I haven’t been skiing at Mammoth since the early nineties, after college, but it’s where I learned to ski in high school from nearby Bishop.  And I had forgotten what a great big and diverse ski mountain it is – though I’m sure I also wasn’t skiing as much of any mountain’s terrain back then either.  Anyway, driving to Mammoth from Santa Cruz/San Jose in the winter isn’t very convenient (given all the Sierra passes are closed) and  you have to essentially drive by many other great ski resorts to do it.  However, with an extended stay at our new place in Tahoe last week, it was easy to hop down to Mammoth for a couple of days (just a three hour drive) and make use of our Mountain Collective passes.

We got some nice, typical spring skiing conditions: overnight frozen snow, following the sun as the slopes softened up from east to west to north.  Plus Mammoth is so high (peaking at 11,000 ft), it was easy to avoid any sticky slush that would develop lower down.

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Here’s the pictures and video from our annual week of skiing and tabletop gaming, this year back in Tahoe again with Jon, Jim, Bill, Kat and Brin. We were unfortunately in a bit of a very warm and dry spell for California at the end of February. This kept us to the freshly groomed runs, rather firm in the morning, soft in the afternoon and refrozen over night, but we hit up Squaw Valley, Alpine Meadows, Sugarbowl and Northstar over the course of the week.