Maybe I should just copy in the report from my trip April 9-10...
12 inches new Thursday night May 5, top closed Friday, therefore first tracks Saturday morning
, about 7K of powder skiing this time. Upper mountain coverage looks the same as 4 weeks ago, so there is some speculation that July 4 might not be the end. Like Marc I'm tempted to try for a 12-month season this year.
There are some differences from April. As Marc also noted the sun is intense even if it's not that warm, and it's also coming from different directions, so some of the usual rules of thumb about snow preservation don't apply. For example NE facing chair 12 softened to spring conditions before SW facing chair 13. On May weekends about 70% of Mammoth's terrain is lift accessible, everything as far east as chairs 4 and 5.
The top opened at 8:45AM, so I hit Climax, Cornice, Wipe Out, Drop Out 2, Paranoid, Huevos and Dave's in search of fresh snow of varying quality. Fat skis were even more essential than in April, with Dave's and Paranoid having the best snow.
After lunch I decided to check out a few of the more exposed runs which are more accessible this year with the deep cover: Hangman's, Varmint's Nest and Philippe's. Saturday morning was blue skies and calm, but the wind picked up in the afternoon. I learned to inspect runs even more closely than normal in May, as Hangman's had dry carvable snow but a return visit to Heuvos at 1:30 served up hardpack instead of the morning's cream cheese. Huevos was particularly interesting as 4 more more skiers came into it in when I was partway down and I was bombarded with sloughing death cookies.
I skied 4 runs on chair 5 the last hour to finish up with 30,600 Saturday. Nearly the entire face of 5 had skier-packed and slightly softened but not sticky snow. This might have been my best overall May ski day (out of 52 lifetime), though I got a bit more powder on the 1998 Baldy day in my avatar.
I pushed hard on Saturday as I expected conditions might be difficult Sunday. As on the trip 4 weeks ago Mammoth did lots of grooming Saturday night, so there was lots of great corn cruising Sunday morning. Morning weather was partly cloudy with some wind, but the May sun still worked pretty fast. By noon a few flatter areas started to stick. Mammoth would usually be salting by now, but since it keeps snowing that hasn't been necessary yet.
In late morning I ventured up top and was pleasantly surprised to find dry windbuff on Cornice and Dave's. There was also some nice smooth snow on the lower part of the Avalanche chutes, which could be reached traversing from Gold Rush, and afterwards skiing down to chair 4. After lunch I went up top one time too many. The cloud lowered onto the mountain and I had a slow one-turn-at-a-time Braille run down Climax. At 1:30 it started to dump snow with increasing wind, so I called it a weekend after another 20,600.
Mammoth reports 7 inches new this morning and it could be as much as 2 feet by tomorrow. Mammoth's continent-leading snowpack is attracting hot-shot skiers from all over. I can't view this 10MB video of some of them at Mammoth May 7 at the moment, but reviews are excellent:
http://www.adventurefilmworks.com/Videos/May7.mov
12 inches new Thursday night May 5, top closed Friday, therefore first tracks Saturday morning
, about 7K of powder skiing this time. Upper mountain coverage looks the same as 4 weeks ago, so there is some speculation that July 4 might not be the end. Like Marc I'm tempted to try for a 12-month season this year.There are some differences from April. As Marc also noted the sun is intense even if it's not that warm, and it's also coming from different directions, so some of the usual rules of thumb about snow preservation don't apply. For example NE facing chair 12 softened to spring conditions before SW facing chair 13. On May weekends about 70% of Mammoth's terrain is lift accessible, everything as far east as chairs 4 and 5.
The top opened at 8:45AM, so I hit Climax, Cornice, Wipe Out, Drop Out 2, Paranoid, Huevos and Dave's in search of fresh snow of varying quality. Fat skis were even more essential than in April, with Dave's and Paranoid having the best snow.
After lunch I decided to check out a few of the more exposed runs which are more accessible this year with the deep cover: Hangman's, Varmint's Nest and Philippe's. Saturday morning was blue skies and calm, but the wind picked up in the afternoon. I learned to inspect runs even more closely than normal in May, as Hangman's had dry carvable snow but a return visit to Heuvos at 1:30 served up hardpack instead of the morning's cream cheese. Huevos was particularly interesting as 4 more more skiers came into it in when I was partway down and I was bombarded with sloughing death cookies.
I skied 4 runs on chair 5 the last hour to finish up with 30,600 Saturday. Nearly the entire face of 5 had skier-packed and slightly softened but not sticky snow. This might have been my best overall May ski day (out of 52 lifetime), though I got a bit more powder on the 1998 Baldy day in my avatar.
I pushed hard on Saturday as I expected conditions might be difficult Sunday. As on the trip 4 weeks ago Mammoth did lots of grooming Saturday night, so there was lots of great corn cruising Sunday morning. Morning weather was partly cloudy with some wind, but the May sun still worked pretty fast. By noon a few flatter areas started to stick. Mammoth would usually be salting by now, but since it keeps snowing that hasn't been necessary yet.
In late morning I ventured up top and was pleasantly surprised to find dry windbuff on Cornice and Dave's. There was also some nice smooth snow on the lower part of the Avalanche chutes, which could be reached traversing from Gold Rush, and afterwards skiing down to chair 4. After lunch I went up top one time too many. The cloud lowered onto the mountain and I had a slow one-turn-at-a-time Braille run down Climax. At 1:30 it started to dump snow with increasing wind, so I called it a weekend after another 20,600.
Mammoth reports 7 inches new this morning and it could be as much as 2 feet by tomorrow. Mammoth's continent-leading snowpack is attracting hot-shot skiers from all over. I can't view this 10MB video of some of them at Mammoth May 7 at the moment, but reviews are excellent:
http://www.adventurefilmworks.com/Videos/May7.mov
