit peaks. It has been called Mount Disney ever since.
When Sugar Bowl opened, it introduced California's first chairlift, a technology still new in American skiing. The combination of the chairlift, the reliable Sierra snowpack, and the accessible location just off the main highway over the pass made Sugar Bowl a destination almost immediately. It helped establish Donner Summit and Lake Tahoe as the West Coast's serious ski country.
The resort has operated continuously for more than eighty years. The original lodge, reached for many years by a gondola from the highway because no road led to the base, is still in use. Mount Disney still overlooks the runs. And somewhere in the lift infrastructure and the culture of California skiing, the imprint of an Austrian champion and a cartoon studio executive can still be felt.
