I have not been to Mountain High since 2011. In the extreme volatility of SoCal ski weather Mountain High occupies an awkward middle ground. When there is abundant natural snow for off-piste skiing Mt. Baldy stands head and shoulders above the rest of SoCal. During the bad years (well over half of them since I retired) Big Bear is the only viable choice due to its robust water supply and snowmaking expertise.
We may be in that middle ground now. The prior day at Baldy was OK but it was mostly groomers and the ungroomed snow conditions were often difficult.
My criterion for considering Mountain High is that the East side is open as well as West. East never opened during 3 of my retirement seasons and was open for less than one month during most of the others. With Mountain High's limited water supply West has snowmaking priority.
We arrived at East just after 9AM and were greeted by a sign announcing $20 paid parking. I asked how far away we needed to park for free, and they said since we were skiers we could park anywhere, which meant very close on this quiet day. The pay parking is there to cut down on the weekend snowplayers using that lot.
The high speed lift at East is 1,600 vertical and serves SoCal's best groomer terrain, especially midweek. The top third of that is just one run shown here.
Below this point it branches to 3 distinct groomed runs with a couple of variations. The best maintained is Goldrush at far skier's left.
Midsection under the lift:
Far skier's right are Sundance and Wildcard which have nice continuous fall lines.
However there were occasional thin spots, not marked by warning poles or signs. These runs were empty so you could turn on the speed. I recall thinking that if you didn't see one due to high speed or flat light you might take a nasty fall.
Here's the high desert view.
That lake in the distance is not on any map, so must be temporary from the rain/snow over the past month.
We skied 6 runs then took a short lunch break at noon. After lunch we tested this short ungroomed section.
It was not the greatest, snow still fairly firm.
Thus we did not ski East's steepest run Olympic Bowl lower down.
Temperatures were down from Tuesday (35F when parking vs. 44F). It was probably quite windy at Baldy (which is why we skied it first) but just a light breeze at the top of East. However the past weekend was in the 50's during the day, accounting for more hardpack snow today. I would say particularly at East most of the snow was natural. Groomed snow was a partially melt/frozen hardpack that loosened up as it got warmer, fairly similar to Robin's and Skyline at Baldy. There was very little frozen granular/boilerplate so it was not difficult to hold an edge.
At 1PM we moved from East (skied 14,500 there) to West, which I like to do by skating the fire road from the bottom of the Discovery beginner chair.
We walked a short section, but it's still quicker and more convenient than taking the shuttle bus.
With current conditions I needed to take the bus from West back to East but when off-piste is good you can ski in Sawmill Canyon from the top of West to East's parking lot.
For a soon-to-be-obvious reason I only "survey skied" West for 5,700 vertical. East is noted for its long runs. West has some short but moderately steep shots and I think some of them have been widened and groomed more since I was last there, specifically Headwall, Vertigo and Gunslinger. The natural snow only runs off Inferno Ridge at the western boundary were roped off but I could see from the Conquest lift that some had been groomed when the snow was deeper. So I checked out Wild Fire here:
Wild Fire and west facing Vertigo had some quite hard snow. Headwall and Gunslinger are north facing and shaded and skied similar to the steeper pitches at East. The problem with Headwall, our first run at West about 1:35PM, is that after skiing the mellow Borderline in the sun, the slope drops abruptly into the shade creating some flat light, especially for Liz wearing dark sunglasses. When I reached the bottom of that pitch I saw she had lost a ski far up the hill and was sliding down the hill screaming. She was still somewhat above me when she came to rest and while she couldn't get up I didn't know more than that so decided to go back up the lift and retrieve her ski. No one had come by when I passed overhead on the lift but when I got back there Liz was attended by two ski patrollers, who took her to the patrol shack in a sled.
None of the patrollers had any medical certification so paramedics came from Wrightwood. The paramedics would not give Liz meds for her intense shoulder pain unless they were sending her to a hospital in an ambulance. Given the intense pain off she went to the nearest hospital ~35 minutes away in Hesperia. When I got to the hospital about 4:15 Liz was checked in and had been given an X-ray. We soon learned that the shoulder was dislocated and broken, but Liz was not seen by the emergency room doctor until 5:30. With IV sedation but not general anesthesia the ER attempted multiple times over half an hour to relocate the shoulder without success, naturally with Liz experiencing off the charts pain the whole time.
Finally an orthopedist was called in. He sat Liz up, tried a different move that improved alignment and toned down the pain some. But when they X-rayed again, the orthopedist could tell the shoulder was not right yet, likely blocked by the biceps tendon that had moved into the vacated place in her socket. This was confirmed by a CT scan so Liz required surgery, which took place at 11PM.
I assumed "broken shoulder" meant the the outer scapula, but the break was in fact the greater tuberosity with 3 rotator cuff muscles attached, shearing off from the top of the humerus inside her shoulder socket, as shown in this diagram.
The bicep tendon was severely irritated but not torn. Dislocations can also affect nerves running to the hand, but Liz has full movement of her hand though of course the rest of her arm is immobilized in a sling. The broken tuberosity is reattached to the top of the humerus and held by a screw as shown in this "after" X-ray.
The surgeon came out about 12:45AM to show and tell me the results. I drove halfway home to Garry's and slept there from 1:30 to 7AM. I was back at the hospital around 9:30 but Liz didn't check out until 2:15 with another hour wait after that to get her pain med prescription filled.
Having been there with the broken ribs in 2008, I know that broken bones are a 6-8 week recovery. Full recovery of the torn rotator cuff takes about a year. The ortho said Liz' ski season is over but perhaps he's thinking winter and doesn't know Mammoth may run much later.
Neither of us are going too far for the next few weeks and obviously Liz cannot go with me to Canada 5 weeks from now. We're looking for someone to take her cat skiing slot at Island Lake Lodge Feb. 24-26.
We may be in that middle ground now. The prior day at Baldy was OK but it was mostly groomers and the ungroomed snow conditions were often difficult.
My criterion for considering Mountain High is that the East side is open as well as West. East never opened during 3 of my retirement seasons and was open for less than one month during most of the others. With Mountain High's limited water supply West has snowmaking priority.
We arrived at East just after 9AM and were greeted by a sign announcing $20 paid parking. I asked how far away we needed to park for free, and they said since we were skiers we could park anywhere, which meant very close on this quiet day. The pay parking is there to cut down on the weekend snowplayers using that lot.
The high speed lift at East is 1,600 vertical and serves SoCal's best groomer terrain, especially midweek. The top third of that is just one run shown here.
Below this point it branches to 3 distinct groomed runs with a couple of variations. The best maintained is Goldrush at far skier's left.
Midsection under the lift:
Far skier's right are Sundance and Wildcard which have nice continuous fall lines.
However there were occasional thin spots, not marked by warning poles or signs. These runs were empty so you could turn on the speed. I recall thinking that if you didn't see one due to high speed or flat light you might take a nasty fall.
Here's the high desert view.
That lake in the distance is not on any map, so must be temporary from the rain/snow over the past month.
We skied 6 runs then took a short lunch break at noon. After lunch we tested this short ungroomed section.
It was not the greatest, snow still fairly firm.
Thus we did not ski East's steepest run Olympic Bowl lower down.
Temperatures were down from Tuesday (35F when parking vs. 44F). It was probably quite windy at Baldy (which is why we skied it first) but just a light breeze at the top of East. However the past weekend was in the 50's during the day, accounting for more hardpack snow today. I would say particularly at East most of the snow was natural. Groomed snow was a partially melt/frozen hardpack that loosened up as it got warmer, fairly similar to Robin's and Skyline at Baldy. There was very little frozen granular/boilerplate so it was not difficult to hold an edge.
At 1PM we moved from East (skied 14,500 there) to West, which I like to do by skating the fire road from the bottom of the Discovery beginner chair.
We walked a short section, but it's still quicker and more convenient than taking the shuttle bus.
With current conditions I needed to take the bus from West back to East but when off-piste is good you can ski in Sawmill Canyon from the top of West to East's parking lot.
For a soon-to-be-obvious reason I only "survey skied" West for 5,700 vertical. East is noted for its long runs. West has some short but moderately steep shots and I think some of them have been widened and groomed more since I was last there, specifically Headwall, Vertigo and Gunslinger. The natural snow only runs off Inferno Ridge at the western boundary were roped off but I could see from the Conquest lift that some had been groomed when the snow was deeper. So I checked out Wild Fire here:
Wild Fire and west facing Vertigo had some quite hard snow. Headwall and Gunslinger are north facing and shaded and skied similar to the steeper pitches at East. The problem with Headwall, our first run at West about 1:35PM, is that after skiing the mellow Borderline in the sun, the slope drops abruptly into the shade creating some flat light, especially for Liz wearing dark sunglasses. When I reached the bottom of that pitch I saw she had lost a ski far up the hill and was sliding down the hill screaming. She was still somewhat above me when she came to rest and while she couldn't get up I didn't know more than that so decided to go back up the lift and retrieve her ski. No one had come by when I passed overhead on the lift but when I got back there Liz was attended by two ski patrollers, who took her to the patrol shack in a sled.
None of the patrollers had any medical certification so paramedics came from Wrightwood. The paramedics would not give Liz meds for her intense shoulder pain unless they were sending her to a hospital in an ambulance. Given the intense pain off she went to the nearest hospital ~35 minutes away in Hesperia. When I got to the hospital about 4:15 Liz was checked in and had been given an X-ray. We soon learned that the shoulder was dislocated and broken, but Liz was not seen by the emergency room doctor until 5:30. With IV sedation but not general anesthesia the ER attempted multiple times over half an hour to relocate the shoulder without success, naturally with Liz experiencing off the charts pain the whole time.
Finally an orthopedist was called in. He sat Liz up, tried a different move that improved alignment and toned down the pain some. But when they X-rayed again, the orthopedist could tell the shoulder was not right yet, likely blocked by the biceps tendon that had moved into the vacated place in her socket. This was confirmed by a CT scan so Liz required surgery, which took place at 11PM.
I assumed "broken shoulder" meant the the outer scapula, but the break was in fact the greater tuberosity with 3 rotator cuff muscles attached, shearing off from the top of the humerus inside her shoulder socket, as shown in this diagram.
The bicep tendon was severely irritated but not torn. Dislocations can also affect nerves running to the hand, but Liz has full movement of her hand though of course the rest of her arm is immobilized in a sling. The broken tuberosity is reattached to the top of the humerus and held by a screw as shown in this "after" X-ray.
The surgeon came out about 12:45AM to show and tell me the results. I drove halfway home to Garry's and slept there from 1:30 to 7AM. I was back at the hospital around 9:30 but Liz didn't check out until 2:15 with another hour wait after that to get her pain med prescription filled.
Having been there with the broken ribs in 2008, I know that broken bones are a 6-8 week recovery. Full recovery of the torn rotator cuff takes about a year. The ortho said Liz' ski season is over but perhaps he's thinking winter and doesn't know Mammoth may run much later.
Neither of us are going too far for the next few weeks and obviously Liz cannot go with me to Canada 5 weeks from now. We're looking for someone to take her cat skiing slot at Island Lake Lodge Feb. 24-26.
. I noted to the fine gentleman that I had been skiing here for 35+ years and I wasn't about to fork up $10 to park. We had a lengthy discussion at which time we came to the conclusion that I'd discuss this matter w/ the GM. 
