I went up to Mammoth for what I expected to be manmade snow, and although that was generally the case, conditions were actually quite good. After getting no sleep at all Friday and driving up at 2:45am on Saturday morning, I picked up my pass and got first chair! Unfortunately, on my first turn, the toepiece on my right binding fell off, so I had to head over to McCoy lodge to get a screw driver to fix it.
Here's the video of the incident:
[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/16805751[/vimeo] EDIT: Why doesn't this work?
Nevertheless, I still had a good, albeit exhausted, day and the manmade snow on Broadway and Saddle Bowl was quite soft. I tried skiing the Face of 3 and although the snow wasn't bad, I hit a ton of rocks. I tried Cornice next, which was very firm at the top. I decided to traverse out into the Drop Out Chutes, where I found great chalky snow and no rocks.
On Sunday, things were a bit firmer, but Broadway and Saddle Bowl were still nice. Cornice hadn't been groomed and the top was actually pure ice--you could see it glistening from McCoy. It was basically ice/scraped troughs and ugly, solid moguls. Combine that with weekend crowds and a bunch of beginners and it looked like a warzone. I saw 5 people slide top to bottom in about 2 minutes. Therefore, I got off Cornice as soon as possible and headed over to Drop Out, where the snow was still nice and chalky. On my final run of the day, I took Stump Alley down to my car. Stump hadn't opened yet, so the snow was quite bad. I went over to the side to get a bit of left over powder, but I ended up hitting too many rocks.
All in all, a fun opening weekend with better than expected conditions. Mammoth really did a good job with snowmaking.
Here's the video of the incident:
[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/16805751[/vimeo] EDIT: Why doesn't this work?
Nevertheless, I still had a good, albeit exhausted, day and the manmade snow on Broadway and Saddle Bowl was quite soft. I tried skiing the Face of 3 and although the snow wasn't bad, I hit a ton of rocks. I tried Cornice next, which was very firm at the top. I decided to traverse out into the Drop Out Chutes, where I found great chalky snow and no rocks.
On Sunday, things were a bit firmer, but Broadway and Saddle Bowl were still nice. Cornice hadn't been groomed and the top was actually pure ice--you could see it glistening from McCoy. It was basically ice/scraped troughs and ugly, solid moguls. Combine that with weekend crowds and a bunch of beginners and it looked like a warzone. I saw 5 people slide top to bottom in about 2 minutes. Therefore, I got off Cornice as soon as possible and headed over to Drop Out, where the snow was still nice and chalky. On my final run of the day, I took Stump Alley down to my car. Stump hadn't opened yet, so the snow was quite bad. I went over to the side to get a bit of left over powder, but I ended up hitting too many rocks.
All in all, a fun opening weekend with better than expected conditions. Mammoth really did a good job with snowmaking.
