Mammoth Opening Day 11/10/11

You know it’s a good day when the season finally kicks off at your home mountain. It means first turns, powder turns and tons of fun ahead. I was really forward to today, it was finally my mountain that was opening up for the season. After the last snowfall and snowmaking, there was more than enough snow to open on our planned Opening Day. I was up bright and early to help out with the marketing team and be a part of the Opening Day experience.

When I arrived at the mountain at 6:30am, there were a couple people near the lift and by the time I went outside at 7:30am, there was a good line-up of people waiting for their chance to be one of the first down Mammoth this season. Joani was on the television doing live broadcasts with news channels (pretty cool to walk inside and watch her on tv).

Conditions were good. It was early when I got up on the mountain so definitely hardpacked corduroy but I didn’t encounter any rocks or dirt while riding. There’s definitely a need for more snow to fill in spots on the runs that weren’t operating but we’ve got time, this is only day 1 of the season.

I helped out with our social media for the morning and got to ride up the lift early so I could capture people at the top and get a couple riding shots before coming in. From the first chair up, you got a good feeling for the jump that the Unbound crew built. Definitely perfect size for all the pros in town. There were a couple easier features in the parks today but definitely more for the intermediate-advanced riders.

I got my laps early on and met up with Daniel for one of them through the park. Right now they are collecting a ton of the snow to build the half pipe so it’s completed way sooner this season. It’s crazy the amount of snow that goes into the super duper pipe but they’re working on it already.

At the end of the morning, Rusty did his toast with Woolly to the season and everyone enjoyed the free champagne or cider.

It was good to see old friends around the Main Lodge today, definitely a bit bummed to not partake in this weekend’s fun but happy to be headed out of town for a couple days.