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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.

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 !

I got up there today super good groomers but no upper mtn though I might have been late. It was a super cool spot and apparently the air port is there but I never heard it. The brewery is open again Thurs to Sat and they built some kind of stage thing for music and what not. I got the best nap with the door open and a super view out of the door. Day 2 - Snowbowl I had to rally straight from the bowl to the party so sorry for the delay but I got moderate wastey pants in the craziest house I've ever seen. I left Taos at 4am to get to the bowl around 11, mostly because I planned this trip totally ass backwards but I was stoked to ride as I've heard so much about it. First thing I went for the bowl as you can see it from the lot and it calls to come ride. Sadly it was closed, not sure if I was too late but it looked like super sweet terrain and a reason to come back. The promenance of the hill is redic and the views are high class particularly for its size. I went white lightening or whatever the one is off the catwalk first about a half a dozen times. The sun side was super soft perfect but the shade was super slick which made for a dope challenge. Groomers were most excellent, super soft with relatively low crowds. I ran Sundance to logjam like 1000 times, its just a perfect hoot of a trail to put the hammer down. I ran super groomer after super groomer in the sun with mostly no crowds. Two days in a row of superb skiing, I'm on to some other stuff for a few days but I want to keep this train going. The question is back to taos or over to mammoth and June ? Thoughts?