Mammoth, April 4-6

It snowed 19 inches from Tuesday afternoon through Wednesday night. My son was up there all week on spring break and enjoyed an epic Thursday of powder most of the day as terrain opened gradually with avalanche control. I arrived Thursday night. Friday it snowed 10 inches from about 6AM to 4PM. There was heavy fog and gusty winds so even the mid-mountain chairs 3&5 were never open. When we skied to Gold Rush after lunch chairs 1&2 were also closed. With skiing restricted to the Canyon Lodge area there was still some decent powder in the trees. The chair 25 area was untracked but visibility was marginal and the chair ride was an arctic blast all the way. By 2PM chairs 22&25 were also shut down. I generally took it easy Friday after hearing the report from Thursday and hoping for an encore over the weekend.

Saturday morning was bluebird, and Friday's storm had filled in the upper runs which had only been open 2 hours Thursday. We got fresh tracks on the face of 3 and the first 2 runs on Climax were outstanding. But on a Saturday the top was tracked out by 10:30AM, so after 4 runs up there I spent the rest of the morning on 14 to get a few more freshies. I was pretty beat when I finally went into lunch at 1:30 after sampling Hangman's and Philippe's. In late afternoon the wind picked up some and the top clouded over so we stayed on Chair 1.

Saturday morning's powderfest took quite a bit out of us, so we forgot about the time change and didn't get on the hill until 9:30AM Sunday. Sunday was clear and predicted warm, but in fact there were steady NW winds and it was colder than Saturday. We stayed on the more sheltered east side of Mammoth, mostly chairs 9, 22, 25 and 5 and mostly on the groomers. The main exceptions were 3 runs in the Avalanche Chutes, which had some light blown-in snow, as did Upper Dry Creek.

Even by the end of Sunday less than 20% of the mountain had spring conditions. It's still winter up there, and I haven't changed my opinion over the past 25 years that early April is usually the best time to ski Mammoth. This is the also the 3rd time in the past decade I've had a big powder day up there in April.

I took several digital pics Saturday and Sunday, and I will try to get some of them up here before too long.

Here's my first try at loading pics:

The first 2 hours Saturday were a feeding frenzy zapping the 2+ feet of powder up top, so I was unwilling to mess with a camera during that time. I spent the late morning on the backside Chair 14. First shot is a knoll which requires about a 10-minute hike:


I was lazy and preferred to scrounge for fresh in the foreground trees. From the top of 14 here's a good profile view of the Wipe Out/Hump side of chair 23:


Depending upon snow deposition each season Philippe's (view from top) is one of those chutes which may or may not be skiable:


From below you can see where freshies are still available below the choke point of Philippe's:

The final shot from Saturday is a classic Mammoth view from the top of Chair 23:
The 3 skiers at far right are inspecting Hangman's Hollow from the top. Crowley Lake and the White Mountains are in the background.

On Sunday we skied a few runs from Lincoln Mt. My friend Garry Klassen is here at the top of Chair 22:


The view is west to Dave's Run and Climax on the upper mountain and the tops of Chairs 9 and 5 at mid-mountain. The north side of Lincoln features the Avalanche Chutes with some of the consistently best snow at Mammoth. Here's Garry in Avalanche 2:

and:


For those who like a little air with their steeps, here's a close-up of the rocks and more extreme lines between Dave's and Climax.

I've only been in there once: on the 50-inch powder day April 9, 1999. The comparatively wide entrance at left is Balls-to-the-Wall. Where it hits the cliff halfway down I was able to traverse left and ski powder in the lower section which had deeper coverage in 1999 than in this picture.