Mammoth Mountain is offering half price beginner lessons for skiing and snow boarding from the 22nd through to the 27th of January. That’s a great opportunity to get into skiing at a awesome price. For as little as $75 the package includes rentals, lift ticket and 4 hours of instruction. Whilst we don’t have snow in the places that experts want to ski 95% of beginner terrain is open. There is also some snow in the forecast for this weekend which will help to freshen everything up.

Bookings need to be made in advance by calling 800 Mammoth or 800 626 6684

Buying new skis can be a tricky business, there are so many choices out there that can make the decision confusing. Here’s a rough guide to help you out. A new pair of skis can make a big difference to your skiing especially if you have some relics from the 1970s!

Before you even start looking at skis think about where you are likely to be skiing and on what kind of snow. Be honest and realistic, that way you will purchase a ski best suited to your needs. Likewise think about your skill level. If you are a complete beginner don’t go for an expert ski and vice versa. Once you have established your skiing needs there are a few ski characteristics to consider.

Length: As a rule of thumb the ski length tip be somewhere between your chin and nose when held up beside you. If you are a beginner err on the smaller side. The type of ski you get will also influence length, for example you might want to go longer on a powder ski to aid floatation in the pow pow.

Radius: Radius refers to the length of turn the ski will make when it is put on edge. The more side cut a ski has the shorter the radius. I ski on a very narrow ski with a big side cut that lets me make 11m carved turns. Good fun on the groomers but a little grabby in the crud. For an all round ski look for something in the 17-22m range. This really depends on the type of turns you enjoy making though, go longer for big turns, smaller for short turns.

Side cut view

Width: Width is measured in three places, the tip, under the foot and tail. The wider a ski the more floatation you have in powder but the slower the reaction to your movements to initiate the turn. A narrower ski gives you more grip in icy conditions. So think about where you will spend most of your time skiing. For soft powder snow go for 100mm or more under foot , for harder snow go for something around 65-80mm. In between 80mm to 100mm gives you an allround ski but they might not be great on ice or powder.

Ski Stiffness: Usually the stiffer a ski the more it holds an edge and the more precise it is but also the less forgiving it is to mistakes. The better skier you are the stiffer you can go, if you are a beginner steer towards softer and more forgiving skis.

Rocker: Rockered skis have been out for a while now and are becoming much more main stream. Rocker refers to the tip, tail or both being bent up. This allows for better floatation in powder and makes it less likely to hook the skis tips if you are a beginner. However, in firm conditions rocker leaves you with less edge and so less grip. The amount of rocker varies from fully rockered to just a wee bit.

Rocker Tips

Twin Tips: If you want to ski backwards then twin tips are the way to go. These skis are preferred by park enthusiasts (aka park rats). One side effect of twin tips is that they generally spray snow out from behind which can be an occupational hazard if you are following someone skiing on them!

Twin tips flying high at Mammoth

Ok so now you hopefully have an idea of the type of ski you want, and we haven’t even looked at skis yet! The next step is to see what is out there that fits what you need. There are a number of places to look.

Local Ski Shop: Visit a local shop if you have one, tell them what you want in terms of length, width, rocker, radius and stiffness. Then they will be able to show you the skis they have to match your needs. If you have put some thought into exactly what kind of ski you want then you should be just left with just a few choices rather than dozens.

Look for the skis dimensions which are usually easy to find; they should tell you the length, radius and width

Demo skis: The best thing to do if you can is to try before you buy. Many mountains have demo days where different ski companies will offer their skis to test for free. This way you can try lots of skis from one brand or a host of brands. Also most mountains and rental shops have demo centres where you can rent skis that they sell to get a feel for them. If you are heading to Mammoth and we actually get snow then visit yeah sweet online. They offer all mountain and powder ski demos with a delivery service included.

Websites: A great source for skis are online stores like evo and skis.com. Often you can find smoking good deals on last years models (often the only difference is the top sheet).

If you are in the market for new skis then I hope this article has helped focus your search. If not I’d be happy to reply to any questions you might have regarding the best ski for you. Happy shopping!

Our last snowfall of note in Mammoth was on November 20, 2011. I’ve got accustomed to waking up to a bluebird day, the only real variable being how cold or warm it is. I’ve resigned myself to the lack of natural snow. I know where the rocks are likely to be on the ski runs and avoid them, soon I will start giving some of them names as they are a regular feature on the slopes. But all is not lost. The lack of snow has provided opportunities to combine a skiing trip with other pursuits not normally available in Mammoth at this time of year. Here are 5 things you can do in Mammoth look on the bright side and make the most of your trip.

1. Ice Skate! This is one of the best ice skating seasons in a long long time. The area is abound with mountain lakes frozen over offering the perfect natural skating rink. In particular Lake Tenaya on the Tioga Highway is a popular spot. You can now hire skates from Quicksliver in the Village.

2. Visit a Ghost Town. Bodie, one of the best preserved ghost towns in California if not America, is usually off limits this time of year due to snow. An hour drive from Mammoth it will be errily quiet at the moment due to lack of the summer crowds. Take a warm jacket as the wind is often blowing through this desolate spot and spare a thought for those that had to endure winter here. It would pay to call the park before venturing out there.

Bodie Ghost Town

3. Take soak in a natural hot spring. Usually in winter only the hardy venture out to the hot springs, often using cross country skis or snow shoes. No snow this winter means that all the local hot tubs are still easily accessible. They make the perfect foil for the days adventures.

Hill Top Hot Spring

4. Drive over Tioga pass. I could only find records going back to 1980 but the road has NEVER been open this late in that time. The Yosemite Valley is about 2.5 hours drive from Mammoth so certainly achievable as a day trip. On the way you could hike up one of the easily accessible granite domes. I was lucky enough to get up there for a picnic on Christmas Day.

Olmsted Point, H/W 120, Xmas Day 2011

5. Go for a hike. Many of the lower hiking trails are largely free of snow at present. This makes a nice change from the previous two winters where 6 feet of snow covered the ground everywhere. Today I went to check out the Inyo Craters. A fun and easy walk, the road in requires 4WD at the moment although you can walk that section too. Other places to check out are Convict Lake and the Lakes Basin. There is the odd patch of slippery ice so take care.

If these activities don’t keep you busy then you could throw a bike in with your skis and go riding, there’s even some off road trail at Rock Creek. Lastly I bet the golf in Bishop is going off!

So I’ve given up fretting about the lack of snow. I’m starting to embrace this winter for what it is and discovering there is a lot on offer if you are willing to look outside of the box. And hey you can still ski too!

Beautiful colors at Mammoth Mountain last night!

What a difference a year makes! Last year I seemed to be spending more time digging out our car than skiing – December 2010 had a record-breaking 209” (17.4 ft, 5.3 metres) of snow. This year December is shaping up to be one of the driest Decembers ever with 2” total to date, with only 1976-77 and 1986-87 clocking in lower at a big fat zero!

Luckily, we have an incredible group of people making snow whenever the thermostat dips below freezing and so most of the lower parts of the mountain are open. This bodes well for beginners and intermediates – with experts itching to get back onto the more challenging runs.

Photo: Peter Morning/MMSA

For a bit of historical perspective, here is a table and graph of snowfall each year from 1969 – click on the image for a larger version.

Snow history data courtesy of MammothMountain.com. Snow history graphs courtesy of Sort Creative.

Originally built in 1964, Chair 5 has serviced some of Mammoth’s most popular terrain as a two-seater, a three-seater and now a brand new high-speed Dopplemayr quad chairlift. This express lift will cut ride time in half as it whisks 2,400 people uphill per hour and services more terrain with new top and bottom locations.

Don’t miss the Grand Opening Ceremony today at 1pm! Complimentary hot chocolate and coffee will be served to keep you warm as you become some of the first people to ride the new lift!

In the news at Mammoth over the last little while  has been the fact that Mammoth Mountain had their H2B visa application denied by the US government. The H2B visa was a stream of visa that allowed the Mountain to employ foreign workers to fill skilled jobs like ski instructing. It was a big loss for me personally as many of my friends can no longer work here and I miss them. It was also a huge loss for the Ski School as many of those instructors denied visas were supervisors, trainers and experienced professionals. Of course the biggest loss is bared by those instructors who can’t return, some of which have been coming here for more than a decade, some of which called Mammoth home.

My good friend Jo, one of many not to get a H2B visa

However, some people are happy that the Mountain is forced to employ Americans for the Ski School. This is a valid argument along the lines of Americans for American jobs, especially true in hard times like the present. But I feel this is a simplistic view. The Ski School benefited from having a mix of nationalities on their roster. Ideas on skiing were shared and the skiing public benefited from this. Friendships between instructors meant Americans could get jobs in the Southern Hemisphere through connections opening up opportunities to Americans. Not to mention the fact the Ski School was able to employ more highly qualified instructors. You may think that people are lining up to be instructors and yes the mountain does receive a lot of applications but most of these are from people that have never taught before. It takes a certain person to want to move to a seasonal and isolated resort, especially for more than one year, it takes a certain person to make a career out of teaching skiing. Instructors with experience and qualifications are hard to come by and don’t grow on trees. It is these type of people the Ski School misses the most.

The future of Mammoth Ski School

On the bright side I’ve had the honor and pleasure over the last two weeks to train some of the new instructors the mountain has employed. I’ve been impressed by their eagerness and excitement. I hope that some of them will get qualified, return next year and make a career out of teaching skiing, it’s what the school needs. They have big shoes to fill left by those not able to come to Mammoth but I am encouraged by what I have seen so far. Good luck to them all.

If you haven’t yet heard the news, Mammoth  Mountain is letting everyone ski and ride FREE today! The idea came from Mammoth’s CEO, Rusty Gregory, who is so impressed with the conditions due to snowmaking he wants to prove to everyone that little natural snowfall no longer means what it used to.  So if you’re not here already, head on up!

We haven’t received new snow in Mammoth for two weeks now and some people are getting twitchy. In that time the Mountain has been making snow and they opened Chair 10 so it is not all bad. The groomed runs are still great but it can be on the icy side. It is not quite true ice like you would find at Whakapapa in New Zealand or out East in the States, but when you get spoilt for powder, as we do in Mammoth, we like to call it ice. Most people baulk at the idea of skiing ice, they feel less control, it’s noisy and it hurts to fall on. However skiing ice and mastering it can be both fun and rewarding, here’s a few tips to help.

1. Widen your stance if you have a narrow one.
The first thing to do is look at your stance, having a slightly wider stance than usual helps to give you more support, it also lowers your centre of gravity slightly aiding balance too.
Exercise: Play around with your width of stance, one exercise to try are Cowboy Turns where you pretend to be riding a horse with your feet super wide apart. Try that for a run or two but remember it is an exercise so don’t ski like that all the time!

2. Balance on your outside ski
Make sure you are balanced on your outside ski. Feel like you are standing on the inside of that foot more strongly. This helps to get more pressure on that edge and hopefully gets it to bite into the snow to give you grip. Making sure your upper body is stable is key in this area, if you let it fall to the inside of the turn too much or twist to the inside then your skis are likely to slide out from under you.
Exercise: There are a million exercises to aid balancing on the outside ski. Sometimes just making sure your inside hand doesn’t drop down to the inside of the turn will help. Or next time your skiing on easier terrain try lifting up your inside ski whilst turning and see if you can balance solely on the outside ski.

3. Aim for round turns
Make round turns and use the shape to control speed, you can even direct the skis up the hill a little to help speed control, don’t get this confused with just traversing however which is a waste of time. You could think of slowing your movements down a bit so that you don’t ‘spin out’ or skid excessively. I like the analogy of driving a car on ice, sudden movements on the wheel can lead to loss of traction and control. The same applies to skiing on ice, quick movements can lead to a loss of grip (on ice it is easy for us to over steer our skis into a skid because of the smooth surface). You might ask then why racers often use aggressive movements on icy courses? well they have highly tuned equipment and bodies, whilst it is inspiring to see them ski, replicating what they do is beyond the average recreational skier otherwise we would all be world cup racers!
Exercise:Try to slow down your movements, counting can help with this. Visualize a round arch and try to stay on it.

4. Use sharp skis
Have your skis tuned and edges sharp, no amount of good technique is going to make your skis grip if they have blunt edges.

5. Put your skis on edge
Conversely even the sharpest skis are not going to grip if they are not edged into the snow. By this I mean the ski needs to be tipped onto its side allowing the ski to cut the snow. It is best to achieve this by feeling like you are rolling your ankles and knees into the hill. Try to keep your upper body still when you do this which will help with balancing on the outside ski.
Exercise: Try traversing (it is not a waste of time of it is a drill!) and roll your ankles and knees into the hill, you should feel your ski grip more and the ski will turn into the hill more too. Try this on both sides. Just make sure that when you are trying this exercise that you pick a quiet slope where you can be easily seen from above.

6. Keep terrain in your comfort zone
Take it easier on the terrain you ski. It is a good idea to ski terrain a level or two below what you usually would. For example, if Cornice, a black run at Mammoth, is the limit of your powers then don’t even bother going there on an icy day. On that note I wouldn’t recommend Cornice to anyone at the moment, last time I skied it it was pretty icy with rocks and other hazards waiting for the errant skier.

7. Be aware
Ski safe, by this I mean be aware of others around you, some of which might have less control in the icy conditions.

Skiing on ice is a great learning experience, it certainly points out any deficiencies in your technique out to you. But if you persevere it can teach you a lot of things about skiing, it is just another condition to master in order to become an accomplished skier.

Mammoth is known for its wind. Sometimes this produces awesome wind blown snow affectionately known by locals as “the buff”. The buff is basically fine snow with a buttery texture that gets naturally filled in by the wind making for amazing skiing, often with fresh tracks every run. However sometimes the wind will scour a slope out back to hard pack or ice leaving it with a moon scape texture which isn’t that great to ski. A lot of the time it depends on wind direction as to where will be good and where will be bad so local knowledge helps in seeking out the buff.

Skiing the buff under Chair 1

I got talking about wind because we had a storm roll in last night that came with a lot of wind but unfortunately not much snow. The bad news with this storm too is that it has an easterly component to it which produces less buff and more moon scape. Winds from the east basically strip the mountain of snow and blow it over to Fresno. It is pretty much the last thing we needed right now with a minimal snow pack so far this year.

Ski Patrol reported the winds at the top of Mammoth to be in excess of 150 miles per hour (hurricane force), that is as far as their instruments will measure so it could have been more! here is a neat graph showing the speeds from last night.

Wind speed at the top of Mammoth

I ventured up the hill this morning to see what was going on and to pick up some pay checks. It was blowing pretty strong and I was surprised to see snow making going. Here are a few shots from this morning.

Chair 6

Looking up towards Gold Rush (Chair 10)

Other than stripping the snow there are a few hazards that the wind can produce, obviously with all the snow being moved around it can form dangerous slab avalanches where it settles. Another hazard is driving with snow blowing on the road and obscuring visibility.

Wind blown snow on the road

At Mount Hutt (New Zealand) this is a particularly dangerous problem as there are no trees to provide reference to the ground once the snow starts blowing about. I’ve also been on the Mount Hutt road when the wind has picked up rocks the size of large marbles which smashed the windows out on several vehicles in our convoy, that was pretty scary. In the video below you can see how quickly visibility can diminish to a few feet with blowing snow.

Untitled from kiwiski on Vimeo.

So wind can be our friend at Mammoth as it usually comes with snow and produces the legendary buff, but it can also be damaging and dangerous and deserves our respect.