Ski Until July 4!

That's Mammoth Mountain's mantra this year. Hey Montana folk - can you believe it? A bunch of us had the day off yesterday and decided to head up to the mountain and see how the snow is this late in the season. It was a funny conglomeration of people, gear, free tickets, etc and it took us a little while to get settled in. We had two alpine skiers (my roommate and a guy who lives across the street), a snowboarder (the guys roommate) and a tele skier (me). It was a pretty perfect combination though, because we were all equally intermediate at our respective mode of travel, so a lot of the day was spent perfecting turns, getting comfortable traveling at higher speeds and settling into skiing again. I hadn't donned skis at all since my knee surgery in September, so for me yesterday was a huge success! I had no pain at all and felt very comfortable lowering myself into (far from perfect) tele-turning posture.

Mammoth got several inches of new snow on Friday. One of the guys that rode a lift up with us even called it a powder day! Yesterday, though, it was almost 60 degrees. People flew by us in bright pink and yellow spandex, jean shorts, tank tops, and one guy even donned a straw cowboy hat. He must have had a chin strap to keep it on! At the lodges, the mountain had provided pool lounge chairs, and many people sunbathed during their lunch break including a group of 5 guys who spent most of the afternoon shirtless and unconscious, lounging in the high mountain sunlight. It was quite a spectacle.

We ate lunch outside in our shirt sleeves and marveled, once again, at the supreme grandeur of this beautiful place we get to call home. Mammoth lies about 30 miles south of Lee Vining, but from the top of the highest lifts you can see Mono Lake, the White Mountains, the Minarets, the beginning of the high Sierra and the Southern part of Yosemite. It was pretty spectacular.

On one of our last runs of the day, we saw a lady bug, a stink bug, and a poor confused mole all running around on top of the snow. These warm temperatures are even fooling the animals into thinking it's springtime. Maybe, finally, we'll see the sun for good!