Ten questions about hiring an agent for a mountain home, and what a good one can prove.

Snow is the reason a lot of people come up here, and it is also the thing that decides whether you can get to your front door.

Crestline doesn’t try to impress you. It doesn’t have a private lake or a ski resort or a village boardwalk. What it has is something considerably harder to manufacture: the feeling that you’ve arrived somewhere real. At 4,600 feet, just far enough above the San Bernardino Valley to leave the noise behind, Crestline is the mountain community that locals have always known about and kept mostly to themselves.

Settled in the 1860s as Strawberry Flats, Twin Peaks puts the whole mountain minutes from your driveway, with a century-old inn still serving dinner and homes that fly under the radar.

One mile from the lake, a working village with real shops, real neighbors, and homes that don't carry the waterfront price tag. Blue Jay is where the mountain actually lives.

Greg Anderson of Mountain Cribs, real estate agent for the San Bernardino mountain communities, answers the Lake Arrowhead questions that decide a purchase or a sale: lake rights, the ALA, Arrowhead Woods, fire insurance, and year-round living on the mountain.

East of Lake Arrowhead where the road becomes a trailhead, Cedar Glen offers the best forest access on the mountain, a six-generation village core, and the most interesting lot market up here.

Home to America's first franchised amusement park and the most dramatic rim views in Southern California, Skyforest is the quiet little town with the famous neighbor.

Where Highway 18 meets real mountain living. Running Springs sits at the crossroads of Big Bear and Arrowhead — and the savvy buyers are paying attention.

A five-acre lake, cabins on 1924-sized lots, and a music camp that's filled the pines with summer concerts since 1942. Arrowbear is the mountain's most affordable front door. Intro: "Every mountain community has a claim to fame. Arrowbear Lake's is the only one you can hear.

Above 7,000 feet and four miles off the highway, Green Valley Lake is the smallest, highest, quietest community on the mountain, with nine acres of trout water and snow that stays.

Two seasons, one spectacular address. From ski runs to summer lake days, Big Bear delivers a mountain lifestyle with real estate to match.