My ski experience last Saturday was quite different from Marc's. The Sierra had some unsettled weather Thursday/Friday with high winds, low temps and even a few snow flurries at high elevation. So Mammoth was frozen solid when Andrew and I arrived at the Main Lodge at 8:15AM. Though no lifts were closed it was still breezy, and I wore my ski hat until 11AM. Those who have observed my metabolism in person will understand this was not normal June weather.
Fortunately Mammoth is still doing lots of grooming on the weekends and also running chair 2, which faces the morning spring sun. The chair 2 runs softened to corn about 9AM, and Broadway to the Main Lodge about 10AM. Anything off-trail was a coral reef until a fairly swift warm-up from 10:30 to 11AM.
Up top snow deterioration made access to outlying runs like Dave's and Paranoid not worth the effort, so nearly all skiing from the gondola was on Climax, Hangman's and Cornice, particularly with chair 23 not running. Climax was the best snow, with its skier's right smooth cruisable corn from 10:30-12:30, probably like Marc's High Baldy runs though only half the vertical. Hangman's was a bit firmer and bumpy with its constrained line, but still enjoyable.
Some runs were roped off for U.S. Development Team training, but they were done by 11AM, and on a couple runs from the top I made my way into the nearly untouched groomed corn of lower St. Anton. I also hit Gravy Chute under chair 1 around noon. On my last run I bypassed Cornice and hiked up to ski Drop Out, which had pasty new snow filling in the gaps between the now softened bumps, an interesting but tricky combination.
The weather confined me to the groomers for the first 2 1/2 hours, and even at the bottom the snow didn't get sticky until after 1PM. Thus I ended up skiing a rather unusual for June 30,800 vertical by the time I quit at 1:30. A day of quantity vs. the quality Marc had at Alta/Snowbird.
Fortunately Mammoth is still doing lots of grooming on the weekends and also running chair 2, which faces the morning spring sun. The chair 2 runs softened to corn about 9AM, and Broadway to the Main Lodge about 10AM. Anything off-trail was a coral reef until a fairly swift warm-up from 10:30 to 11AM.
Up top snow deterioration made access to outlying runs like Dave's and Paranoid not worth the effort, so nearly all skiing from the gondola was on Climax, Hangman's and Cornice, particularly with chair 23 not running. Climax was the best snow, with its skier's right smooth cruisable corn from 10:30-12:30, probably like Marc's High Baldy runs though only half the vertical. Hangman's was a bit firmer and bumpy with its constrained line, but still enjoyable.
Some runs were roped off for U.S. Development Team training, but they were done by 11AM, and on a couple runs from the top I made my way into the nearly untouched groomed corn of lower St. Anton. I also hit Gravy Chute under chair 1 around noon. On my last run I bypassed Cornice and hiked up to ski Drop Out, which had pasty new snow filling in the gaps between the now softened bumps, an interesting but tricky combination.
The weather confined me to the groomers for the first 2 1/2 hours, and even at the bottom the snow didn't get sticky until after 1PM. Thus I ended up skiing a rather unusual for June 30,800 vertical by the time I quit at 1:30. A day of quantity vs. the quality Marc had at Alta/Snowbird.
