Mammoth - excellent

I'm writing this late. Not late in the day, but late in the date. This is being written on the 1st of April, but I'm going to write it as if we just got back from skiing.

Skiing was...excellent! After work last Wednesday we drove up to Ridgecrest, roughly half way to Mammoth. We stayed at the local Comfort Inn which was pleasantly comfortable. The manager was typically camp and gave us a "manager's discount" on the room. All I had to do was smile and bat my eyelids at him.

We got up nice and early on Thursday, and headed North on the 395. Excellent scenery, and a nice long straight bit of road too. We were expecting the drive to involve winding mountain passes and lots of slow driving but there was nothing of the sort. We drove up a gentle hill for about four hours, getting closer to the snow line until we had snow either side of the road. Then by 10am, we were there. Much earlier than expected.

We were on the slopes by 11:00am.

Emily gave me lots of direction on my skiing which was mighty helpful. She also snook us onto a few black diamond slopes that afternoon without my knowing.

Saturday brought with it snow. Lots of snow. A blizzard in fact. This excited me; images of the Ice Planet Hoth in my mind. Emily was somehow less enthusiastic. We stuck with it though (helped along with neoprene/fleece face masks that we bought after the first run down) until about 2pm when they closed the mountain.

The next (and our last) day of skiing was even better than all those before, though we were getting a bit tired by this point. Very few of the slopes had been groomed, and by mid-morning moguls had developed almost everywhere. Lots of fun.

A few photos were taken.

Monday was spent on the road. We had planned to stop off a couple of times but most of the route was either through barren desert or through dire looking small shanty-esque towns. We did have one stop off though, at Fossil Falls.

We got back home in time for dinner. It was good to be back at sea level. Mammoth ranges in altitude from around 8500 to 11000 feet, high enough for altitude sickness to be an issue. We found that we were out of breath a lot of the time. The other bother we had was sunburn, or rather windburn. I got badly burnt skiing in the blizzard on the various small exposed areas of skin on my face: The underside of my nose, by my ears and around my mouth (the mask had lots of small holes punched in the material around the mouth).

All-in-all, an excellent little vacation. I wish we had been able to spend more time there. The drive was long, but not all that bad. The air back home feels like a warm soft blanket in comparison.