Mammoth Mountain Grooming
Remarkable is the first word that comes to mind when I think about the grooming crew at Mammoth Mountain. One of the reasons I have stayed in Mammoth for so many years is that the grooming exceeds expectations and is unmatched compared to anywhere else I have been.
There is nothing like the daily morning corduroy rush locals and visitors have come to love. Once 8:30 AM hits, there is no waiting; you’re just off taking endless corduroy carving turns for the next 3 hours. For those in shape, you can quickly rack up 10,000+ feet vertically before all the corduroy is skied off to packed powder snow.
During non-storm cycles, the grooming crew tackles around 800-1000 acres of terrain each night during the midweek. On Friday and Saturday nights, they ramp up the grooming, covering an estimated 1200-1500 acres of terrain.
The Mammoth Mountain Ski Area Grooming fleet consists of over 30 Snow Grooming machines and is one of the largest in the industry. The Mammoth Grooming Crew is in action from before the season starts to the last day of skiing, which happens most years in early Summer. There have been several grooming seasons that lasted from late October into early August.
Early Pre-Season Snow Spreading & Grooming on Broadway
In addition to grooming out the runs, the grooming team maintains all the entrance and exit ramps on all the lifts several nights each week. During storm cycles, the grooming crew moves snow to thin areas and helps maintain a ridable surface and ramps so you can load to the lifts.
The grooming crew also has a unique Unbound Crew that builds and maintains all the Unbound Parks located from Main Lodge to the Roller Coaster area and Canyon Lodge and by Little Eagle Lodge.
Mammoths’ History with grooming starts with Dave MC Coy, who was the backer of the current snow grooming standards. Dave and his Mountain Crews developed much of the groomer machine’s beginning and passed off the ideas and technology so its equipment could be produced.
What was the first mountain to groom steeps? Yep, Mammoth Mountain. Cornice Bowl got a makeover in the early 80s when they bulldozed part of the top and added towers so the groomers could winch up and down Cornice Bowl.
Mammoth is also famous for grooming steeps. In the 1980s, Dave MC Coy came up with the idea for the winch cat and had the company build him what he needed.
As soon as the top opens at Mammoth, the groomer crews run just about nightly grooming Cornice Bowl and Scotties.
If you want to make the most of the night runs groomed into perfect carving corduroy, you will want to be in the lift line before Mammoth opens. Some of the lifts fire off at 8:30 AM: 15, 16, 4, 2, 1, with all the other lifts up and running over the next 30 minutes.
One of my all-time favorite early-season groomer laps is Saddle Bowl to Mambo; below is a video from the Fall of 2023 skiing that exact line. It’s so much fun; just watch your speed. I filmed this video on a slow Wednesday.
