Mashing Up Mammoth Mountain Ski Area – 06/11/05

Cue the OC theme music…..

After emailing, PM’ing, texting, and calling anyone that I thought might be interested, as fate would have it, I had to go solo. I almost got Zippy to come along, until I told him what time Mammy opened…..7:00am. And hell, if I’m going to buy a day ticket ($50 US), I’m getting there when they open.

Music: Matrix & Danny J – ‘Telepathy’

I arrived in South Lake on Friday night at around 10:00 pm. Spaghetti dinner and a few Steinlagers later, then go to sleep with the Weather Channel on sleep timer. A few nightmarish dreams of Dave Schwartz (aka "the creeper") of the Weather Channel choking me from my television, I depart to 7-Eleven at 4:00 am. With some needed caffeinated drinks and snacks in hand…I’m on my way to Mammoth at an ungodly hour.

Bridgeport at something like 4:55 am, I’m sure Bcrider is in there somewhere

Not many cars on 395 this morning, made it an easier than easy drive to do while "thinking" that one is awake at the wheel.

Mammoth Mountain California – June 11th 2005:

Mountains looker’s left of Mammy…

Bloody Couloir, gimpy, Kellie, Greydon Clark, had memorable experiences there in May 04′

Broadway – littered with US Ski Team lemmings looking for gates and concrete snow

Nice shot of Chair 23 in the background

..and concrete snow they got. It really did freeze the night before, at 7:00am it was pretty bullet, at 7:15 am it was a little softer and so on for every run. By 10 am the whole place was pretty much unfrozen except for a few lingering patches on Broadway and on the GS courses they took down and re-opened for the public.

Chair 23 and Philippe’s…more on that later

The Upper park and pipe..

The pipe was definitely not up to Mammoth’s standards….as in mid-winter when the Super-pipe is SUPER. This was more like a Kirkwood pipe at the height of the season….decent but nowhere to being a super-pipe. Once the stragglers finally got out of their El Camino’s and on the hill, a line formed at the pipe on BOTH sides. I have no patience for stuff like that, so I bailed on the pipe and started hitting the upper mountain.

Ahhhhh…the scenery…The Minarets

Directly behind the Top of the Ganjola:

…of course, the sign for all you snow depth whores and a pair of DB skis

Hiked over to Chair 23 – Nelson Carmichael where are you?

The ridge over to Philippes is melted out, but it looked like if I scurried over some shale and brush, I’d get in there and "hopefully" be able to ski it top to bottom.

View of the top section from below:

Into Philippes…a small rocky crux near the bottom, but what’s a few rock-rail slides for a nice chute

From below..good fun line, worth the extra effort to get in there from the top.

Out of the chute, it was fine for about 6 gs turns and then it turned into this:

So yeah, everything else was pretty suncupped. Just FYI – I don’t know how the rest of the BC would be, but if its like this it’ll be horrid with a capital "H".

Some chutes on the way back to South Lake….mmmmmmmmmmmm, looks like there’s some options there.