I was at Mammoth Thursday to Monday. The mountain looked pretty ugly on Thursday, but I actually found good, soft chopped up powder on Climax.
Friday was a considerably better day with about a foot falling during the day. Certain areas (Face of 3) stayed thin for most of the day, but I found untracked lines with 2 feet of light powder all afternoon by traversing from Chairs 3 and 10. These were short shots, but there was absolutely no one on the mountain, so I got plenty of quality vertical in. Friday was unfortunately really hard on my skis, as many nasty sharks lay waiting below the light snow. Most of the open steep pitches were still full of rocks, so for someone who didn't want to huck everything into questionable landing zones, scrambling over rocks was mandatory.
Saturday was much deeper than Friday, but also much more crowded. I started by lapping the steep, rocky trees next to Coyote from Chair 3. This was the rockiest area I skied on Saturday, and it was also a bit alarming. We set off several small slabs in the seemingly stable trees and we consistently heard the "whoomph" sound in the snow. At one point, I even set off a small slide of maybe 10-15 feet wide down to the rocks. The plus of this is that a ton of snow filled in the landing zones of the cliffs, so hucking the ~10 foot cliffs was safe. Chair 10 opened up later in the day, and we traversed as high skiers left into the Chair 5 area. It required about a 2 minute sidestep, but led to about 300 feet of completely untracked waist deep pow leading into the lightly tracked Dry Creek. Surprisingly, our small group of 3 seemed to be the only people skiing this area, as our sidestep marks were nearly filled in every run.
As Adam mentioned, very little was open on Sunday. Only the Lower Gondola, Broadway, and Stump Alley were made available, so we decided not to head up and just watch football. Some people we were staying with said Roger's Ridge and Gravy Chute were good, but it was brutally cold and windy and lines were long. I slammed my back into a tree pretty hard on Friday, so the day of rest was definitely appreciated.
Monday was the day everyone was waiting for, so the mountain was surprisingly busy for a Monday. We started by traversing into the bottom area of Chair 5 from Stump Alley, and found very deep, nice snow. After a few more runs, we decided to wait for the opening of Chair 10, and after a short wait (~10 minutes) we were heading up. We traversed to the liftline of Chair 5, found some very strange, yet untracked wind crust and then waited for the opening of Chair 5. We had a 20 minute wait before loading Chair 5 with a huge crowd. This was the first time Chair 5 had opened since the storm, so expectations were high. Although it was still good, the snow was definitely wind affected, and no face shots were available. Unsurprisingly, Chair 5 was tracked out almost instantly, so after 3 runs, we headed over to Chair 3 to be near the Upper Gondola. After one nice but wind affected run where we traversed all the way out to Cornice, we decided to wait for the Gondola.
This wait was more like 40 minutes, but very worth it. The first run down skiers right of Climax was not wind affected and DEEP. I only have 86 waist skis, so this means I got face shots every turn. There was a decent line at McCoy, so our next two runs on Climax were more tracked out and not as good as the first. Looking for more fresh tracks, we next took the traverse to Dave's. We did find untracked snow, but it was not deep like Climax. I would say it was a mix of wind buff and wind affected powder, if that makes any sense. On our next trip up the gondola, we traversed over to Chair 23, hiked over the saddle, traversed more, and finally hiked even more to get to Paranoid Flats. Due to the effort required, there were barely any tracks in P4, and the wind had smoothed it out. The entrance was a little rocky, but once in P4, it was DEEP. At least 3 feet, and for me, about 20 turns of straight face shots. Once the Paranoids opened up into one open field, we found a ridge with really nice wind buff. After that, it was bad wind crust before getting the groomer (St. Anton?). We noticed Chair 23 was going to open, so instead of taking the Gondola, we just took Broadway to Chair 23. For the rest of the day, we lapped P4. Our first run there was the best, but the snow was consistently deep and it never got really tracked out. All the locals seemed to leave just before Chair 23 opened, so we skied onto the lift every time and almost everyone was just skiing Wipe Out and Drop Out.
Although I don't keep track of my vertical. I would say I got about 22,500 feet of vertical, with 13,500 of powder. All in all, an absolutely incredible day, probably only surpassed by my two days at Alta when the LCC was closed.
This is my first trip report, so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
