My son Adam has graduated from UC San Diego, but he was helping out their ski team with holiday training.
The early season snowpack is better than this time last year but not as good as mid-December 2005 with similar reported base depths and season snowfall. Which runs are good in low snowpack is quite variable depending upon wind deposition during particular storms. So here is Adam's rundown:
On top Dave's Run had the best snow. Climax was pretty good skier's left funneling into a couple of mogulled choke points near the bottom. Skier's right was not covered yet. Cornice was wide open, and if you stayed high and traversed left toward Drop Out snow was excellent. Drop Out was not accessible from the top.
Everything skier's left of Chair 23 looked bad. Only Scotty's was skiable via a narrow traverse entry, and the overall view of that area did not tempt Adam to try it. He didn't go to chair 14 even though it was open because some of his friends said it wasn't too good. Chair 12 was fine, even off trail in the trees.
The new Chair 9 was running to move people around, but none of the terrain under the chair is skiable yet. Groomed Gold Hill is OK, but the lower groomed runs in the Chair 9&25 areas were thin and had more and more gravel showing as the holiday week wore on.
Lower mountain maintained trails from Eagle across to Main Lodge are fine, like last year at this time. While riding Chair 16 Adam scoped the Avy chutes and thought he could get down them. But they had enough rocks to be definite DFU territory, and since he saw no one skiing them they may have been roped off at the top.
The face of 5 had decent skiable lines. The face of 3 was not good. Adam shares my opinion that installing a high speed quad on the face of 3 has put a lot of pressure on the snowpack there in both early and very late season.
Definitely not 100% open, probably about 70%. Thankfully this will all be academic a week from now. This weekend I would expect very little to be open given the predicted storm intensity. But anyone coming to Mammoth after January 9 will have nothing to worry about.
The early season snowpack is better than this time last year but not as good as mid-December 2005 with similar reported base depths and season snowfall. Which runs are good in low snowpack is quite variable depending upon wind deposition during particular storms. So here is Adam's rundown:
On top Dave's Run had the best snow. Climax was pretty good skier's left funneling into a couple of mogulled choke points near the bottom. Skier's right was not covered yet. Cornice was wide open, and if you stayed high and traversed left toward Drop Out snow was excellent. Drop Out was not accessible from the top.
Everything skier's left of Chair 23 looked bad. Only Scotty's was skiable via a narrow traverse entry, and the overall view of that area did not tempt Adam to try it. He didn't go to chair 14 even though it was open because some of his friends said it wasn't too good. Chair 12 was fine, even off trail in the trees.
The new Chair 9 was running to move people around, but none of the terrain under the chair is skiable yet. Groomed Gold Hill is OK, but the lower groomed runs in the Chair 9&25 areas were thin and had more and more gravel showing as the holiday week wore on.
Lower mountain maintained trails from Eagle across to Main Lodge are fine, like last year at this time. While riding Chair 16 Adam scoped the Avy chutes and thought he could get down them. But they had enough rocks to be definite DFU territory, and since he saw no one skiing them they may have been roped off at the top.
The face of 5 had decent skiable lines. The face of 3 was not good. Adam shares my opinion that installing a high speed quad on the face of 3 has put a lot of pressure on the snowpack there in both early and very late season.
Definitely not 100% open, probably about 70%. Thankfully this will all be academic a week from now. This weekend I would expect very little to be open given the predicted storm intensity. But anyone coming to Mammoth after January 9 will have nothing to worry about.