Mammoth -California Dreaming

Mammoth Mountain

Why Mammoth Mountain is a Must Do

If you’re looking for huge snow totals, wide-open bowls, and a California feel, Mammoth Mountain should be at the top of your list. In this Where to Ski podcast, I sit down with longtime patroller Ian Scott, who has spent 54 years skiing Mammoth — including 16 years on the ski patrol.

Location

Located in the Eastern Sierra, Mammoth Mountain is easily accessible from Los Angeles, Reno, or Mammoth Lakes Airport. This ski resort is famous for its long season, massive storms, and high-alpine terrain. Sitting at 10,053 feet, Mammoth is the highest lift-served ski resort in California. It averages over 400 inches of snow each winter, with some seasons pushing past 700 inches. This allows for skiing that stretches into July and even August.

Terrain Overview

With 3,500 acres of terrain, four base areas, and high-speed lifts, Mammoth can handle big crowds while spreading skiers out from beginners to experts. Lower-mountain zones and dedicated learning chairs offer wide, well-groomed runs for families and new skiers. Intermediates love the long cruisers off Stump Alley and Canyon Lodge.

For advanced skiers, Mammoth delivers legendary steeps. Off the summit, Cornice Bowl, Scotty’s, Dropouts, and the Headwall offer drops, chutes, and high-speed carving. Many of these expert runs are winch-groomed from the top down, allowing confident skiers to experience steep terrain in prime conditions.

Apres Ski and Local Attractions

With tons to do in town, a rockin' Apres scene, and some killer skiing, Mammoth may just be your next spot to hit. After a day on the slopes, unwind with friends at local bars and restaurants. Enjoy live music, delicious food, and a vibrant atmosphere.

Additional Activities

Mammoth Mountain isn’t just about skiing. The area offers a variety of activities year-round. In the summer, hiking, mountain biking, and fishing are popular. Explore the breathtaking scenery and enjoy the great outdoors.

Plan Your Visit

Before you head out, make sure to check the weather conditions and snow reports. This will help you plan your trip effectively. Whether you are a beginner or an expert, Mammoth Mountain has something for everyone.

🎧 Hear the full Mammoth episode on the Where to Ski podcast.

For more information, visit Mammoth Mountain.

Episode Transcript

Welcome to Where's Ski, I'm your host John Morgan. This episode takes us to California in the USA. Let's click in and check out Mammoth Mountain.

Mammoth is in California's eastern Sierra Mountains, about 36 miles southwest of the Nevada state line. Five hour drive from LA, this is Southern California's biggest and best. You can fly into Mammoth Lakes Airport, drive from LA, drive from Reno.

It's all right there. Mammoth was founded by Dave McCoy. Legend has it that he noticed that Mammoth consistently held more snow than other mountains in the area, and he bought the rope tow from the local ski club in 1941.

In 1953, the Forest Service awarded a permit to McCoy to operate the ski area, and the first ski lift went up in 1955. At 10,053 feet, Mammoth is the highest lift-served terrain in California. The vertical isn't the only thing that makes this ski area legendary.

It averages more than 400 inches of snow annually, and that keeps its huge terrain open longer than most North American ski resorts. Our guest for this episode is Ian Scott. Ian was on the ski patrol in Mammoth for 16 years and has skied this hill his whole life.

He now runs the Mammoth Ski Patrol Alumni Group, which has some incredible number of members. So, after this quick break, we'll talk to Ian and find out about the real Mammoth from the perspective of a longtime patroller.

 Ian, welcome to WHERETOSKI.

Thank you. As we've been talking about, I've spent some time at Mammoth, and it's always delivered. Usually, I was there skiing towards spring, and the snow, the sun, the California attitude all made it awesome.

You've spent 54 years skiing this mountain. 16 of them on the ski patrol, if I got it right. What brought you to Mammoth, and why did you stay? It's that infamous year break from school.

Wanted to do something different and think about what I was going to do in the future, and this ended up being the future. And you just never left, and that's great. It's turned into a great life for you out there.

Yeah, I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do when I grow up. So getting there, most people aren't lucky enough to live in Mammoth or Mammoth Lakes and right around there. What's the easiest way to get there? You can fly in, but that's sort of limited.

There's only so many flights going into Mammoth Lakes. Most people drive up there? Yes, they do. And it's generations of people taking that long drive, whether it be from San Diego, Orange County, Los Angeles.

It's a six-hour drive. And a lot of people have been doing that ever since they were kids, and now they make their kids do it. And that's just what it does, what it takes to come to Mammoth.

And it's usually well worth the drive. Yeah, I've been there on Friday nights when people start pulling in. It's interesting.

Yes, the long white snake coming up the road. But then the town just absorbs them all and puts them on the hill. That's great.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That mountain can hold up to 24,000 people in a day. What? Yeah.

It's not exactly skiing, but they're there. That's huge. That's a lot of throughput.

It is. And nowadays with the high-speed detachables, everybody is moving. Everything is moving and they're moving faster.

And it doesn't overload the mountain? I think for some, that's a matter of opinion. There's the generations that take that drive on Friday to come up here and ski Saturday, Sunday, that's what they know. That's their Mammoth experience.

So 3,500 acres and a little bit of so-called out of bounds. You can move people around. Yeah, there's a lot there.

And there's four base areas, right? And so people spread out. Yeah. And it's pretty predictable, too.

The congestion is in the congested areas. On those really busy days, they can fan out a little bit more. But if you know what you're doing, you can still avoid somewhat of a crowd.

And because of the difference in the way the mountain's laid out, the difference between the expert skiing and the beginner and intermediate skiing is sort of separated. So you're not getting a lot of, say, beginner skiers skiing with the experts. There's not a lot of overlap.

It's a lot of lower mountain versus higher mountain stuff, right? Yeah. Well, it's the other way around. You get too many experts skiing with the beginners.

The mountain, you can divide it up into thirds, into lower mountain, middle mountain, and upper mountain. And it does spread people out. Nowadays, with the equipment and the grooming capabilities for the upper mountain, seems like Cornice Bowl and Scotty's Run will hold the congestion, depending on the snow conditions.

And if the dropouts and the wipeouts aren't that good, people will be in Scotty's and Cornice. When it gets good, we can flare them out either direction. So as I was saying, there's a lot of expert at the top, and down toward the middle and lower mountain is intermediate and beginner.

But there's a lot of skiing there for starting off skiers, beginners and intermediates. It's like half the terrain's targeted for them. Yeah.

Whether you're a true beginner and you're over on the Chair 11, Sesame Street Express, or over on the Canyon Lodge side, Schoolyard Express, and the old Chair 7, a lot of places there, a lot of good terrain for beginners. Yeah, and a lot of it's wide open. They're wide open, they're groomed.

I'm assuming it's been a while since I've been there. I'm assuming the grooming is up to par, and it's just beautifully done every day. Yeah, it is well-groomed.

And with the amount of snow you guys get there, that's important because it can stack up. It most certainly can. We had over 700 inches, what was that, three years ago.

This is a place where you can say, yeah, that's too much snow. Is that when they have to dig the lifts out? Yeah. Just because we had all that snow doesn't necessarily mean it was a good skiing year.

So everything was maxed out at the bottom. All the lift terminals were maxed out. So the CAC crew would have to come in and really flare it out so people can get into the loading area without having to go downhill.

Yeah, yeah. And then it just goes from there. You've got avalanche work every five minutes, all day, every day, pretty much, when you have a year like that.

There was a lot of work to be done. And sometimes, after a storm, two days of digging out, avalanche work can get done pretty quick in the morning under the right conditions. You dig out for two or three days in that season in particular, then another series of storms would come in, and you're right back to where you started.

Yeah, you got to be careful what you wish for sometimes, right? Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, so back to the beginners and intermediates. So they're skiing over there.

What's a great place for them to sort of take a break on the hill? There's the mill down at the bottom of Stump Valley Express and Gold Rush. Also over in the outpost, the backside of the mountain, is another spot. There's McCoy Station, which used to be referred to as Mid-Chalet.

So there's quite a few facilities there for them to take a break at. And they can always go down at the main area. There's the lodge, and there's a few other things down at the base too.

So there's a lot there that they can just jump all into. Yeah, there's Main Lodge, there's Canyon Lodge, there's Eagle Lodge. Fair amount of good facilities for them.

Okay, so that works out pretty well. And I'm sure that a lot of the, especially the weekend skiers that get up there, take advantage of a lot of that. Yes, yes they do.

Let's go on to some of the more advanced stuff. This is where I have fun at this mountain. I mean, I got taken on a few runs up there that were kind of hair-raising.

They were fun, you know, shoots, things like that. And there's been a lot of work done over the last few years, especially about opening up more terrain, opening up a couple of the ridges, right? Yes, there has. What were some of your favorite runs? Do you remember the names? Oh my God, no, I can't.

You know, I just sort of look down the hill and I go, oh, let's see, I sort of want to go down that one. I don't look at the name, I look at sort of how it lays out. Yeah, yeah.

But I'm thinking about things like, oh, Skyline and Cornice Bowl. Cornice Bowl, I think I've been down. Yeah, if you skied anywhere off the top, more than likely it was Cornice Bowl.

It does get groomed. The cornice that made Cornice Bowl famous really no longer has an opportunity to build up like it used to because the cats can get in there. Oh, you cat that out? Oh, yeah.

Oh, really? Yeah. So they don't go down the hill, they just do the ridge, right? Oh, no, they go down the hill. They are hooked up to a cable.

It's a winch system there at Cornice Bowl and also at Scotty's. So they are grooming it from the top all the way down. So what do they do? They do the center and then the outsides left to be able to get skied without grooming? Yeah, I mean, for Cornice Bowl, you can only go so far to the right because then you're into MJBs and you're into the rocks.

You know, they do a lot of summer work up there to make these things possible for the cats. If you go too far to the left, yeah, the pitch has kind of changed and now you're on your way over to the dropout side and not nearly as desirable of a pitch and an entry for the rest. Okay.

Yeah. Now, most of where I've been to is like Exhibition, Christmas Bowl, and now there's a backside. I've never seen that.

You're dating yourself there with Exhibition. Well, you used to have to spend time over there. Yeah, I know.

They don't call it Exhibition anymore? It doesn't get the traffic that it used to when the old chair three was there and it was double. I mean, there was a reason they called it Exhibition and that was a big bump run that had big bumps and people would ski that to put on a show for the people waiting in line at the old chair three. That was Exhibition.

Well, you know, the knees don't do that much anymore. I used to be able to ski those things, but those bumps were actually pretty big and groomed. They weren't groomed, but they were well-formed, so you could actually ski them.

Yes, exactly. Now, you sent me, I think it was yesterday, you sent me a picture of what hangs over the door in the main lodge patrol room. The sign that says be flexible? Yes.

How does that work at Mammoth? How does that work at Mammoth? Well, you may show up with a plan. As we know with ski areas and the ski industry, things change. The weather will change your program.

Be flexible for what needs to get done so you can get it open. Okay, so speaking about the program, how do you ski this mountain? What's the best way to do it? Does it ski with the sun like some places you ski with the sun or without the sun and you move across the mountain over the course of a day doing that? Yeah, you can look at it that way. Early season, what's in the shadows of your winter sun, you would want to be more over at the main lodge area because once it comes up over through the lake space and then over the whites, you actually do get sunshine.

The canyon lodge side with Lincoln Mountain, you can stay in the shade most of the day. And so that's something that is to consider early season into the winter time. Now, that completely changes later on in the spring where you're looking for where the sun has been shining and you're staying away from the shadows again because you're looking for some good corn snow.

As opposed to something that's been just beat on for a while and that is turning to just mashed potatoes. Yep. Okay, so where should people stay away from more than anything? I know being a patroller, you're like, just don't go out of bounds, but there's certain parts of every mountain where it's like, well, I don't know if I really gonna have a lot of fun there.

It looks cool, but it may not be. Well, everyone's sense of adventure is a little bit different. So what is it that they're looking for? For me, I have a different set of eyes than the skiing public.

Where would I stay away from? I would stay away from Stump Valley on a Saturday. That's just me. But I'm looking for where the least number of people are.

And it might require that you need to have a better ability for that. Are there places that you could throw some skins on and go up to a ridge that people can't get to? No, we're really not set up like that. I mean, one place I can think of would be Hemlock Ridge off the backside, Chair 14 area.

And that's a short walk up. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone putting skins on to do it. It's not that long of a walk.

But that being said, they do allow in some areas uphill traffic these days. So you have to get your uphill ski pass from Ski Patrol and sign all the proper waivers to go against the flow. And with that, then people are training going uphill with their skins on.

We see them quite often over in the Chair 9 area heading up to the top of Lincoln Mountain, Chair 22 and Chair 25. Do they let people do that all day long? Or do they have a cutoff time for that? No, I've seen it all day long. But then again, I'm not skiing all day long these days.

So I don't really know what's going on in the afternoon. Fair enough. Fair enough.

I try and get the good stuff in the morning myself. Yeah. I've found that a lot of places, it doesn't hurt to get a guide or an instructor to help you get used to the mountain and to keep you out of trouble.

Is that a sense of mammoth? It's pretty open. You can see a lot of the mountain in one shot. So it's not like you're going to get lost.

You're not going to hit a crevasse like you would in Europe or something like that. No, no. People do hire ski instructors not only for maybe the lesson aspect.

Can you give us a couple pointers? But we want to see the hill, and we want to be able to cut the lift lines. So what exactly are you looking for in that? The mammoth host department offers tours. And they're more of a naturalist tour.

And they talk about the area and the mountain and Dave and the local topography and geology. And they talk about the squirrels and the pine trees and things like that. Our organization, the Mammoth Mountain Ski Patrol Alumni Association also offers tours.

And that's more specialized. We kind of give them the tour of what the job is related to ski patrol. Really? So give me a little bit more on that.

Because the organization you run is really kind of cool. It's got, I don't know how many members you have, but there have been a lot of patrollers that have gone through that area in the last, say, 50 years. Yes, our history is coming up on 73, 74 years.

How many do we have on our roster? We are well over 1,200. Jeez. Do you ever get them all together and send them? Um, back in 2017, before the Mammoth Mountain Ski Patrol Alumni Association was a nonprofit organization, its roots began in 2017.

And we held our first official Mammoth Mountain Ski Patrol reunion. And we had about 350 members show up. And it was just fantastic.

We had guys there that patrolled in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s. It was great to see the younger current members being able to meet some of these guys that were true legends. Even before my time, I patrolled from 85 to 2001.

But having the current members being able to meet our assistant director, Dave Crockett, and our supervisors, and like, oh, I just met these guys. This is what that name is, that run is named after. So it was a fantastic weekend.

That's how we started the organization, was coming out of that reunion. That's pretty cool. There's a lot of history, actually, at Mammoth.

And it's not like old, old history, a lot of it. A lot of it is from when McCoy found the place and decided to try and develop it and get the Forest Service permit. But since then, there's a lot of lore around, oh, we found this set of runs here.

And we're going to open them up next year. Or we've been looking at that whole bowl over there for five years. Now it's time to do something with it.

Yeah, yeah. Starting in the 40s, when Dave was down at McGee Mountain along 395, and Dave was a hydrologist for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, he had his eye on Mammoth Mountain. He knew how much snow that hill was holding.

So when he finally got up there, yeah, starting off with the old rope tows and getting to the first chairlift, and then the first three, and then how he developed the mountain very strategically at that time for maximum coverage on the acreage. Well, and it does hold snow. I mean, how late is Mammoth open these days in the spring? It's open until like June or July, right? It's not uncommon for us.

To make Memorial Day is a really good average. But we will go into June. We will go into July.

We will go into August. I think September is the only month out of the year that we haven't skied Mammoth with lifts running. We open up in October.

So you get October through August. That's a pretty good season. That doesn't give everyone much downtime either for maintenance or for just time off.

No, you need to give your feet a break from the boots. Yeah, no kidding. So we talked a minute about abbey mitigation up there.

You guys get heavily involved with that, right? Oh, yeah. That's a big part of the Mammoth Mountain Ski Patrol. So what's a day like? Let's say it dumps.

What's a day like for a patrolman getting up there at like 7 and as soon as the sun's up and looking to see what's going on? On a typical day, if you can get that, we will be out the door. If you're on a shooting mission, say out of Canyon Lodge, you're out the door at 6 a.m. to hop in the snowcat to get a ride up to the top of Lincoln Mountain. And you're getting up there at first light.

Some folks, if they're on the guns, they'll be heading out at 530. So and those times kind of vary. Later on, when the actual sunrise time changes, we have been known to go up earlier.

Yeah. And so we use guns and drop charges or how? Yeah, we have hand charges and a gun program. We have two 105s on the hill.

One takes care of the main lodge side. That's gun one. And gun two takes care of the chair nine area through Dave's to Huevos Grande.

So a pretty extensive acreage and what those guns need to cover. That's huge. So you've got to move those guns, aim those guns and.

The guns are permanent. Are they? They're set. Okay.

So they are set. And then this summer, they actually put in their first remote activated. What do you call it? A gas propellant, like it's called a boom whoosh.

It's like a potato gun almost. Yeah. And it's set and it's yeah.

So the ski area is trying that for the first time this year. I've seen those. I haven't seen any in the US, but I know some people are using.

I just haven't seen them. I've seen them in Europe and they're pretty cool. They are being used more and more.

A lot of the highway departments use them. If you're familiar with Alpine Meadows and Kirkwood, they are used there. Caltrans uses them along Carson Pass.

We have them just here on 395 above Mono Lake, north of Lee Vining. Those are the old gas X programs. Same principle.

Just make a big bang and the repercussion takes it all out, but they're stationary. So you just hit a button and they go. Yep.

I believe there's an app for that on your phone. Yeah. Let's set up an avalanche.

Let me hit the button. That's pretty cool. How does the mountain open after a dump? A good solid dump.

Not like a three-dayer, but a reasonable overnight dump. They try to get on it as soon as possible, getting the things done. But patrol is just one aspect of it.

You have to have lift maintenance getting up there, checking all the lifts. Was there an ice event? Do they need to get in there and clean off all the ice? What's the grooming conditions like? So patrol catches a lot of slack for hurry up and wait. What are you guys doing? But that's just what the people in line see.

There's a lot of other things going on. That's because you guys are the guys that drop the ropes. Oh, well, yeah.

But what they're not seeing is the cats up top. Yeah. Okay.

At that time. So when it does dump, does the bottom of the mountain open fairly quickly, and then you clear the top as soon as it makes sense and it's safe? Yeah. There's a fair amount of avalanche work that needs to be done even on the lower hill.

Really? And yeah. Off of chair one. You have gravy chute in the wall and around the corner chutes from, oh, the bear, upper cliffs, lower cliffs, Rogers on down.

That's in the chair two area. All that needs to be done before the lower hill is open. And then also over at the canyon lot side, Lincoln Mountain.

Well, that all needs to be done before they could open up chair eight, 16 and four. And so it's not always what's in front of you. It's what's above you.

Fair enough. Fair enough. Yeah.

So what's the, in a normal day, do you guys get to ski a lot or do you get after you've got the mountain clear and going, is it here? I'd love to hear more about the day of a patrolman out there. Um, Hey, get, get the work done. Now the secret is to get to the work.

You have to ski that. That's one of the perks, but as far as free skiing, no, I'm not free skiing. And until the work is done, um, taking care of the closures, making sure all the mitigation avalanche mitigation is done before the public gets on there.

Um, then you got to deal with the people that need your help. And that starts as soon as the first person gets off the chair, you know, there's that mad rush. And, and, uh, man with mountain ski patrol does, uh, takes care of a lot of wrecks, a lot of first aid.

And, and you're just going to get that with the terrain and the, and the number of people that we get up there. There's a, you know, there's a lot of skiers. You're going to get that.

And, you know, you guys have got some real experience up there. So that should make everyone feel better that they, if something happens, they're going to be taken care of. Well, they, they are well taken care of.

They have an excellent patrol program these days. So the last few years, there's been more infrastructure investment in the mountain. Um, the lifts keep getting upgraded, you know, they've gone all to pretty much as everything is detachables, right? Just about, yeah, they, they can move some people.

There's still some lifts that are the old slow fixed grips. Uh, we'll see what they do next for those areas. You know, I'm particularly talking about chair 12, 13, and 14.

Those are all still double chairs, fixed grip. It's a, it's a slow ride up when you got used to all those high speeds. Yeah.

It gives you a chance to, we have your legs a break though. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Something to be said about that. Um, and then at the same time you have chair 23 and chair 22.

You, at least in my opinion, you don't want to turn those into high speed chairs. There's enough people up there, you know, it's what's taking you up to the top. It's what's taking you up to Lincoln.

Uh, those get skied out quick enough. We don't need to put what? Three more butts in the chair and send them up that much faster. Let it be.

And, and, and let us enjoy what we have. Well, and keep the mountain sort of balanced. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. All right.

You know, mammoth, we mammoth can get packed, um, especially on weekends. How would you ski it? If you were skiing, not patrolling, how would you ski it on those days? When everyone, everyone in their brother's skiing, go the other way. You're lucky you live there, but if somebody comes up, any, any advice for them? Um, you know, just the way that the skiing public is, they are watching everybody.

They are watching the crowds and that's what they feel safe doing. And it takes the other set of eyes and knowledge to go to those other places. So it's hard for me to say, um, to, to do that, you know, areas like the backside when it's winter time and you're not dealing with the spring conditions, that's a great place to go to first thing in the morning.

When, when it's open, because everyone else is still riding chair one, two, and three. And if there's any kind of snow, you'll get some probably back there and you're high enough up that it's probably pretty good powder. It's, it's, it's pretty good.

Nice open bowls back there, a different aspect. You're, you're facing more to the west. Um, it can be a lot of fun back there.

So on, on that vein, you know, this mountain's.