Mammoth

April 5, 2004 - Ed goes to Mammoth

Did you notice that the family who lives next door to you was out of town last week? Their newspapers were piled up in their driveways, the front porch light was on all day and night, and there were no late afternoon leaf blowing noises. Well, the dedicated staff of edhat.com knows where they were. It seems that everyone (particularly everyone with kids) was up at Mammoth last week for Spring Break. Restaurants, gondolas, and hot tubs were packed full of Santa Barbarians.

The dedicated staff knows, because we were there too. On Wednesday, instead of waiting in line at the DMV as we told our readers, we made up an incredibly believable and clever April Fool’s Day story, gassed up the car, waxed up the skis, and headed to the eastern Sierra. It was a beautiful drive through the orange groves of Santa Clarita, the poppy fields of the Antelope Valley, and the Owens Valley where the views of the backside of the Sierra are stunning. A tip for anyone making the drive – don’t get gas in Mojave! Just don’t.

In a world full of unreliable information, ski reports rank up there near the top. The Wednesday ski report on mammothmountain.com told tales of great packed and ‘off-piste’ conditions. The truth of the matter was that the snow was icy in the morning and slushy in the afternoon. And, because of a heavy wind, the ‘off-piste’ remained icy all day. Oh well, we were skiing … it sure beats a day driving around looking at gas prices! We ate our lunch at the Mid Chalet. At the table next to us sat about 20 people from Santa Barbara. We think one of them was the architect of the new Carrillo Hotel.

Wednesday night we shared a hot tub at our condo with a bunch of current and former Santa Barbara residents. Experts in not drawing attention to ourselves or revealing our identities, we remained quiet and listened to the talk. So what do Santa Barbara people talk about up in Mammoth?

“The ONLY place to live in Santa Barbara is on the Mesa.”

“I know wealthy lawyers who can’t afford to buy a house in Santa Barbara.”

“Santa Barbara isn’t a place for retired hippies anymore, they can’t afford it!”

It is funny to hear the small talk people make when we know they are really wondering how many blueberries were in a Jeannine’s muffin or about the mating patterns of the California Tiger Salamander.

On Thursday, the weather report on mammothmountain.com said “infinite sunshine”. Ever the gullible bunch that we are, the dedicated staff dressed lightly - two layers. However, once on the slopes it quickly became apparent that we had been April-Fooled ourselves. It was windy and cold, and hard little pellets of icy snow pounded against our poorly insulated bodies. Halfway up the mountain, the fog was so thick that visibility was zero.

The top of the gondola was closed. This put a giant crevasse in our rider/skier counting for the day. A closed gondola meant that there was no way to get to the top of the mountain and nobody to count if we found a way up there. We did however count skier and snowboarders at the Canyon Lodge. There we found 63.5% of all winter recreationists to be skiers. On Wednesday, the day before our count, we had made it up to the top of the mountain. We would venture to guess that the skier/snowboarder percentage there was similar to the one at the lodge.

Guesses in our contest for the percentage of skiers varied from 18% to 79% with an average of 54%. Lemony, who guessed 63%, was the closest and is the winner of a prize from the edhat.com grab bag.

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