Mammoth Summit with Smally – 04/30/05

Slim, Smally, and myself rolled into Roberto’s parking lot in Mammoth at around 8 pm or so on Friday night. A few drinks later and a few maggots finally met, we roll to about 5 more bars with the troup leader, Yoga, stringing us along. At the final venue, Smally ends up moshing to the punk band and almost fights a guy 10 times his size, and so we soon roll to the condo to get some needed rest after hiking Carson Pass earlier in the day.

We snuggle into Squirrel’s room on the floor. However, we barely fall asleep beacause of Squirrel’s ever numerous attempts to get us to spoon him on his "King-Size" bed.

In the morning, the S’s: Slim, Smally, Snorkeldeep, 666, Spats, and Squirrel were skiing together for most of the day. A few laps with Shane-O and Arty was as much maggotry we were able to consolidate. At one point there were about 30 maggots at the Gondola mid-station, but the skiing logistics would have been nightmarish, so the S’s toured the mountain.

How about some old Ed Rush & Optical for audio happiness while reviewing the photos?

Here’s what Mammoth looked like:

Lovely, lovely Minarets:

Yosemite…I can see the RV’s and Sanka from here:

BC behind the top of the Gondola:

Chair 23 – REALLY wide-open bowl goodness – lots of winter snow up here.

I drank a pot of organic coffee and then saw this:

More BC looking south off the top of Lincoln:

Smally in Phillipes (Mammoth name noob here, not sure if I’m exactly correct but its the far skiers left off of Chair 23, into lower part of Star Chute)

…And testing his edges:

And then in a typical Smally fashion…climb up into the gnar:

He’s on rock at this point…Squirrel and I get nervous:

Nope, he’s fine…

Smally on Hemlock:

Squirrel stops eating twigs and berries and shows up in front of the camera:

Squirrel coming through "Top of the world" area off the Ganjola:

I followed Smally into the exposed line on looker’s right…got to trust a kiwi:

Spats on top of Star Chute…getting pumped:

Spats on fire…killing lines everywhere on this day:

So now Smally wants to hike up this wall inside lower star chute to hit a straightline on the other side:

…he wants to get his money’s worth on the lift ticket. Squirrel helped him by raising the Bid Daddy’s up the rock face:

A ski patrol was next to me while we watched Smally ski this. He told me that its probable that its never been skied before:

A view from Slim’s camera…rinsin’ it out:

What a wicked day! Nice to meet and ski with some of the maggots.

…and so after the incredibly inept waiter at the Yodeler finally gave us the check..we headed back to Tahoe to hit the closing day of Kirkwood…..the very next day.