Andrew will be a liftie at Mammoth this season. He started training this week but he had to report to HR Sunday. They wanted a second form of ID besides his driver's license. #-o
This gave me an excuse to go up there, but Dec. 1 was still a challenging day. We got up at 5AM in Florida to catch our flight home. We got to the house before noon, but there were few things to sort out and pack before I left for Mammoth about 2PM. Liz stayed home and I got to Mammoth about 7:30.
It is definitely warm for December, already 37 in town at 8AM. I drove up to chair 2 about 9:30 and the lot was full so I parked across the street from it. Base of chair 2:
This would normally be a nothing line at a high speed quad, but it was about 5 minutes with most chairs going up with one or two people. I only had a couple of other lines as long as this later.
I skied to the admin building, showed them Andrew's birth certificate so he was good to go. He gets an Alterra Pass so I will get refunded his Ikon.
Temps were in the 40's with no wind, so I wore no hat and a standard paper mask as I had for spring ski days at Baldy and A-Basin. I have a cloth mask for colder weather.
There are about 9 open distinct runs, all of which I skied at least twice. Broadway and the Unbound Park are open in front of Main Lodge. You can go around the back of chair 1 to Silvertip and Rusty's, but Andy's is the only race course run with grooming and snowmaking as yet.
Andy's is at right and was roped off for racers even when I was last there at 1:45. Fascination at left was the only run I skied on only natural snow. You needed to hold a line skier's left to avoid rocks and shrubs but the snow was chalky without the underlying manmade base evident elsewhere.
Mammoth's local kid's program seems alive and well here, regrouping near the base of closed chair 23.
I saw other kid's groups elsewhere.
Chair 3 was open, but only to ski off the back. Here's the view down the front to the unfrozen snowmaking reservoir near McCoy Station.
You can see two blue poles with brown spots at their bases. Those are round pieces of wood about the size of manhole covers, presumably sheltering snowmaking hookups.
Riding 3 I got this view of the Cornice with a line of snowmaking towers down its shaded center.
Normally Cornice opens fairly early on; I'm not sure if priorities will change this year.
Climax viewed from the back of 3 has a long way to go.
The upper gondola was open for scenic rides.
West Bowl in foreground got bumped up over Thanksgiving weekend. I was not tempted as there are probably rocks in the troughs of many of those moguls.
The Paranoids and Minarets are in background.
Chairs 10 and 4 were also open with one run each. Over Thanksgiving Schoolyard and chair 17 were temporarily open to allow parking access from Canyon Lodge. From chair 10 you have to exit around to the right to lower Solitude, view up from there.
Snowmaking has started on upper Solitude, and when it's done chair 5 can open. The rocky far left background is Dave's Run.
View down lower Solitude/Easy Rider to the chair 2 base:
You can also cut skier's right to chair 4 and Rollercoaster.
The run is very wide at the bottom because they haven't started building South Park yet.
Andrew's training group was at the base of chair 4.
He is at far right.
From the top of 4 is a view of chair 5 terrain.
Only Solitude will be skiable when it opens. Triangle and Dry Creek at center right are nearly solid rock.
I finished at 2PM with 21,900 vertical. This really felt like a warmup day. Step aerobics have been my best ski training since 1990 and the gyms have been closed since the March shutdown. I also have a case of "beach foot," with my boot buckles at a low setting that never needed to be tightened. I did not wear shoes for four months this summer and sometimes since when I'm mostly at home. I noticed this one other opening day in 2016 after we had spent a month in sandals in Thailand.
The grooming was to good standard and coverage was fine as long as you did not stray to the far edges of runs. Only on a short section of Easy Rider did I see any "floater" rocks. Skier traffic was not excessive but enough to scrape down the surface a little. But midday the subsurface was not all that slick in these temperatures. And with the low sun angle the only softening was at the bases of chairs 1&2 and the south facing exit off the back of 3. Overall it was similar to a typical Big Bear mid-to late December day in terms of both open runs and surface conditions, though at Big Bear some of the runs would be shorter.
The crystal clear weather does mean the temperatures get down at night with max relative humidity 36%. Mammoth patrol site showed a high of 51F today with 8 of the past 24 hours below freezing. Time will tell how much snowmaking progress can be made with this weather that will probably persist for two weeks.
Even though I was not in the Tesla this time, I checked out the new superchargers in Bishop.
There are 12 of the new fast v3's. This will add some efficiency to future trips as we often stop in Bishop anyway for Schat's bakery, which is about half a mile north of the chargers. In future seasons Bishop's dining options are probably better than Lone Pine's.
This gave me an excuse to go up there, but Dec. 1 was still a challenging day. We got up at 5AM in Florida to catch our flight home. We got to the house before noon, but there were few things to sort out and pack before I left for Mammoth about 2PM. Liz stayed home and I got to Mammoth about 7:30.
It is definitely warm for December, already 37 in town at 8AM. I drove up to chair 2 about 9:30 and the lot was full so I parked across the street from it. Base of chair 2:
This would normally be a nothing line at a high speed quad, but it was about 5 minutes with most chairs going up with one or two people. I only had a couple of other lines as long as this later.
I skied to the admin building, showed them Andrew's birth certificate so he was good to go. He gets an Alterra Pass so I will get refunded his Ikon.
Temps were in the 40's with no wind, so I wore no hat and a standard paper mask as I had for spring ski days at Baldy and A-Basin. I have a cloth mask for colder weather.
There are about 9 open distinct runs, all of which I skied at least twice. Broadway and the Unbound Park are open in front of Main Lodge. You can go around the back of chair 1 to Silvertip and Rusty's, but Andy's is the only race course run with grooming and snowmaking as yet.
Andy's is at right and was roped off for racers even when I was last there at 1:45. Fascination at left was the only run I skied on only natural snow. You needed to hold a line skier's left to avoid rocks and shrubs but the snow was chalky without the underlying manmade base evident elsewhere.
Mammoth's local kid's program seems alive and well here, regrouping near the base of closed chair 23.
I saw other kid's groups elsewhere.
Chair 3 was open, but only to ski off the back. Here's the view down the front to the unfrozen snowmaking reservoir near McCoy Station.
You can see two blue poles with brown spots at their bases. Those are round pieces of wood about the size of manhole covers, presumably sheltering snowmaking hookups.
Riding 3 I got this view of the Cornice with a line of snowmaking towers down its shaded center.
Normally Cornice opens fairly early on; I'm not sure if priorities will change this year.
Climax viewed from the back of 3 has a long way to go.
The upper gondola was open for scenic rides.
West Bowl in foreground got bumped up over Thanksgiving weekend. I was not tempted as there are probably rocks in the troughs of many of those moguls.
The Paranoids and Minarets are in background.
Chairs 10 and 4 were also open with one run each. Over Thanksgiving Schoolyard and chair 17 were temporarily open to allow parking access from Canyon Lodge. From chair 10 you have to exit around to the right to lower Solitude, view up from there.
Snowmaking has started on upper Solitude, and when it's done chair 5 can open. The rocky far left background is Dave's Run.
View down lower Solitude/Easy Rider to the chair 2 base:
You can also cut skier's right to chair 4 and Rollercoaster.
The run is very wide at the bottom because they haven't started building South Park yet.
Andrew's training group was at the base of chair 4.
He is at far right.
From the top of 4 is a view of chair 5 terrain.
Only Solitude will be skiable when it opens. Triangle and Dry Creek at center right are nearly solid rock.
I finished at 2PM with 21,900 vertical. This really felt like a warmup day. Step aerobics have been my best ski training since 1990 and the gyms have been closed since the March shutdown. I also have a case of "beach foot," with my boot buckles at a low setting that never needed to be tightened. I did not wear shoes for four months this summer and sometimes since when I'm mostly at home. I noticed this one other opening day in 2016 after we had spent a month in sandals in Thailand.
The grooming was to good standard and coverage was fine as long as you did not stray to the far edges of runs. Only on a short section of Easy Rider did I see any "floater" rocks. Skier traffic was not excessive but enough to scrape down the surface a little. But midday the subsurface was not all that slick in these temperatures. And with the low sun angle the only softening was at the bases of chairs 1&2 and the south facing exit off the back of 3. Overall it was similar to a typical Big Bear mid-to late December day in terms of both open runs and surface conditions, though at Big Bear some of the runs would be shorter.
The crystal clear weather does mean the temperatures get down at night with max relative humidity 36%. Mammoth patrol site showed a high of 51F today with 8 of the past 24 hours below freezing. Time will tell how much snowmaking progress can be made with this weather that will probably persist for two weeks.
Even though I was not in the Tesla this time, I checked out the new superchargers in Bishop.
There are 12 of the new fast v3's. This will add some efficiency to future trips as we often stop in Bishop anyway for Schat's bakery, which is about half a mile north of the chargers. In future seasons Bishop's dining options are probably better than Lone Pine's.
