Less than two weeks ago, several storms dumped snow on Mammoth Mountain. According to some locals, they hadn't seen conditions like this since 2004.
We had been planning a trip for the end of January for months (see
here). My excitement to try out my new snowboard and experience the conditions couldn't be contained. I found a way to leave work earlier in the week and a friend left earlier than the trip was scheduled to leave. This gave us time to explore a good meeting place on the mountain and find some decent places to eat, AND ski/snowboard in some great conditions.
Late Wednesday afternoon, we pulled out of the driveway in a 2009 Subaru Forester for the 300 mile drive from my house to Mammoth Mountain.
235 miles away from Mammoth, we noticed snow covering the local mountains halfway down to their base.
130 miles away from Mammoth, we noticed a few small random places where the snow had not yet melted on the side of the road.
For those who have never taken the drive from Southern California to Mammoth Mountain, the road increases slightly in elevation for ~80% of the way until you arrive in the town of Bishop. The road after Bishop is where the elevation noticeably changes as you approach Mammoth Lakes.
Bishop is the closest town from the south and its about 45 minutes from Mammoth Mountain. There were a lot of places where the snow on the ground had not yet melted. I don't recall seeing snow on the ground in Bishop in my past experiences. The town's low altitude translates into a daily average temperature that isn't below freezing, which means that any snow that fell in the town melts rather quickly. A lot of snow had fallen in the past two weeks and the average daily temperate wasn't high enough to melt all of the snow on the ground, but this apparently was a sign of things waiting for us.
Between Bishop and Mammoth, just about everything was blanketed white:
I couldn't believe the amount of snow on the ground in Mammoth. All I could hear it say was tell the "Enthusiasts to come to the snow!" (taken from my iphone) so I relayed the message via text, call, and posts on the Internet when AT&T's service worked, which was rare since we were in the equivalent of the Bermuda triangle where the phone's time and date are often incorrect and service/connectivity was less than poor.
We pulled in to grab some dinner and the snow in some places towered over the Forester (taken from my iphone):
Crystal clear skies and no wind made a trip to the 11,000 foot peak of Mammoth Mountain a must:
McCoy Station is a mid-mountain lodge that serves foods and drinks, but its also the last place to pick up the Gondola before reaching the highest peak seen in this picture on the left. Rather than taking the Gondola to the top, we rode over to Chair 23 and took it to the top of the peak seen furthest to the right in the picture below:
From the top of that peak, we looked down to find McCoy station way off in the distance. The mountain is just HUGE:
McCoy Station looks a bit more familiar when zoomed in:
The mountain didn't look this steep at the top when looking up from McCoy station, YIKES!
The 180+ degree panoramic view from the top of Mammoth Mountain was beautiful. The Sierras were covered in snow for hundreds of miles in every direction. These were taken from the top of Mammoth Mountain from right to left:
Ok, nature aside, how the heck do we ski and board down the mountain? I definitely didn't want to board from the top of Chair 23, but it looked like most people felt comfortable skiing and snowboarding from a level surface not far from where we were standing:
Even that was just as steep as the drop off from the top of Chair 23. The lower height made it slightly less intense and more doable. so we went down that run and started exploring all areas of the mountain, including the backside, which still had 2 feet of untouched powder in some places.
The weather and sheer amount of good snow made this one of the most enjoyable weekend's of skiing/snowboarding that I have ever experienced. I posted on the forum (in the few rare instances AT&T's service allowed it) and called Aaron to let Subaru enthusiasts know that the snow was definitely calling and anybody who missed this opportunity would regret it!
