January 19th, 2017 - Mammoth Mountain
So Mammoth has been getting absolutely dumped on this January. In fact, January 2017 set the record for snowfall in one month for this mountain with 246 inches of snow which puts the old record of 209 inches, that was set in December 2010, to shame. That's right December 2010, you're now January's bitch. That's 20.5 FEET! FEEEEET! That's 205 toes!! That's more snow than mammoth got in the ENTIRE 2013-2014 season. So that being the case, Mr. Marek and I decide that its high time that we get our asses on the mountain. So that's exactly what happened.
In to our respective cars we go and we're off to Mammoth by way of Mojave and Lone Pine. You've already met Vince and Kelly, so now let's Phil! He's the one throwing up gang signs in the back, or is that a 'thumbs up' and a 'rock on' hand gesture that's been mashed together, or maybe that's just how Phil show the number 3. Phil sits across from me at work, he is literally the person I see the most at work. I have so many stories about Phil that its difficult to chose the one that I want to represent Phil with, so instead I'm going to pick two. Story 1: I have a standing desk at work and I often listen to music at work. When I listen to music, I often dance. Phil has taken it upon himself to dance in a semi-mocking/semi-approving fashion every time he comes to my desk. If I were to attempt a visual; his dance is basically a slow and smooth version of 'raise the roof' combined with a low impact knee-bend all topped of with copious laughter. Story 2: Phil hiccups... a lot... loudly. He also hiccups while coughing as the same time, and I'm pretty sure he's hiccuped and burped at the same time. I laughed, probably way more than was appropriate, every time he did any of these for the first 3 months or so of meeting him. Yeah, he's entertaining.
Jordan J. has some wickedly awesome hair. It's big, and curly, and I was momentarily granted a single two-handed hair grab a week. That moment was about half a second when she realized "Wait, once a week? Awww no, that's way too often." I think we are on a case by case basis now. More importantly, don't tell Jordan that she used to design clown costumes because she will straighten you out; she designed circus costumes. Ahhhh, right... that's what I meant. Either way, I still think it's pretty rad. Oh, also I think she got a restraining order on me for trying to take her picture this weekend. She hates it. Hates is. Go to the end of the youtube video to see how much. So of course, what did I do? I took a boat load of pictures of her. But to be fair Jordan, I think I got some good ones.
After unpacking and settling into the house, we all congregated in the common space to hang out, have a few drinks, and play some table games. That is of course if you are Steven and you make it your personal goal to start the fire. Steven was in front of that fireplace for about 10 hours over the course of the weekend. We appreciate the effort Steven, I shall build a monument to immortalize this moment. Also, thanks Alan for actually starting all of our fires. And to add to that, thank you Ocampo for bringing back "The back of yo head is RIDCULOUS!" Click the link... you know you want to. I dare you not to.
Next up is Jordan H.
He’s played a handful of games with Virgin’s super non-pro basketball
team, The Cosmic Ballers. Apparently he’s
got a hot hand from 3-pt land but I think he needed a couple games to take the
gloves off. Jordan is pretty decent on a
snowboard, especially when he has to deal with the shenanigans of Vince and
me. Unfortunately, Lani decided to ditch
him on the 'end of the day run' back to the lodge and pushed him off the path
down into some off-trail trees and he ended up at a different lodge with no
lifts running. Those pesky skiers are
such jerks! Just joking, Lani didn’t do
that. If fact she was helping Phil with
his skiing: elbows in, French fry, French fry, FRENCH FRY PHIL! OOOoooh, French Fry Phil, that a French ass name! Anyhow, after an hour or more, Jordan showed
up at Eagle Lodge by way of a very slow bus.
Friday conditions were great. It dumped all day, I was off-trail in thigh
high powder most of the day. I even
managed to clip a buried fence that sent me for a nice tumble. Even though it was super cold, pretty windy,
and the visibility was close to whiteout, I haven’t seen this much uncut snow
in Mammoth in years. It wasn’t quite
enough snowfall to cover your tracks on the next run down, but definitely
enough to find clean lines all day long.
Keep in mind that only 1/3 of the mountain was open due to strong winds. The best part was that there were no lift
lines! Woohoo!
Unfortunately the experience was not quite universal with the
group. If you’re not experienced with riding
in fresh powder, the conditions can be extremely frustrating. You have to ride faster than you normally do,
you have to lean back to keep your tips out of the snow, you can’t stop, and
you definitely don’t want to fall since it can be impossible to get back up
with no hard surfaces to leverage yourself on.
In fact, it’s pretty common for snowboarders to fall off-trail, get stuck
with their head in the snow, their back against a tree and their board in the
air, and suffocate. Just ask Vince, it
happened to him. Luckily he was riding
with a group and his buddies dug him out.
But then again, Vince is a boss, so he can pull that off. Also, Phil is a boss, or more accurately Phil
does things “Like a Boss”. Vince can
also eat chicken cutlet out off a ziplock bag on a Jones beach “Like a Boss”. Don’t get it?
Spend 10 minutes with Vince and see if he doesn’t bring up chicken
cutlet. He’s talked about it so much
that I’m craving it, and I don’t think I’ve ever even had it before!
Back at the cabin, it’s time for lounging, S’mores, drinks,
curry, and hot tub! We also took a
gander at Alan’s GoPro footage where he caught Jordan J’s MASSIVE
faceplant. Catching a front or back edge
is one of the worst ways to fall on a snowboard. Basically your head is cruising along and
your feet decide that they are done moving and come to an immediate halt. Hello face, meet ground. It’s the kind of
fall that will get a 5 second “OOOOOOOOH!” from the 10 nearest chairs on the
chairlift. It also the type of fall that
separate the people who think people falling is hilarious (that’s me and Alan)
and the people who have a heart and feel bad for them. As you can guess Jordan J didn’t ride the next
day. But she did get a bunch of people asking if they can get her number.
It had snowed through the night but had let up in the morning. Down at the cabin, the weather looked pretty decent, no wind, a bit of blue sky, a drizzling of snowfall, perfect conditions. So those of us that were up for a second day made our lunches, had our coffee, made our beer-mosas, dug the cars out, and proceeded to drive all around mammoth looking for a place to park. After about an hour, we gave up and dropped everyone else off at Eagle lodge and Alan and I parked the cars halfway between the lodge and the cabin. Herein lies the critical failure of Mammoth Mountain. The problem is that Mammoth is LA’s primary mountain. That means for any holiday weekend or really good storm, everyone flocks to the mountains. More so, the top half of the mountain is usually not open until late morning on calm days and rarely is open during a storm. For THIS storm in particular, there were even more chairlift closures. The result. INSANE LIFT LINES. In that picture of the mass of people, there were twice as many people in front of me.
By the time we got up to the top of Eagle Chair, over to Canyon Lodge, and back up to mid mountain, the conditions were pretty much whiteout with a whipping wind that was stopping all the chairlifts multiple times on every ride up. I was legitimately cold. We shed a few more riders from the group and pushed through. Finally we ended up RollerCoaster and the baby park. Just off of this run was a crappy 2-person chair lift that let us to some perfect run conditions and no lift lines. Just off the top of the run, someone had built a set of jumps that ended in a bank of powder. Vince is drooling at this opportunity and spends about an hour here trying to throw a backflip. I do get one shot of him with a sweet boardgrab. Jordan H and I later go off the same set of jumps. I try to throw a 360 but was totally unprepared for the shape of the kicker. It basically threw me up rather than out and my legs came up over my head and I landed like a lawn dart in 10 feet of powder. Alan grabbed the jumps on his GoPro and I stuck it in the video.
We stop for a quick lunch to warm up and end up shedding a
couple more riders. The rest of us catch
another break and find some great weather and even better riding on the way
back to Eagle Lodge. I lead the group to
do some off trail skiing and we end up back at Eagle to lap the lift one more
time before ending on a very satisfied note.
End of the day, end of skiing, end of the trip right?! Not quite!
There was concern with some of the group about the storm that was
predicted to continue through the next 2 days.
I’ve only been snowed in at mammoth once before, and even then we got
out the same day, so I wasn’t concerned.
Plus, it was dumping snow! Of
course I want to stick around! So some
of the group took off early that night as not to have to deal with snow chains
and possible delays etc. The rest of us
hit the hot tub and settled in for a nice night.
Sunday morning starts off very relaxed and Steven announces that
the highway out of Mammoth, the 395, is in fact open. So we have breakfast, pack up the cars, and
spend about 1.5 hours shoveling out the car.
Alan, with his badass 4x4 truck can’t even pull out of his spot without
chains on all four tires. My truck had
to be completely dug out to even have a chance with its 2WD and puny tire cables. Eventually we get all the cars out with an
impressive showing of diesel smoke from Alan’s exhaust pipe and we are on our
way home. …Until we are directed to go
left back into town instead of right towards the highway. After aimlessly driving in horrible traffic
around town, we decide to just head back to the cabin and wait it out. Luckily, Phil and I had our work laptops with
us, so we didn’t miss a beat while the rest of the gang enjoyed the down time. As soon as the sun went down, we decided to
not try to get home that day in the dark and just spend another night in Mammoth,
but before calling it a night, we took a joy ride around town in Alan’s truck
to check out the snow laden ghost town of Mammoth. It was a good thing we didn’t try to leave
since we had an average of 5 feet of visibility while driving around town. At several points, we couldn’t see the hood
of the car, now that’s some bad vis.
Monday morning was an even more impressive amount of
snow. The suburban was covered in snow
up overt the windows. Digging the cars out took even longer and I had somehow managed
to lose one of my snowchains. On the plus side, the massive snow banks were
perfect for jumping into from the tops of the cars. A quick run to the store for replacement
chains and we are ready to go just in time for CHP to open the 395. The drive out of Mammoth was gorgeous all the
way to Bishop. Everything was white,
except for the sky, I’ve never seen this area so beautiful. Unfortunately, I was driving so I got zero
pictures but Phil and Vince were hanging out of the windows for the first half
hour of the drive.
I always have a great time in Mammoth, big group or small,
this trip was no exception. Here’s to many
more ski trips and many more winter storms!
