Mammoth 2/25/11: The day 60K of powder happened

S

Staley

Member
I arrive in Mammoth about 2:00am, got 5 hours of sleep, and then got first chair at Broadway. I managed to do 12 Broadway laps in just the first hour. They were all Gravy or Baby Gravy to the Potato rock. I think I finally got the correct balance in the air for the Praxis, and now they’re pretty much automatic. I slowed down a little after the second hours, and Stump laps through Roger’s/Drop 18 are slower. I took one out to the Bear, which was great, but I realized I’d never get to 60K if I kept doing that. The rest of the day was a mix of the above.

Counting the time it takes to load and allowing for short lift stoppages (of which there were very few, I spent a bit less than 5 hours on lifts. Since I loaded about 8:25 and finished me last run at about 4:20, I spent almost exactly 3 hours actually skiing. That gives me 2.5 minutes per run, so clearly I’m quite tired.

I considered Broadway and Stump as 850 vertical of powder. Total, Broadway is 886 and Stump is 984. I think this is pretty fair, since Broadway was entirely powder until the ropes at the bottom. Stump was all powder except for the cat track at the bottom. No lift lines ever.

I ended up taking 57 laps on Broadway, and 16 on Stump. I got to know the lifties at Broadway quite well and they let me duck under any ropes I wanted.

66246 total vertical, 62050 of powder.
 
I don't think you have your vertical calculated correctly. You should calculate based on the vertical rise of the chairs. Afterall, you do have to ski back down all that ascent.

Broadway Express is 964.5 vertical feet
Stump Alley Express is 1,060 vertical feet

Your total vertical based on the number of chair rides is 71,936.5 feet. You also spent 5.415 hours riding the chairs.

Honestly, I don't think you can do 12 runs on Broadway in one-hour. The ride time on the lift is 4 minutes, 4 seconds. In one hour, assuming perfect lift operations (no stops for bad loads/unloads), that would only leave you with 11 minutes, 15 seconds for skiing. You'd have to average around 60 mph per run, which is impossible. It's not impossible to hit that speed at some point, but to average it you'd have to be going much faster at points.

Regardless, the overall stats are impressive for the day. Congrats!
 
I would love that map if it were not upside down. Also, I don't understand where that map gets its numbers, but I question the accuracy since Mammoth has been claiming a top elevation of 11,053 feet for as long as I know. Chair 3 for example, the mountain claims it has a vertical rise of 305-meters (1000.65 feet). That map says 820-feet. That's a HUGE discrepancy. Who's wrong?
 
Chair 3 definitely isn't 1000 vertical feet. I think the map I used is based on GPS stuff from Google Earth, so it should be pretty accurate.
 
The lift vertical numbers on that map look low. There are some discrepancies between my Vertech watch and the Mammoth trail map numbers, but Broadway and Stump are very close to the 1,000 and 1,050 claimed. I typically do my warmups there and on chair 3 (which I think is shown somewhere at 890) and the watch agrees very closely with mid-morning chair counts.

With regard to Staley's vertical numbers I don't necessarily challenge the total vertical using those fast lifts, but it has to be a very liberal definition of powder to claim 90% over the whole day on two of Mammoth's more popular, lodge accessible lifts. Furthermore I'm guessing chairs 3, 5 and 22 were not open, or else Staley would have been hitting the better powder terrain there. With those chairs closed, 1 and 2 are going to get tracked quite rapidly.
 
On any sort of a normal storm day, Chairs 1 and 2 get tracked within about 2 hours. I had a very similar day earlier this season where this was the case. However, for whatever reason, nobody was over at 1 and 2. I think all of the better skiers went to Canyon hoping 22 would open. I heard reports of 30 minute waits on Chair 8. The complete white out and strong winds also kept people away, so the result was that no decent skiers were over on Chairs 1 or 2. I showed up at 8:22am and there was nobody else even outside at Main. I got the first chair and I couldn't even see anyone on a chair behind me (not that I could see very far). When I finished my Gravy Chute laps, I didn't even go through the rope maze but went patroller-style right onto the chair. By the time I made it to the top, my tracks were completely gone. As the short cat track to Gravy Chute is basically flat and the powder extended straight to the bottom of the chair, I honestly think 90% is conservative. Obviously the bottom bit isn't the best terrain and I was just straightlining it, but it's still not a run-out and can be counted as powder.

Also, as Tony correctly pointed out, had 3 and 22 been open, I would have spent time there and not tried to maximize vertical. I disagree about Chair 5 being a good powder chair, though. The top is usually windblown and roped off for avalanche danger, and then it's simply not steep enough for big storms. Also,if you want to make it back to the chair, you have to either stick to a small part of the chair's acreage or cut your run short and traverse back. Getting stuck in the gullies and then taking the slow run back to the Mill isn't so great on a powder day. I'm not saying I wouldn't wait in line for first chair given the opportunity (I did this just last weekend), but I feel Chairs 1 and 2 are actually better for powder.
 
I just went on Google Earth and the numbers on that map don't add up. Chair 2 on Google Earth calculates out to 1,030 feet, Chair 1 at 940 feet and Chair 3 at 877 feet. I don't trust Google and neither should anyone else. I think the lift survey stats from the manufacturer of the lift would probably be the most accurate. Why doesn't Mammoth post each lifts vertical in their trail map? I also don't think that a company like Mammoth would make false claims about their 3,100 vertical foot drop.
 
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