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Sometimes I don't want to go to the store which is less than 4 actual minutes down the road but then today I did 600 miles and since last Friday something like 3k. I got up as early as I could muster after 3 days of maximum shenanigans, its a bachelor party so to the grave but I highly recommend the boulders golf course and cake on the strip in Scottsdale. You make your own fun but some of the rowdiest shit in my life. I'm just getting to Mammoth, I scored a sweet ski in/out condo but I'm posting because my path took me about 30mins from death valley and I almost didn't make the detour. I've been lucky enough to go alot of places and drive alot of cool drives but Holy fucking shit death valley was absolutely stunning. Massive vistas in an almost alien landscape it was maybe the best drive I've ever been on. If your nearby don't miss it, it's as close as you can get to being on mars and except for the main area I saw almost no one for 50 miles.

Belle was fun today, looked like winter as soon as you turned off 28. As soon as the sun came out it was def spring. Cream cheese bumps du jour !

Day 61 and that's a wrap. Fresh snow and fog

Yes sir. Mid day peanut butter whiskey break. Still snowing, fresh lines and no lift lines all day baby. GH010039_1712240103532.MP4

Day 3 - Mammoth About a half inch of surprise snow overnight and lifts that spin at 830 and I was up and out early. Cold and up top it was hyper windy but super sun kept it from being uncomfortable. Mammoth is obviously gigantic with almost 30 lifts and 200 trails, like Sunday river it's mostly pods of 2k vert or so. As a big fan of weird lifts they have some great ones, 3 older fix grips, a two part gondy that you load in the lodge like a train station and my favorite chair 23, where it's so windy they built a hut to off load with directional tunnels depending on how you wish to unload. Where taos jams more steep on steep, Mammoth rolls over though it does have endless steeps and tech skiing. Personally I think CA skiing absolutely murders in the terrain, particularly playground terrain that is super playful tech but not actively trying to kill you at any moment and Mammoth has endless amounts of that. I went up 9 first to get the bit o fresh in the dragons back zone 2 which was good until you hit the wind scour and then it got spicy af. The groomers were perfection with low crowds and superb views. The gondy to the summit was on wind hold but I noticed they groomed a run down cornice bowl that looked like Kitzbuel. Chair 23 was absolutely rocking, the wind up top was blue like but I wanted to ski dropout chutes which are kinda famous that held decent chalky turns and the cornice groomer to st Anton. It was one of the best groomed runs ever, the steepness was perfect and it's the fastest I've gone on skis in forever. It was so good I ran it three times in a row at hyper speed Chair after chair, run after run of just perfect sunny groomers. Lower mtn I foolishly tried off trail and found deadly punch through crust that tried to send me to the shadow realm but everything else was mint and my God the scale of the place. You could ski here for a month and not get all the steeps lines. Reds Lake run, solitude, white bark bowl there were so many runs where you can absolutely fly but my favorite run in the whole place was rooster tail to dry creek. It was a steepish bowl of chalk to a choke with a monster rock wall backdrop. The line was perfect chocolate chip and once charted you could air between and over and come out the other side 1000% club super sex. The sheer amount of terrain and the amount of fun and creativity you can have is absurd. I don't know what it is but CA kills fun flowy super fast terrain and I did my best to ski as many and as much of the place as possible but I just scratched the surface. I don't think PASR does alot of golden state skiing but Mammoth is up there with the super resorts like Vail, Snowmass, etc etc where the scale alone is impressive.

Death Valley is the best detour I've made on a trip. Badwater Basin is pretty cool being so far below sea level. Really underrated park. Glad your car took you there!

Today is going to be a good day. 22 runs on hard pack to start, sleet that changed over to snow around 2pm yesterday. Today 8"+ being reported from the lower elevations and more up high. 13 miles away from Stratton and on my way. This might get Ikonic 😇

Day 60. Fresh but set up snow on the back, mud and glop on the front.

Some more footy from the storm. Stratton has some really really good tree riding when it's fresh. Snapinsta.app_video_10000000_392424296985773_7249342533102599535_n.mp4

No. That's a Maine thing, bub.

I was racking my brain this morning trying to figure out how this mountain was so steep after looking at it on cal topo. You can clearly see there are mellow descents to the north/northeast really looking at this map and now knowing where all the names peaks are, I realize we started down this line circled. I would really like to try this ski again with the mellower descent

We ate at a place called The Rack on the access road last night. Great food, beer list and crowd was lit IMG_8964.mov

Today I got to see what the cool kids in Marble do when they go backcountry skiing. I met a local the other day mid 70’s. We agreed to meet today at the winter closure gate at Lead King Basin. Our objective was to ski Sheep Mountain elevation 11,575’. I thought we were hiking up with skis on packs until we hit snow, then skinning. Nope. He picked me up in his side by side. We rode up about a mile to where he had his snowmobile parked. Then we switched vehicles. I sat in front and away we went. I actually have never been on a snowmobile before and it took a minute to get used to it. The snow was rutted and spring conditions and there were so many little roller coaster like up and downs. I was really trying my best not to smack his chin with my helmet from all the jerky stop and go motions. We came to a creek crossing and he got stuck on the uphill. So he instructed me to throttle it while standing next to it and he would pull from the front. That worked after a few tries. We exited the main jeep road and got into Sheep mountain road which is very tight and rough. He said there were 19 switchbacks. At switchback 13 he warmed me it would start to get rough. I was thinking “tougher than it’s been already” as we were skirting steep drop offs and almost riding sideways. He wasn’t wrong. We ran into another guy whose machine died. We helped him move it onto what little space there was without rolling down the hillside so we could get by. When we reached the top there were views from every direction. He gave me a very thorough explanation of what peaks were, ski lines, avalanche paths etc. The pictures don’t do it justice. It was so warm today. I asked him if we could go down the gentlest way possible and he said “I won’t do that but come this way.” I knew I was in trouble. The first headwall was really steep for me. Here is a picture from the bottom and my pathetic tracks of side slipping hoping not to fall Yeah, I can hear you all laughing but it was steep for me. We ended up not doing the whole 2000’ vertical and traversed to the snowmobile track and skinned back up. Ha wanted to hang out a bit since it was such a beautiful day. We snacked and chatted for a good hour in the sunshine. he left his snowmobile above the creek and after a sketchy crossing on slippery rocks with ski boots, carrying our skis, we skied the rest of the road to the side by side. Even though I didn’t ski the whole mountain, it was a stellar day!

Time to head back home, still snowing here and theyre claiming total 14" so far. Today was another one for the books, this Ikon pass has paid for itself already with these 2 spring access late season ikonic powder trips.

And we had over a foot of powder in places! I’ve only ever skied true powder once in my life. Definitely a learning curve. Lucky my son was there to haul my ass up!

We got 6 runs in when everything but the beginner lift went on wind hold☹️. But it was ok because the higher lifts were getting a little scary. Only lift open was a surface lift that laps the one area, but you had to be up there already. We lapped the baby lift a bit, then got off it and hiked up and over to get some untouched. Totally worth it. I may have a new hobby

View from condo when I woke up this morning