It was a beautifully bright start at camp this morning. The wind had dropped, the dust clouds settled and all traces of cloud in the sky had vanished. After soaking up the warmth over an al fresco breakfast, we packed up and headed off to continue our mission of "climb, surf and ski around the world in style" by driving up to the world famous Mammoth Mountain resort for some skiing.
It was only a short drive north before the snowy mountains got closer...
And by mid morning, we'd precured ourselves a pair of skis each and a eye wateringly expensive lift ticket.
Apparently there's been a bit of a drought in California this winter, so instead of being buried in the usual 10ft of power snow, the mountain was looking rather sparse in terms of snow cover. In town it was like summer, which was surprising as their ski season runs all the way until June! There were signs up in the village saying 'please pray for snow!'
That said, once on the mountain, the pistes had been well maintained so there was still a huge area to ski. By lunch time we were heading up the first chair lift of the day...
As there was no off piste power to find, we spent the day whooping down endless empty trails.
There might not be neck deep powder, but we did seem to have he whole mountain to ourselves!
We never had to que for a lift either and always had the chairlifts to ourselves!
The wierd eat part was looking down into the valley. At times the only snow you could see was under your feet - looking up and around, the forest was all in summer conditions and away in the distance was dusty dry desert land.
After skiing about 4000m of descents, we caught the last lift, then left winter behind and skied back down to summer to exchange ski boots for flip flops!
Showers and a couple of 'small' burritos later and we were pretty much sparked out...
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