Mt Waterman 12-21-08

S

socal

Member
My first time up at Waterman. Ride up there was pretty easy, but it's pretty slow going even where it's dry for about 33 miles on CA-2. Roads were fine, very little snow on the road at all. Employees were nice and seemed to be happy to be open.

I got up to the hill about 5 of 9 grabbed a ticket and caught the lift. Coverage was pretty good but there were plenty of hidden rocks off trail and the runout down to chair 1 had about 6 inches of coverage and you could pretty much guarantee you'd hit a rock (only about 50 yards of low coverage).

Best runs were the trees specifically to about 3/4ths of the way along the cat track on the skiers right off chair 1. Made a few runs down there. There were 200ft of vertical patches of dry light untouched powder in the trees. I guess the shade helped them stay light even though it went up to about 45-50 yesterday.

After about 3hrs or so I called it a day and made it home to catch the 2nd quarter of the late NFL games. Ride down was slow since there were literally 1000s of people parked along the road playing in the snow. We came to a stop several times. My guess is that the road had so many cars on it people stopped/slowed down to look for parking.

The next storm should be great, put a foot of new powder on this stuff and it would have been a great day. With the storm coming in tonight/tomorrow scheduled to have snow levels around 6500 ft seems that Waterman's 7000 ft base elevation would be a big advantage over Baldy, which I think is around 5500 ft or so.


View up the run to the skiers right of chair 1.
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View of the run to the skiers left of chair 1. Good coverage but snow really heavy in the sun.
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View from looking back on the lift.
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Some lightly skied stuff on the sides of the open runs on the face of 1.
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One of the groomers off chair 2.
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Some really nice untouched snow was out there if you looked in the trees.
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Another good tree run.
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Look up the face, again.
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wow, the snow looks very thin, but fun in the trees. nice pics. and baldy's base is around 6500 feet just so you know. hopefully i will be able to get up there after this next storm before mammoth
 
The base of Thunder/Chair 2 at Baldy is 7,600, so if the rain/snow line is marginal, Baldy has a ~500 foot advantage on the other local areas for the majority of its terrain. But rain will form a creek under chair 1 and make that more difficult.

Mt. Waterman's elevation range is 6,950 - 8,036. It normally gets the most natural snow of the SoCal locals. I'm surprised it was so thin near the bottom compared to Baldy.
 
im not sure on this theory, but baldy might clear their runs a little better than waterman in the summer. the thick of the storm may have just missed waterman too allowing baldy/high/big bear get a little more snow
 
We do know the second storm Wednesday was unusual in some ways. Most obvious for the low snow line and all that snow in the desert. Wind was from the northeast judging by snow deposition at Baldy. But reported snow totals of Baldy/Mt. High = 2x Big Bear are typical, and Waterman tends to do even better in that pattern. The first storm Sunday/Monday was more even than normal between the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mt. ski areas.
 
I'd say around 50 cars or so. Maybe 100-150 people up there. I'm really just estimating but it seems about right. Compare that to the 500+ that were playing in about 12 inches of snow about 10 miles down the road.
 
They told me that they were going to open it a little later in the day. I was told that they needed to put the pads on the lift towers and mark some uncovered stuff but that it would be done soon. I left before then. It did seem odd to me that they had skied all day on Saturday (one of the guys working the lifts told me) but didn't have a chance to get chair 3 area ready to go. Also, a little surprised they didn't have the beginner/intermediate chair 2 ready to go at 9am either. Took about an hour or so to get it going. There were people just sitting at the top of chair 1 waiting for 2 to get going. Seems like the motives may be somewhere between operating a profitable ski area and having their own private resort (not that this is necessarily a bad thing).
 
same thing happened last year as certain people were able to drive to the area when the road was closed and yet they still did not open right after the roads did
 
ski-the-face":2y8c7lii said:
same thing happened last year as certain people were able to drive to the area when the road was closed and yet they still did not open right after the roads did
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oh yeah. i think i remember that.
the road was dry, the snow was there, and the gate was locked at 3-points.
locked that is to us taxpayers.

i got a log of s on this board for pointing it out.
fyi: this has been going on for several years now.
whatever.
 
Kinda seemed like that's the case. All the open runs off Chair 1 were all skied up at 9am. Even if they were loading customers up the hill before 9, there wasn't even close to enough to ski all that untracked in 30 minutes or so. The skiing was good, but considering the quality of the snow I found in the trees it was kinda sad that the more open runs were hammered by skiers before customers even showed up.
 
I no longer have anything to do with Mt. Waterman and have been staying out of the conversations on this site, but back in the Newcomb days that was the #1 rule...Nobody skis the hill before the public. Everybody worked until chair 1 and chair 2 were ready to go and open to the public. Then we would move to chair 3 and get it open. The paying customer was always allowed to get first tracks and that is the way it is at most resorts.

I know I defended the new ownership last year as I felt they were learning and the rest of the amenities would be available this year to be headed to a viable ski area. But the kitchen is still not done I hear and still no rentals. You cannot bring in the numbers needed to be profitable without the profit centers. I for one am very disappointed in not being able to be there, and in the lack of direction.
 
if you are a skiers mountain and want to stay that way, you need costumer satisfaction. most skiers that ski at waterman dont need rentals so that is not a priority right now, everyone needs to eat food so opening the kitchen would be great, but the biggest reason you would go to waterman is for its uncrowded steeps, if those are all chewed up by ski patrol and owners then there is not much reason to go here over Baldy for powder. well now we know its not the crowds that get to the powder at waterman, its the management. [-(
 
I agree with all the comments here about how it sucks that they track up the hill before it opens, but frankly, can you really blame them? If they're having to be at mid-mountain anyway to work on things, it's hard to fault them for skiing down.

I may be able to make it out there Friday, will see.
 
all pro- or anti- waterman comments aside, nice trip report and nice photos! =D>

was really wanting to be there this weekend but was out of town, so this TR has been the next best thing. thanks for posting!

:D
 
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