Adam Crocker
New member
I'm (Tony Crocker) posting on his behalf as Adam is back at UC San Diego. He was accepted to the college club ski team, which rents a house at Mammoth for the entire season. Adam also has a season pass dating back to last May. <BR> <BR>The team goes to Mammoth first after Christmas to do a 2-day race clinic and the first league race with several other SoCal colleges (USC, UC Santa Barbara, etc.). USC had poor turnout (no surprise). Both the clinics and the races were cancelled for weather. <BR> <BR>Adam's first day was Dec. 27, first day the top was open after a 40-inch storm. Unfortunately the storm was Sierra cement and everyone got exhausted quickly given 1)snow 2)first day of the season and 3)first day at 11,000 feet. How thick was the snow? Adam came to a halt several times on Climax, which is an open bowl of 30-35 degree pitch. <BR> <BR>Dec. 28 was better as the new snow was cut up and skier packed. Dec. 29 brought round 2 of weather, with wind shutting down most of Mammoth's lifts and all the steep terrain. So Adam and some of his friends went to June Mt. and probably got the most powder that day of any on the trip. June is nearly deserted and its top chair has some good shots of 500-600 vertical before hitting the long and flat runouts back to the base. June also has trees to the top, much less wind and about 2/3 the snowfall as Mammoth. <BR> <BR>Dec. 30 was the best Mammoth day. It was unusually cold, in single digits but with no wind. Adam did over 20K, concentrating on steep runs from the top and chair 22. Now acclimated, he observed that he was now skiing better than most of the other UCSD people (no doubt due to Snowbird and SMS instruction and the almost 5 million vertical he's skied since age 4). <BR> <BR>Then came the biggest storm, Dec. 31 and Jan. 1. 50 inches in total, very little lifts or terrain open either day. No one skied and some people went home. That wasn't easy either as the road out of town was intermittently closed during that time. The main activity for those who stayed was digging out buried cars. <BR> <BR>Adam had to come home Jan. 2, but with the season pass he tried to ski the morning. Only one advanced lift was open, chair 22, and Adam didn't try it as he estimated the lift line at close to an hour. He skied 4 runs and came home, as even some high speed quads had half hour lines. <BR> <BR>I had a few experiences like this back in the 1980's. Almost 2/3 of Mammoth's terrain is above timberline and closed during big storms for wind, visibility or avalanche danger. Particularly during a holiday period like this there is a perverse side effect of long lift lines because so many lifts can't operate. <BR> <BR>Powder days at Mammoth are a wildly unpredictable. With the upper lift closures, you get to ski 3 or 4 days accumulation when they open. If you're lucky you get the thigh deep face shots Adam had last April or I did 4 years before. If the snow is heavy or the wind has compacted it, you get what Adam had Dec. 27. Unless you can ski like Glen Plake every Sierra powderhound should have a dedicated fat ski like my Chubbs to handle those conditions.
