We knew there was a modest storm forecast Monday, but it was supposed to clear out by Wednesday.
Tuesday morning had thick fog above 9,500 feet with possible lift delays (Monday had a lightning closure for an hour), so we did not get out until 10AM. That’s when we found out I had left my boot bag at home! So Liz dropped me at Main Lodge, where I rented a demo boot, the K2 DCA120.
The rain/snow line was just below Main Lodge, and reported new snow was 2 inches, perhaps 4-5 up high. With temps about 34F surfaces on the lower mountain were not frozen, so groomers skied OK aside from visibility issues. From Gold Rush, they did not want you up by top of Chair 4, which is not open midweek, even though a couple of runs from there go back towards the Mill. Liz and I managed to over to a very lightly tracked Lost in the Woods midday.
The Main Lodge area was still foggy 1PM, so we returned to Gold Rush, where we ran into Rainbow Jenny, TonyS, James and Debbie from Ski Talk. They traversed far left to catch the ungroomed below Face of 5, and we were pleased that there was no firm surface under the dense now snow. The fog rose a little so we went up Chair 5 twice and skied Sanctuary and China Bowl/Coyote with similar conditions.
We were done after that, but I had to go back to Main Lodge with the demo boots. But when I got off chair 2, the top was finally visible.
There were traverse tracks from back of 3 all the way out to the lower Paranoids. So I started on that traverse. I was suspicious of steep terrain so I tested a few turns under Hangman’s, OK but I was hitting bottom. So I skied Gremlin’s, then crossed St. Anton. I skied diagonal low angle powder almost to Bristlecone before cutting back to St. Anton. I skied 17,200 on Tuesday.
The K2 boot fit easily on my smaller left foot but was painful to put on my larger right foot. While skiing there was mild discomfort after awhile but I corrected it by tightening the second buckle on right ankle to reduce the upper foot boot contact. Skiing seemed OK, though only the last 90 minutes or so had much challenge.
I turned the boots in, figuring I might get something better at Footloose. But Footloose said they would not fit any of their Gripwalk demo boots to my skis, which are 2005 vintage Bonafides I bought via Craigslist in 2022. I found this strange since both my new and old Bonafides have Marker Griffon bindings and I bought my Lange XT3 Gripwalk boots in April 2021 at Footloose! The Footloose tech said Marker has revised those bindings at lease twice, and they won’t service the older ones. Nonetheless I have skied ~80 days on the 2015 Bonafides with my Lange XT3 boots without incident.
So at 4PM I went back to Main Lodge and rented the K2 BCAs for next two days.
Wednesday temps were in the 40s and sunny enough (maybe 1/4 to 1/3 clouds, more than forecast) that all the new snow went into spring mode immediately. That is a mixed bag because that snow can be very heavy until it drains into the old snowpack. Flat spots at mid and higher elevation were stickier than old spring snow at the bases of chairs 1 and 2. The rule of thumb on both groomed and especially ungroomed Wednesday was that you needed some pitch to overcome the heavier new snow for less resistance. We had our usual Stump Alley warmups, then moved to chair 5. Chair 5 ungroomed was mostly skier packed and skied well, Liz on Sliver here.
But it got sticky when it flattened out, so Liz wanted get some spray wax out of her boot bag in the car.
So I headed up top and ventured into Climax, since I saw no evidence of hard snow from the gondola view. Climax had been skied a little, and I found skier tracked lines manageable. There were huge chunks of the recent snow but they were still soft, which they probably will not be overnight. View from about 2/3 of the way down:
Next I traversed into Drop Out 3, which was a little easier as it had been more skier packed. My timing there was good, as the US Ski team racers had just finished with St. Anton, so I skied that down to chair 1 and reconnected with Liz. We took the gondola to Cornice and an encore of the St. Anton race course.
By now it was past noon and the lower race courses, which had not been roped off, had their best conditions of the day, Fascination in particular. We also skied Gravy Chute.
Ralphie’s and Terry’s (which had been roped off for racers) were also good.
We rode the gondola bottom to top around 2PM. Liz took another Cornice run while I tried Dave’s. I followed skier tracked lines as on Climax, but the unpacked snow was much heavier 2+ hours later in the day. And the traverses to and from Dave’s at that hour were extremely tedious in heavy snow.
I met Liz at chair 3 and we skied the ungroomed but skier packed liftline, then finished with Mambo/Patrolmen’s. I skied 23,600 vertical Wednesday.
The right boot gave me sharp pain putting it on. I realized I should ask Liz for assistance removing it and putting it on Thursday. The boot has a Boa cable system to tighten where most boots have their lower two buckles. I think it works fine for making the lower boot fit well, but you can’t spread it open when putting the boot on or taking it off. And that process puts a lot of pressure on the top of that foot exactly where my bunion surgery was in 2022.
But the bottom line is how does the equipment perform during the ski day? After my right foot settled down over maybe half an hour, the answer was very well. And Wednesday’s conditions were kind of weird, with that baked new snow being more resistant than settled spring snow. We rode a chair with Mountain Monster Thursday and he said Wednesday was the stickiest snow he has skied this spring. I’ve been in enough of that snow over the years to pick and choose the times and places to avoid the worst of it.
Thursday we got on the hill at 8:50 and Stump Alley was at its corn peak already. It probably got up to 50F but the chair rides were windy so didn’t feel much warmer than Wednesday. The groomed runs were all in normal spring mode despite no overnight freeze.
After 3 runs on Stump we moved to chair 5 and skied Solitude and Coyote. We got to Cornice at 10:15 and it was worth an immediate encore. As I suspected the ungroomed top runs were seeing much less activity than on Wednesday. While I’m sure the snow was more difficult, why bother when with very typical softening by exposure, it was easy to ski close to ideal corn for the 5 hours we were there?
We got out of the gondola when several of the US ski team racers were there.
We went up top via 23. View toward upper gondola station from there:
We’re not sure what created that pattern of backside snow streaks.
The last racers were still practicing when we reached bottom of Cornice.
We rode 3 and skied ungroomed Christmas Bowl to Coyote and another Solitude run. Crowds at Mammoth were fairly light this week, so popular runs like Solitude and Broadway didn’t get chewed up as fast and retained smooth corn longer.
We moved to Chair 1 at 11AM and hit the perfect corn window there: Broadway, Rusty’s, Ralphie’s and Fascination. Best of all was Terry’s, which we hit twice immediately after the racers were done there.
Then the ropes dropped on St. Anton, so we rode 23 up to Cornice and hit that. Next time up I skied Scotty’s to lower St. Anton.
Riding 23 there is a metal turtle affixed to a rock dead center of this pic.
Higher up between Wipe Out and Drop Out, “Chicken Man” and the Hulk are still going strong.
The Hulk is in his 12th season. Chicken Man can get buried in snow but The Hulk is almost always exposed.
Liz and I skied the chair 3 liftline: then she skied to our car at Chair 2. I skied Face of 3, then World Cup to Andy’s so I could return the boots to Main Lodge rentals. Liz then came to pick me up with my shoes.
I skied 26,600 vertical Thursday in mostly ideal corn. Overall I got by quite well with those demo boots. Only towards the end of each day I could feel some heel support lacking due to not having my custom insoles.
Tuesday morning had thick fog above 9,500 feet with possible lift delays (Monday had a lightning closure for an hour), so we did not get out until 10AM. That’s when we found out I had left my boot bag at home! So Liz dropped me at Main Lodge, where I rented a demo boot, the K2 DCA120.
The rain/snow line was just below Main Lodge, and reported new snow was 2 inches, perhaps 4-5 up high. With temps about 34F surfaces on the lower mountain were not frozen, so groomers skied OK aside from visibility issues. From Gold Rush, they did not want you up by top of Chair 4, which is not open midweek, even though a couple of runs from there go back towards the Mill. Liz and I managed to over to a very lightly tracked Lost in the Woods midday.
The Main Lodge area was still foggy 1PM, so we returned to Gold Rush, where we ran into Rainbow Jenny, TonyS, James and Debbie from Ski Talk. They traversed far left to catch the ungroomed below Face of 5, and we were pleased that there was no firm surface under the dense now snow. The fog rose a little so we went up Chair 5 twice and skied Sanctuary and China Bowl/Coyote with similar conditions.
We were done after that, but I had to go back to Main Lodge with the demo boots. But when I got off chair 2, the top was finally visible.
There were traverse tracks from back of 3 all the way out to the lower Paranoids. So I started on that traverse. I was suspicious of steep terrain so I tested a few turns under Hangman’s, OK but I was hitting bottom. So I skied Gremlin’s, then crossed St. Anton. I skied diagonal low angle powder almost to Bristlecone before cutting back to St. Anton. I skied 17,200 on Tuesday.
The K2 boot fit easily on my smaller left foot but was painful to put on my larger right foot. While skiing there was mild discomfort after awhile but I corrected it by tightening the second buckle on right ankle to reduce the upper foot boot contact. Skiing seemed OK, though only the last 90 minutes or so had much challenge.
I turned the boots in, figuring I might get something better at Footloose. But Footloose said they would not fit any of their Gripwalk demo boots to my skis, which are 2005 vintage Bonafides I bought via Craigslist in 2022. I found this strange since both my new and old Bonafides have Marker Griffon bindings and I bought my Lange XT3 Gripwalk boots in April 2021 at Footloose! The Footloose tech said Marker has revised those bindings at lease twice, and they won’t service the older ones. Nonetheless I have skied ~80 days on the 2015 Bonafides with my Lange XT3 boots without incident.
So at 4PM I went back to Main Lodge and rented the K2 BCAs for next two days.
Wednesday temps were in the 40s and sunny enough (maybe 1/4 to 1/3 clouds, more than forecast) that all the new snow went into spring mode immediately. That is a mixed bag because that snow can be very heavy until it drains into the old snowpack. Flat spots at mid and higher elevation were stickier than old spring snow at the bases of chairs 1 and 2. The rule of thumb on both groomed and especially ungroomed Wednesday was that you needed some pitch to overcome the heavier new snow for less resistance. We had our usual Stump Alley warmups, then moved to chair 5. Chair 5 ungroomed was mostly skier packed and skied well, Liz on Sliver here.
But it got sticky when it flattened out, so Liz wanted get some spray wax out of her boot bag in the car.
So I headed up top and ventured into Climax, since I saw no evidence of hard snow from the gondola view. Climax had been skied a little, and I found skier tracked lines manageable. There were huge chunks of the recent snow but they were still soft, which they probably will not be overnight. View from about 2/3 of the way down:
Next I traversed into Drop Out 3, which was a little easier as it had been more skier packed. My timing there was good, as the US Ski team racers had just finished with St. Anton, so I skied that down to chair 1 and reconnected with Liz. We took the gondola to Cornice and an encore of the St. Anton race course.
By now it was past noon and the lower race courses, which had not been roped off, had their best conditions of the day, Fascination in particular. We also skied Gravy Chute.
Ralphie’s and Terry’s (which had been roped off for racers) were also good.
We rode the gondola bottom to top around 2PM. Liz took another Cornice run while I tried Dave’s. I followed skier tracked lines as on Climax, but the unpacked snow was much heavier 2+ hours later in the day. And the traverses to and from Dave’s at that hour were extremely tedious in heavy snow.
I met Liz at chair 3 and we skied the ungroomed but skier packed liftline, then finished with Mambo/Patrolmen’s. I skied 23,600 vertical Wednesday.
The right boot gave me sharp pain putting it on. I realized I should ask Liz for assistance removing it and putting it on Thursday. The boot has a Boa cable system to tighten where most boots have their lower two buckles. I think it works fine for making the lower boot fit well, but you can’t spread it open when putting the boot on or taking it off. And that process puts a lot of pressure on the top of that foot exactly where my bunion surgery was in 2022.
But the bottom line is how does the equipment perform during the ski day? After my right foot settled down over maybe half an hour, the answer was very well. And Wednesday’s conditions were kind of weird, with that baked new snow being more resistant than settled spring snow. We rode a chair with Mountain Monster Thursday and he said Wednesday was the stickiest snow he has skied this spring. I’ve been in enough of that snow over the years to pick and choose the times and places to avoid the worst of it.
Thursday we got on the hill at 8:50 and Stump Alley was at its corn peak already. It probably got up to 50F but the chair rides were windy so didn’t feel much warmer than Wednesday. The groomed runs were all in normal spring mode despite no overnight freeze.
After 3 runs on Stump we moved to chair 5 and skied Solitude and Coyote. We got to Cornice at 10:15 and it was worth an immediate encore. As I suspected the ungroomed top runs were seeing much less activity than on Wednesday. While I’m sure the snow was more difficult, why bother when with very typical softening by exposure, it was easy to ski close to ideal corn for the 5 hours we were there?
We got out of the gondola when several of the US ski team racers were there.
We went up top via 23. View toward upper gondola station from there:
We’re not sure what created that pattern of backside snow streaks.
The last racers were still practicing when we reached bottom of Cornice.
We rode 3 and skied ungroomed Christmas Bowl to Coyote and another Solitude run. Crowds at Mammoth were fairly light this week, so popular runs like Solitude and Broadway didn’t get chewed up as fast and retained smooth corn longer.
We moved to Chair 1 at 11AM and hit the perfect corn window there: Broadway, Rusty’s, Ralphie’s and Fascination. Best of all was Terry’s, which we hit twice immediately after the racers were done there.
Then the ropes dropped on St. Anton, so we rode 23 up to Cornice and hit that. Next time up I skied Scotty’s to lower St. Anton.
Riding 23 there is a metal turtle affixed to a rock dead center of this pic.
Higher up between Wipe Out and Drop Out, “Chicken Man” and the Hulk are still going strong.
The Hulk is in his 12th season. Chicken Man can get buried in snow but The Hulk is almost always exposed.
Liz and I skied the chair 3 liftline: then she skied to our car at Chair 2. I skied Face of 3, then World Cup to Andy’s so I could return the boots to Main Lodge rentals. Liz then came to pick me up with my shoes.
I skied 26,600 vertical Thursday in mostly ideal corn. Overall I got by quite well with those demo boots. Only towards the end of each day I could feel some heel support lacking due to not having my custom insoles.
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