Mammoth 12/18/10

What a day.  Last night I headed to bed early because you know the early bird gets the worm.  Well the early Shay gets a powder day!  This morning, it was over knee deep in the parking lot and when I texted my trusty snow reporter friend Ashley, she said 3+ feet on the mountain plus it was still snowing.   I hitched a ride with Daniel to get to the mountain early and headed up to the village for the gondola.

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The snow was exactly as reported except deeper.  The first lift up, the first tracks looked amazing but then you started to notice the struggle of the first tracks due to the deepness of the snow.  We hit up chair #8 a couple of laps and realized that the mellow pitch of the terrain was not working this deep of snow.   I’ve never seen so many people stuck on the mountain and it was easy to get stuck.  I got stuck 3 times, tumbled head over heels 2 times and got air probably 4 times without meaning to.

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We decided it was time for chair #22 and the steeper terrain it offered.  It was about an hour of wait for the chair to open but we got 12th chair and I got first tracks down avy chutes!  I was sooo stoked that first run (even though my helmet cam didn’t record it, I got the 2nd and 3rd runs recorded).  The steep and the pow was perfect.

I put together a video of today’s riding with some clips from my vholdr helmet cam, figured I should bring it out to capture the moment but also looking forward to upgrading my cam this year to a better HD one.

Mammoth 12/18/10 from Shayboarder on Vimeo.

When it’s this deep, staying on the tracks means everything if you don’t want to crash.  Still it was fun to look back and see the snow with only two tracks.

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Daniel taking a tumble and kicking up a lot of snow in the process.  He’s in there somewhere.

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When chair #22 closed, we headed back to chair #8 to ride under the chairlift which had some great turns and more tracks meaning you didn’t get stuck while enjoying the freshies.  I snapped this shot of Daniel charging through the snow.

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