Mammoth Sanction 2006

Skiing – Woo-hoo!

19 Days at Mammoth Mountain

Week One

Day One, Monday January 30

….had a slow start. Our arrival Sunday evening was after 11PM. Normally, that’s not enough to really slow us down, but Bentley, our Rottweiler, decided that he was not ready to settle in just yet. There were formalities he had to attend to. First, he had to make a thorough inspection of the place with his nose. And he is a very meticulous sniffer. After that, he was delighted to realize that this is a dry climate and that static electricity abounds! One of his favorite pastimes is to push his doggie bed around until he can make it spark. Then he drinks in that ozone fragrance and does it again. For hours.Even though he hasn’t had the opportunity to do this for months, both Fred and I recognized the rhythm: shuffle shuffle pause… shuffle shuffle pause… And on. Add that to some probably altitude sickness, and we didn’t have a really restful night. And then we had to gather us all our ski gear and escort Bentley to his first day at Doggie Day Care before we could make it to the slopes.

OK, so it was 11 before we made our first run. By starting later we avoided a frigid wind that died down and left a very comfortable sunny day. There had been a storm Friday night, so the slopes were in nice condition for packed powder runs. . By 1PM we started getting a very light dusting of corn snow, making the slopes even smoother.

My favorite run of the day was on “Haven’t the Foggiest”, which made for a nice warmup. Dinner at the condo.

It kept snowing until early evening and we were crossing our fingers and praying to the snow god for a fresh snow day Tuesday.

Day Two, Tuesday

Made it to Eagle Express before 10. About 5 inches of new snow – a bit on the heavy side, but nice all the same. Carolyn’s powder legs started to get their rhythm. Runs off the gondola were great – not sure if it was Upper Dry Creek or Huevos Grande, but that run and Dave’s were just fantastic with lots of new snow. We kept towards the trees a lot, where the snow was less tracked up.

Early quitting – about 1PM. Definitely a jacuzzi time!

Day Three, Wednesday — Skiing Uphill

Covered most of the mountain today. Still great conditions from Tuesday. We went all the way over the the chair 13/14 side. Nice snow everywhere, but it was especially nice among the trees.

Carolyn did a non-stop top to bottom from chair 10 Gold Rush down to the Mill, just for the heck of it while Fred made a phone call.

It was getting windy about 2PM – the chair lift was halted for a while. The wind is usually a nuisance, but today it helped out. The route to return to our condo pretty much requires that we get to the top of the mountain and take Dave’s Run to the Eagle Lodge side of the mountain. There’s a bit of a trek along the ridge, but the wind was at our backs, so we got a lift over to the crest of Dave’s. Skiing uphill…. unusual.

Dinner at Slocum’s: STEAKS

Day Four, Thursday Groundhog Day

Our plan was to ski if there was new snow and reasonable conditions. The decision was easy: no new snow and what looked like a whiteout on the mountain.

Good day for playing on the computer, reading and taking in the little Groundhog day celebration. At the Village, “West Coast Ollie” was called on to challenge his Pennsylvania cohort. Along with a band playing and a petting zoo.

Day 5, Friday

Sunshine everywhere and very warm!

Took Chair 23 and had some great runs in Drop Out chutes (lumpy at the top, but smooth and powdery just below.)

The ski passes and extended time allow us a little more leisure than usual. One a two day trip, at $72 bucks a day (or something like that) you don’t want to miss a minute of ski time. And also, we don’t want to overdo it early in the trip. We can always overdo it later!

Knowing we had two days of rest ahead, we skiied a little longer; his was our longest day so far – on the slopes before 10 and fried our legs until 3:15. Som really nice kids we met in the parking lot thought it was funny that we were planning to take the weekend off. Kind of like our workweek is skiing. Well, it is!

Days 6 and 7, Saturday and Sunday

Activity in the village increased as the weekend travelers arrived, but we were lounging or (Fred) working on his Brew application. We’re liking this idea of taking off the weekends and resting our legs.