This was in many respects the most unusual weekend I have ever experienced at Mammoth in 30 seasons.
Most obvious were the conditions. Many of you have heard me critique places like Taos and Crested Butte for being so difficult to cover their steep slopes. This is the exact problem at the top of Mammoth this season. Season snowfall is 72 inches, but the largest single storm was only 20 inches on Dec. 26-27. That storm got Mammoth from about 1,000 skiable acres up to maybe 2,000. Many of the storms have been low water content, and most of them have been followed by clearing winds from the east that have stripped the snow from the entrances to nearly all of the runs from the top. Cornice is the only straightforward entry, and it's quite slick from wind and manmade snow. Once in you can traverse to better snow below Hangman's or the Drop Out rocks. You can get into Drop Out, but it's firm, narrow and definitely DFU skiing. You can also step down a gravelly entrance to Scotty's, according to Adam who skied it Christmas week. Everything else up there is awaiting at least one classic Sierra dump to be skiable. Those clearing winds have also made lower St. Anton an occasional minefield, and that's probably where one of my skis got its battle scar.
The lower mountain is far better than one would expect based on the above. All the groomed runs I skied were in good shape. The were a few gravel spots over by Chair 25, but they were avoidable as that's a low traffic area. With 2 small storms totalling 9 inches the past 10 days there's a uniform packed powder surface, and with the possible exception of the last few hundred vertical near Eagle Lodge I couldn't tell that much of the base was probably manmade. I'm told Mammoth's snowmaking system is very portable so they can move it around to where it's needed. On this frigid weekend it was only being used to build more features in the Unbound Terrain Park. Intermediate groomed run skiers have little to complain about at Mammoth now in terms of either cover or surfaces.
For ungroomed terrain chair 5 was probably best. The face of 3 has some also. On powder days the locals are skiing in the trees between the lower groomed trails, but there are still some obstacles. My one real adventure was picking my way down a rocky entrance to Avalanche 2. Once in, the snow was firm enough that I skied in survival mode, one turn at a time.
The part of this weekend that will amuse easterners like Patrick the most was the weather. An impressive Arctic air mass is dominating the West, featuring low temps of 26F at my house (with some minor plant damage), -2F at Big Bear, and -16F Friday night at Mammoth. It was still below zero when we started skiing from Chair 2 at 8:30AM, and needless to say the mountain was quite empty for the first 2 hours. At the start of the day it didn't seem as cold as my last such experience at Castle Mt. in Feb. 2004, but after 3 runs I was slowly chilling and went inside to add an extra sweater and face mask. Unfortunately I never completely recovered and was back in the Main Lodge at 10:30 and 1:30 to thaw out my toes. Saturday was sunny, and fortunately the only wind was at the top. Temps remained below zero up there and warmed to about 10F near Main Lodge. Being confined mostly to groomed runs results in more wind chill and less body heat than a normal day of skiing for me, as I also recall from the day at Castle and a similar one at Norquay in 2002. I forgot the camera Saturday, but I probably wouldn't have taken my mitts off often to use it anyway. Despite all the breaks I still managed 28K on Saturday.
Saturday night some clouds came in, and thus the overnight lows were about 10F higher than Friday night. But Sunday's daytime highs were similar to Saturday, and of course felt at least as cold with no sun. Despite wearing all the clothing I still needed a short morning break and an hour at lunch after watching Adam's slalom race. After lunch we made an exploratory run from the top (where it was -3F with 30-50mph winds) down the backside to chair 14. We were with Mammoth Forum member Dave (with whom Patrick and I skied July 4) and he said the wind had stripped a lot of snow away back there since Christmas week.
We stopped Sunday at 3PM so we could watch the Chargers' playoff debacle before we drove home. But I still managed another 23K. Just to show how spoiled we have become over the past 20+ years, I skied more vertical this weekend than any weekend of my first 6 seasons prior to 1984. The weather would have made life more difficult back then riding slow lifts. My worst ever Mammoth experience was probably this same MLK weekend in 1987, nearly as cold with even less snow and no snowmaking back then. There was more fog and wind then, so I never saw how much snow was on the upper mountain. On that trip we went to June Mt. the next day and then went home a day early.
Most obvious were the conditions. Many of you have heard me critique places like Taos and Crested Butte for being so difficult to cover their steep slopes. This is the exact problem at the top of Mammoth this season. Season snowfall is 72 inches, but the largest single storm was only 20 inches on Dec. 26-27. That storm got Mammoth from about 1,000 skiable acres up to maybe 2,000. Many of the storms have been low water content, and most of them have been followed by clearing winds from the east that have stripped the snow from the entrances to nearly all of the runs from the top. Cornice is the only straightforward entry, and it's quite slick from wind and manmade snow. Once in you can traverse to better snow below Hangman's or the Drop Out rocks. You can get into Drop Out, but it's firm, narrow and definitely DFU skiing. You can also step down a gravelly entrance to Scotty's, according to Adam who skied it Christmas week. Everything else up there is awaiting at least one classic Sierra dump to be skiable. Those clearing winds have also made lower St. Anton an occasional minefield, and that's probably where one of my skis got its battle scar.
The lower mountain is far better than one would expect based on the above. All the groomed runs I skied were in good shape. The were a few gravel spots over by Chair 25, but they were avoidable as that's a low traffic area. With 2 small storms totalling 9 inches the past 10 days there's a uniform packed powder surface, and with the possible exception of the last few hundred vertical near Eagle Lodge I couldn't tell that much of the base was probably manmade. I'm told Mammoth's snowmaking system is very portable so they can move it around to where it's needed. On this frigid weekend it was only being used to build more features in the Unbound Terrain Park. Intermediate groomed run skiers have little to complain about at Mammoth now in terms of either cover or surfaces.
For ungroomed terrain chair 5 was probably best. The face of 3 has some also. On powder days the locals are skiing in the trees between the lower groomed trails, but there are still some obstacles. My one real adventure was picking my way down a rocky entrance to Avalanche 2. Once in, the snow was firm enough that I skied in survival mode, one turn at a time.
The part of this weekend that will amuse easterners like Patrick the most was the weather. An impressive Arctic air mass is dominating the West, featuring low temps of 26F at my house (with some minor plant damage), -2F at Big Bear, and -16F Friday night at Mammoth. It was still below zero when we started skiing from Chair 2 at 8:30AM, and needless to say the mountain was quite empty for the first 2 hours. At the start of the day it didn't seem as cold as my last such experience at Castle Mt. in Feb. 2004, but after 3 runs I was slowly chilling and went inside to add an extra sweater and face mask. Unfortunately I never completely recovered and was back in the Main Lodge at 10:30 and 1:30 to thaw out my toes. Saturday was sunny, and fortunately the only wind was at the top. Temps remained below zero up there and warmed to about 10F near Main Lodge. Being confined mostly to groomed runs results in more wind chill and less body heat than a normal day of skiing for me, as I also recall from the day at Castle and a similar one at Norquay in 2002. I forgot the camera Saturday, but I probably wouldn't have taken my mitts off often to use it anyway. Despite all the breaks I still managed 28K on Saturday.
Saturday night some clouds came in, and thus the overnight lows were about 10F higher than Friday night. But Sunday's daytime highs were similar to Saturday, and of course felt at least as cold with no sun. Despite wearing all the clothing I still needed a short morning break and an hour at lunch after watching Adam's slalom race. After lunch we made an exploratory run from the top (where it was -3F with 30-50mph winds) down the backside to chair 14. We were with Mammoth Forum member Dave (with whom Patrick and I skied July 4) and he said the wind had stripped a lot of snow away back there since Christmas week.
We stopped Sunday at 3PM so we could watch the Chargers' playoff debacle before we drove home. But I still managed another 23K. Just to show how spoiled we have become over the past 20+ years, I skied more vertical this weekend than any weekend of my first 6 seasons prior to 1984. The weather would have made life more difficult back then riding slow lifts. My worst ever Mammoth experience was probably this same MLK weekend in 1987, nearly as cold with even less snow and no snowmaking back then. There was more fog and wind then, so I never saw how much snow was on the upper mountain. On that trip we went to June Mt. the next day and then went home a day early.
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