10-29-2021 – Opening Day Trip Report from the Mammoth Snowman

It was a fantastic Friday, October 29th out on Mammoth Mountain. Got up to Main at 7:45 and there was already a big crowd at chair 1.

Everyone was happy and ready to ride. There were even some costumes and people really getting into the fun.

Oh, and the best part was the free coffee after not sleeping all night due to “Opening Day” excitement. Lol! opening day is like Christmas Morning you’re so excited you can hardly sleep.

AS for the snow there is 1-3 feet of base snow was on the menu and the snow ended up being great if you chose wisely.

My first run choice was a ride to the top and skiing down a groomed cornice bowl. From the first turn up top it was like, “yahoo! this snow is soft and fun!”.

Dropping into Cornice I was expecting hard pack and it was a nice carvable groomed-out surface.

Smooth was the word, the cat crew that groomed cornice had it perfectly smooth no cross cat lines or uneven surfaces just carve and not think about it. I went back several times throughout the morning and Cornice was holding up well.

Dave’s run had some great snow on Friday and it only got better as it got skied and then the wind picked up a bit. Flaskman took these photos for you just after lunch.

Lot’s of people skiing and riding in the Drop Outs. The snow in there was soft and fun. The upper 1/3 was the best,

the lower apron had some funky setup snowdrifts you had to watch out for. But with some good turn in between the drifts.

The lower 3rd was a sketchy crusty surface that needed more traffic to break the snow up into the soft stuff. If there is some decent traffic in the dropouts the next few days it should back into some really fun early fun wind pack type snow with soft snow on top.

With the late October sun high in the sky and the warm temperatures, the snow thawed by around 10 AM on Broadway.

Thawed or not there were some great turns to be had. Of the lower runs open, I did Rusty’s, Broadway, and Fascination.

Broadway has decent coverage and by the time I got to ski it the snow had thawed just enough so it was soft but not sticky. No rocks or floats yet, but you could tell the base was very thin in spots.

Fascination was fast, firm, and carvable. In this shot, you can see the snow is still firm and is ready for a nice tuned edge to carve through. The base in here is very thin in spots, near the bottom there where are couple of dirt spots so beware.

All and all I gave this October day a ’10’.  There has not been many October 29th’s that a person can enjoy great turns off the top like this.

Overall the coverage was thin but it’s still a ton of fun out on Mammoth Mountain.  Did not hit any rocks or see any floaters when I left at noon. With that said I would expect to see some obstacles as more and more people are on the thin base.

Ski ya Later Snowman…