Mammoth Mountain Photos 11-13-09

Cool photos Snowman.

I wish they had invested in snowmaking during the years I lived in Mammoth. Always seemed to be a place that starts a little slow, but finishes strong. Snowmaking could have turned some lean years into real winners. You have to have guaranteed snow for Thanksgiving/Christmas. The first season they had snowmaking it snowed like hell early and buried all the manholes. There are worse problems to have!

Hope you guys have a great season, it's a long drive down there,(I could fly, starting this season) but it's still my favorite mountain.
 
Snowmaking could have turned some lean years into real winners.
Click to expand...
I suspect Dave McCoy didn't look at it that way. With the feast or famine pattern of snow but superb preservation Mammoth was usually set after the first big dump. And they probably didn't think snowmaking could give them any more than 10-20% of terrain during an extreme drought start like 1976-77 or 1980-81. After 1990-91 was lean through the end of February Mammoth finally made the push into snowmaking.

I generally don't go up there in the lean early seasons, so I don't have a lot of before vs. after comparisons. My records (from snow reports not eyewitness) show Mammoth very limited over the holidays in 1999-2000; the big dumps that opened everything hit in January. The snowmaking helped a lot in 2006-07. All the lower mountain trails were in good shape in mid-January. But that drought was not as extreme as 1976-77 or 1980-81. There had been several small storms totaling 56 inches in December. The wind had blown most of it off up high, but in combination with grooming and snowmaking lower mountain coverage and surfaces were well maintained through the holidays and beyond until the dumps finally came in February.

Snowmaking has also been a big help starting the past 2 seasons. In these cases there was early natural snow up high but rain and/or a meltout lower down. So snowmaking is being used to connect some lower runs to the natural snow up higher.

Mt. Bachelor remains among the rare elite areas that don't need a serious snowmaking system. The PNW has had 2 very bad seasons this decade in 2000-01 and 2004-05, yet my records indicate Mt. Bachelor was in full operation by Christmas and through most of those seasons when other PNW areas were closed or very limited.
 
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