I got in another day, this time with Garry, before picking up Liz at Orange County airport (cheapest short notice flight from NYC) Wednesday evening. There were many reminders of the unique nature of skiing between Christmas and New Year's.
Since I found out Dec. 24 that the lifts don't start spinning until 9AM, I was less in a hurry and that's exactly when we arrived. Mammoth has added insult to the injury of delaying lift opening by charging $20 for parking in the main lot at Snow Summit for 6 of the 7 rows of the lot. On a holiday like this you might have to get there at 7:30 for the one row of free parking, then cool your heels for over an hour before you start skiing. The alternative is the Brownie parking lot at the bottom of the hill with a cattle car shuttle to and from your car. I paid the $20 to avoid that aggravation, and of course in Garry's and my cases you can't say it's an expensive day because we're skiing there on our Mammoth season passes. However, for the typical younger, price sensitive daytrippers I believe the new pay parking policy is a colossal marketing blunder that will alienate a lot of people. Big Bear is not Vail, so it makes no sense IMHO to assume you have that clientele. The employees were all very apologetic, and actually encouraging people to complain to Mammoth.
The good news is that the world class snowmaking ~8-10 hours a day is continuing to improve surfaces and open more terrain despite the Christmas crush. Snow Summit is now 90+% open, including some runs Side Chute, East Why and Off Chute that I have not skied in several years as they are rarely open this early. We usually start with top to bottom cruisers before they get busy, but while we were skiing Miracle Mile the chair 2 high speed quad broke down, resulting in this line at chair 1.
I timed that line at 13 minutes. An hour later it was 8 minutes and shortly after that Chair 2 was up and running.
In the meantime we skied chairs 6 and 10 (which terrain we prefer anyway) to get away from the crowds. Here's a skier carving the early morning manmade snow on the Wall.
Enough snow had been made plus the intense grooming that I would call it ~70% packed powder in the early morning. Later pictures will show that some of it didn't stay that way all day due to traffic.
Some of the chair 10 runs were used for local race training in the morning.
We used that 8 minute line to get up to View Haus for lunch by 11:45. It took me 10 minutes to get lunch, but by the time we left at 12:30 the lunch line was 3x as long. We took advantage of lunch hour to ski the Westridge park and 3 runs on the sometimes popular chair 3. Under the lift was an interesting ice formation, perhaps from a snow gun that had been left on too long.
After 2PM we again moved over to chair 6, 7 and 10 for lower skier density than busy places like Summit Run.
Needless to say we didn't go near this on Dec. 30.
In the afternoon the Wall had much evidence of Christmas Week amateur hour. If you wonder why snow gets a little firmer in the afternoons, here's the Southern California Heelslide® in action.
But here's the Warren Miller Award winner of the day.
This boarder was overmatched by the Wall and so took his board off and slid down the hill face first, using it like a boogie board.
But overall chair 6 had good skiing with low density.
Off Chute, Olympic and Wall, left to right.
We took two more runs on Chair 10 before it closed at 3PM. Garry was recovering from an illness and called it a day while I took two more top to bottom runs on Westridge and Log Chute/Side Chute.
I finished at 3:30 with 19,100 vertical. We drove down the Hwy 38 Redlands route and got to Garry's in Rancho Cucamonga in a bit over 2 hours. We heard that on Sunday it took 4 hours to get down the front road Hwy 330.
Since I found out Dec. 24 that the lifts don't start spinning until 9AM, I was less in a hurry and that's exactly when we arrived. Mammoth has added insult to the injury of delaying lift opening by charging $20 for parking in the main lot at Snow Summit for 6 of the 7 rows of the lot. On a holiday like this you might have to get there at 7:30 for the one row of free parking, then cool your heels for over an hour before you start skiing. The alternative is the Brownie parking lot at the bottom of the hill with a cattle car shuttle to and from your car. I paid the $20 to avoid that aggravation, and of course in Garry's and my cases you can't say it's an expensive day because we're skiing there on our Mammoth season passes. However, for the typical younger, price sensitive daytrippers I believe the new pay parking policy is a colossal marketing blunder that will alienate a lot of people. Big Bear is not Vail, so it makes no sense IMHO to assume you have that clientele. The employees were all very apologetic, and actually encouraging people to complain to Mammoth.
The good news is that the world class snowmaking ~8-10 hours a day is continuing to improve surfaces and open more terrain despite the Christmas crush. Snow Summit is now 90+% open, including some runs Side Chute, East Why and Off Chute that I have not skied in several years as they are rarely open this early. We usually start with top to bottom cruisers before they get busy, but while we were skiing Miracle Mile the chair 2 high speed quad broke down, resulting in this line at chair 1.
I timed that line at 13 minutes. An hour later it was 8 minutes and shortly after that Chair 2 was up and running.
In the meantime we skied chairs 6 and 10 (which terrain we prefer anyway) to get away from the crowds. Here's a skier carving the early morning manmade snow on the Wall.
Enough snow had been made plus the intense grooming that I would call it ~70% packed powder in the early morning. Later pictures will show that some of it didn't stay that way all day due to traffic.
Some of the chair 10 runs were used for local race training in the morning.
We used that 8 minute line to get up to View Haus for lunch by 11:45. It took me 10 minutes to get lunch, but by the time we left at 12:30 the lunch line was 3x as long. We took advantage of lunch hour to ski the Westridge park and 3 runs on the sometimes popular chair 3. Under the lift was an interesting ice formation, perhaps from a snow gun that had been left on too long.
After 2PM we again moved over to chair 6, 7 and 10 for lower skier density than busy places like Summit Run.
Needless to say we didn't go near this on Dec. 30.
In the afternoon the Wall had much evidence of Christmas Week amateur hour. If you wonder why snow gets a little firmer in the afternoons, here's the Southern California Heelslide® in action.
But here's the Warren Miller Award winner of the day.
This boarder was overmatched by the Wall and so took his board off and slid down the hill face first, using it like a boogie board.
But overall chair 6 had good skiing with low density.
Off Chute, Olympic and Wall, left to right.
We took two more runs on Chair 10 before it closed at 3PM. Garry was recovering from an illness and called it a day while I took two more top to bottom runs on Westridge and Log Chute/Side Chute.
I finished at 3:30 with 19,100 vertical. We drove down the Hwy 38 Redlands route and got to Garry's in Rancho Cucamonga in a bit over 2 hours. We heard that on Sunday it took 4 hours to get down the front road Hwy 330.
