1928: The Yosemite Ski School comes first
The story doesn't begin with the resort. It begins with a ski school. In 1928 — seven years before Badger Pass opened as an actual resort — the National Park Service had already established a ski school in Yosemite Valley, teaching the new European-imported alpine ski technique to a small population of California winter visitors. Skiing was still a niche curiosity in the American West; the Yosemite school helped change that.
1935: Badger Pass opens
On December 21, 1935, Badger Pass opened to the public as California's first developed ski area. The original tow was an "Up-Ski" — a sled-style conveyance that pulled skiers uphill on a wooden cradle, designed by Yosemite National Park concessionaire Donald Tresidder. The terrain was the same gentle bowl-shaped slope it remains today, chosen for being approachable rather than challenging.
The opening predated developed skiing at Mt. Hood (Timberline opened 1937), Sun Valley (also 1936), and most of the now-major Western resorts. Badger Pass was the original.
1948: The Olympic bid
In 1948 the U.S. Olympic Committee considered Badger Pass for hosting the alpine skiing events of the 1956 Winter Olympics, with the bid eventually going to Squaw Valley (now Palisades Tahoe) for the 1960 Games. The Badger Pass bid was a serious effort — it speaks to how central the resort was to American alpine skiing in that era.
The Curry Co. era and the long quiet decades
For most of the 20th century, Badger Pass operated as a small family-oriented resort under the Yosemite Park & Curry Co. concession. It never grew the way Tahoe-area resorts did — no high-speed lifts, no expansive base village, no snowmaking infrastructure. It remained, deliberately, the modestly-scaled mountain that families introduced their children to skiing on.
This is one of the under-told stories of California skiing: while the industry chased big-mountain destination skiing, Badger Pass quietly kept doing what it had always done. Wide, gentle terrain. Affordable lift tickets. The same ski school structure that had been refined since 1928.
2016: The name controversy
When the Yosemite concession contract changed hands in 2016 — from longtime concessionaire DNC Parks & Resorts (a Delaware North subsidiary) to Aramark's Yosemite Hospitality — Delaware North claimed trademark rights to several Yosemite-related names, including "Badger Pass." The National Park Service and Aramark, to avoid years of litigation, temporarily renamed the resort "Yosemite Ski & Snowboard Area."
The name change was deeply unpopular with the resort's longtime visitors. Generations of California families had introduced their children to skiing here. "Badger Pass" wasn't a brand — it was a place name, soaked into the family memories of thousands of visitors. The rebrand felt corporate in a way that the resort itself had never been.
2019: Badger Pass restored
In July 2019, following the resolution of the Delaware North trademark litigation, the name "Badger Pass Ski Area" was formally restored. The signage went back up. The original name came home.
The droughts: 2020-21 and 2024-25
Badger Pass operates entirely on natural snow — there's no snowmaking infrastructure. In years when the Sierra winter doesn't deliver enough snowpack, the resort simply doesn't open. This happened in 2020-21 (COVID combined with low snow) and again in 2024-25, when an unusually dry winter forced cancellation of the entire season.
It's a vulnerability that's part of the resort's character. Badger Pass isn't a manufactured product — it's a real winter recreation site that depends on real winter. Most years it gets what it needs. Some years it doesn't.
What's stayed the same
For all the changes — corporate concessionaires, name disputes, droughts, the slow modernization of lifts and rental gear — the essential character of Badger Pass has barely shifted in 90 years. It's still a small, family-scale resort. Still no surge pricing. Still teaching beginners on the same gentle terrain. Still surrounded by Yosemite National Park, with the same astonishing views of the Sierra that drew the first skiers here in the 1930s.
That's the longest-running story at Badger Pass: that it's still, recognizably, the place it always was.