Liz’ knee replacement got infected when I was last at Mammoth. She had a second surgery July 5 to clean it out and after 6 days at the hospital is at home with picc line setup to get IV antibiotics 3x a day for 6 weeks.
After a week of this routine, I made a short run to Mammoth Tuesday/Wednesday with only one night there. In summer I would often do an afternoon hike after morning skiing, but this time I drove Tuesday morning and got up to Lake Mary by about 2:30. I wanted to check out some of the Duck Lake trail where I have not been before.
I had never hiked in this area, and so started with less than a mile to Emerald Lake.
Past Emerald Lake the trail ascends a forested ridge to join the main Duck Lake trail as shown in red on the map above. The trail in this area was often hidden by snow patches but I managed to find it on top of the ridge. Even though this took awhile I thought I would at least make it to Skelton Lake.
But as I walked south past the loop trail intersection I saw this lake to my right (west).
There is no such lake on the map. I soon came to another one not on a map.
The bushes in the water probably indicate that it’s a flooded meadow. And here is the stream between the two unmarked lakes.
Looking to the southern edge of the flooded meadow there is substantial water flowing into it.
An equally strong flow was out the northern end leading down to Arrowhead Lake. As it was past 4PM and I was skiing the next day, I had a snack here and proceeded no further. Even though Skelton Lake is not much farther, the trail to it may be partly under water.
On the way out I took the short detour to Arrowhead Lake.
And later there was another detour to a viewpoint of the south side of Mammoth Mountain beyond Lake Mary.
The trailhead is about 9,100 feet and I got up close to 10,000. Here’s a bigger map of the area, with my modest hiking route in purple.
With a full day the trail over the Mammoth Crest at 10,800 and down to Duck Lake at 10,500 is 10.4 miles round trip. The hike just to Barney Lake at 10,300 is 5.4 miles round trip and would be quite moderate once the snow and water subside.
Wednesday morning I parked by bus stop A just down from Main Lodge after 7:30. I walked directly to the gondola with this view up the mountain.
Last weekend was the end for the lower race course runs but there is still a continuous strip from St. Anton.
The top of Broadway has narrowed but it branches out below and some of the Unbound park features remain.
I exited the upper gondola about 8AM to this view.
A narrow strip to Cornice remains, with this view down.
This was smooth corn already so worth an encore.
At the bottom of Cornice I could see the only area being used by racers at skier’s right of Saddle Bowl.
I made the error of continuing down Broadway, which was solid frozen granular from salting. Notice from the pics that it was mostly overcast. The clouds remained until about 10:30, which prevented the late morning from getting too slushy despite overnight low temp of 52F per OpenSnow. The Broadway run was an error because chair 1 was closed so I had to schlep across the road to the gondola.
I inquired, and learned that water runoff during the scorching past weekend (as high as 94F in town of Mammoth and at least 75F on the mountain) had undermined the snowpack by chair 1’s loading area.
I was also puzzled by mostly wall-to-wall coverage on Face of 3, yet no entry had been maintained to it as on July 30, 2017. A knowledgeable gondola passenger explained that during the weekend heat wave the snowcats were unable to push snow uphill. The cat driver he talked to wants to fix that but the temperatures need to come down some. Another issue is that they only have 8 people working grooming this summer vs. at least twice that many in 2017. It’s hard to keep cat drivers around in summer when they can make more $$$ on construction jobs.
After another Cornice lap, I loaded at mid to try Climax.
Climax was very similar to July 30, 2017, wide open for the upper 2/3, then a few narrow openings through the emerging rock band. I moved to 23 and skied Cornice from that side.
The strip coming from the gondola is on its last legs but probably lasted longer than in 2017. There was a skier packed line directly below me that merged into Cornice halfway down. I skied another Climax variation and returned to 23, wondering how to get to Scotty’s. There is no snow at all exiting looker’s right from 23, but I saw this group start at the top of Wipe Out 1 and traverse toward Scotty’s (dead center of pic).
Here they are skiing Scotty’s.
The big moguls at the Wipe Out 1 entry formed a level platform to put skis on. Here’s the view down on the way to Scotty’s.
Snow on Scotty’s about 10AM was excellent corn. Few people were on it today, but enough must have been there on the weekend to prevent suncups. St. Anton was still mostly good with just a little resistance near the bottom.
After a bottom to top gondola and a third Climax run, I skied Drop Out 3 from 23.
Snow was good here too but I needed my usual suck wind break in the middle before the lower moguls.
Here’s the overview of chair 23:
I moved to chair 3 and walked across the dirt at the top to ski the face, which was in great shape like Scotty’s. I did not take pics as I got yelled at by patrol for crossing that dirt.
I returned to 23 and skied Drop Out 1, then the steep part of Drop Out 3 cutting over to lower Cornice to reach chair 3 at 11:57. Skier’s right of Saddle Bowl was smooth and supportable to the end because the racers had been there until about 10:30. View down Broadway and the Unbound on my last run:
I skied the Unbound to the idle base of chair 6 to exit via the management offices. There I found out about the Tioga opening July 22. They did not know about the Red’s Meadow shuttle opening July 21 or the ski area closing date of August 6, both of which were announced a day later.
I skied 19,400 vertical in overall good spring conditions similar to those last two days in 2017. The snowpack two weeks from now is not going to be what it was in 2017, so I would be unlikely to return then for just skiing. But with Tioga now open and the Bluesapalooza music festival (which Liz and I attended two nights in 2017) August 3-6, I am tempted to make one more trip.
After a week of this routine, I made a short run to Mammoth Tuesday/Wednesday with only one night there. In summer I would often do an afternoon hike after morning skiing, but this time I drove Tuesday morning and got up to Lake Mary by about 2:30. I wanted to check out some of the Duck Lake trail where I have not been before.
I had never hiked in this area, and so started with less than a mile to Emerald Lake.
Past Emerald Lake the trail ascends a forested ridge to join the main Duck Lake trail as shown in red on the map above. The trail in this area was often hidden by snow patches but I managed to find it on top of the ridge. Even though this took awhile I thought I would at least make it to Skelton Lake.
But as I walked south past the loop trail intersection I saw this lake to my right (west).
There is no such lake on the map. I soon came to another one not on a map.
The bushes in the water probably indicate that it’s a flooded meadow. And here is the stream between the two unmarked lakes.
Looking to the southern edge of the flooded meadow there is substantial water flowing into it.
An equally strong flow was out the northern end leading down to Arrowhead Lake. As it was past 4PM and I was skiing the next day, I had a snack here and proceeded no further. Even though Skelton Lake is not much farther, the trail to it may be partly under water.
On the way out I took the short detour to Arrowhead Lake.
And later there was another detour to a viewpoint of the south side of Mammoth Mountain beyond Lake Mary.
The trailhead is about 9,100 feet and I got up close to 10,000. Here’s a bigger map of the area, with my modest hiking route in purple.
Wednesday morning I parked by bus stop A just down from Main Lodge after 7:30. I walked directly to the gondola with this view up the mountain.
Last weekend was the end for the lower race course runs but there is still a continuous strip from St. Anton.
The top of Broadway has narrowed but it branches out below and some of the Unbound park features remain.
I exited the upper gondola about 8AM to this view.
A narrow strip to Cornice remains, with this view down.
This was smooth corn already so worth an encore.
At the bottom of Cornice I could see the only area being used by racers at skier’s right of Saddle Bowl.
I made the error of continuing down Broadway, which was solid frozen granular from salting. Notice from the pics that it was mostly overcast. The clouds remained until about 10:30, which prevented the late morning from getting too slushy despite overnight low temp of 52F per OpenSnow. The Broadway run was an error because chair 1 was closed so I had to schlep across the road to the gondola.
I inquired, and learned that water runoff during the scorching past weekend (as high as 94F in town of Mammoth and at least 75F on the mountain) had undermined the snowpack by chair 1’s loading area.
I was also puzzled by mostly wall-to-wall coverage on Face of 3, yet no entry had been maintained to it as on July 30, 2017. A knowledgeable gondola passenger explained that during the weekend heat wave the snowcats were unable to push snow uphill. The cat driver he talked to wants to fix that but the temperatures need to come down some. Another issue is that they only have 8 people working grooming this summer vs. at least twice that many in 2017. It’s hard to keep cat drivers around in summer when they can make more $$$ on construction jobs.
After another Cornice lap, I loaded at mid to try Climax.
Climax was very similar to July 30, 2017, wide open for the upper 2/3, then a few narrow openings through the emerging rock band. I moved to 23 and skied Cornice from that side.
The strip coming from the gondola is on its last legs but probably lasted longer than in 2017. There was a skier packed line directly below me that merged into Cornice halfway down. I skied another Climax variation and returned to 23, wondering how to get to Scotty’s. There is no snow at all exiting looker’s right from 23, but I saw this group start at the top of Wipe Out 1 and traverse toward Scotty’s (dead center of pic).
Here they are skiing Scotty’s.
The big moguls at the Wipe Out 1 entry formed a level platform to put skis on. Here’s the view down on the way to Scotty’s.
Snow on Scotty’s about 10AM was excellent corn. Few people were on it today, but enough must have been there on the weekend to prevent suncups. St. Anton was still mostly good with just a little resistance near the bottom.
After a bottom to top gondola and a third Climax run, I skied Drop Out 3 from 23.
Snow was good here too but I needed my usual suck wind break in the middle before the lower moguls.
Here’s the overview of chair 23:
I moved to chair 3 and walked across the dirt at the top to ski the face, which was in great shape like Scotty’s. I did not take pics as I got yelled at by patrol for crossing that dirt.
I returned to 23 and skied Drop Out 1, then the steep part of Drop Out 3 cutting over to lower Cornice to reach chair 3 at 11:57. Skier’s right of Saddle Bowl was smooth and supportable to the end because the racers had been there until about 10:30. View down Broadway and the Unbound on my last run:
I skied the Unbound to the idle base of chair 6 to exit via the management offices. There I found out about the Tioga opening July 22. They did not know about the Red’s Meadow shuttle opening July 21 or the ski area closing date of August 6, both of which were announced a day later.
I skied 19,400 vertical in overall good spring conditions similar to those last two days in 2017. The snowpack two weeks from now is not going to be what it was in 2017, so I would be unlikely to return then for just skiing. But with Tioga now open and the Bluesapalooza music festival (which Liz and I attended two nights in 2017) August 3-6, I am tempted to make one more trip.
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