Mammoth Ski Report

The Mammoth Mountain Ski Area is a large ski resort located in Eastern California, along the east side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in the Inyo National Forest. The ski area, commonly called Mammoth, is a popular ski resort for residents of Southern California. Geographically, the ski area exists on the north side of Mammoth Mountain, located in the volcanic Long Valley Caldera. Overnight guests stay in the town of Mammoth Lakes, California, and occasionally in neighboring towns like Bishop. Mammoth has more than 3,500 acres of skiable terrain, serviced by 28 lifts (including three gondolas). The area is at an elevation of 11,053 feet. The top of the mountain has challenging chutes and open mogul runs. There are three main terrain parks branded "Unbound" at Mammoth. Extreme snowboarding and skiing enthusiasts praise Unbound Main, located adjacent to Main Lodge, as one of the major attractions of the ski resort. Many top professionals in the sport, including 2006 and 2010 Winter Olympics gold medalist Shaun White, come to practice and compete in the world famous 18-foot-tall Super Pipe and 22-foot-tall Super Duper Pipe. There are only a handful of Super Duper pipes in the world. There is also a Mini Pipe. Mammoth Mountain is one of only a handful of resorts in the world to offer a half pipe of this size and is the only resort in North America that has three different sized half pipes. Mammoth Mountain also has one of the longest ski seasons in North America, which averages from November to June. Mammoth does occasionally open earlier; in 2005, the resort opened in October, and did not close until July 4. Mammoth Mountain's longest season, over 10 months, was thanks to the 1994-1995 winter season when the resort opened on October 8 and did not close until August 13. Mammoth receives an average of 339 inches (860 cm) of snow per season, though during 2005-2006 season the resort accumulated an astounding 578 inches (1,470 cm)--a record tally. Mammoth Mountain is located in the Eastern Sierras of California, approximately 100 miles south of the Nevada state line and 30 minutes from the Eastern Gate of Yosemite National Park. The ski area resides in northern California. Skiers and snowboarders from Southern California frequent the resort. Though it is a five-hour drive from Los Angeles, Mammoth is much closer for Southland skiers and riders than the Lake Tahoe area resorts, which are more accessible to those who live in the San Francisco Bay Area. Mammoth Mountain is a more popular destination than Southern California resorts because these areas rely heavily on snowmaking, have lighter precipitation and notably shorter seasons. Although Mammoth is physically closer to San Francisco than L.A., mountain passes along the Sierra crest close after the first major snowfall, and this lack of a trans-Sierra travel route creates an unusually long drive to Mammoth from the Bay Area and most of Northern California. For example, during the summer, the distance from Fresno to Mammoth Lakes is 189 miles, while the same excursion in winter involves 366 miles of driving. In recent years, Mammoth visitors from outside of California and Nevada fly into Reno and travel down. Ski season commercial flights are now available to MMH via LAX on Alaska Airlines (operated by Horizon Air). The Mammoth Mountain ski area has been aggressively trying to tap into the Bay Area market as an alternative to Tahoe, since the airline offers flights out of Mammoth. A mammoth is any species of the extinct genus Mammuthus. These proboscideans are members of Elephantidae, the family of elephants and mammoths and are close relatives of modern elephants. They were often equipped with long curved tusks and in northern species, a covering of long hair. Like their modern relative the elephant (Asian or African), mammoths were quite large; in English the noun "mammoth" has become an adjective meaning "large" or "massive". The largest known species, Songhua River Mammoth, reached heights of at least 16 feet tall at the shoulder. Mammoths would weigh in the region of six to eight tons, but exceptionally large males may have exceeded 12 tons. However, most types of mammoth were only about as large as a modern Asian elephant. Archeologists found dwarf fossils of species of mammoth on the Californian Channel Islands and the Mediterranean island of Sardinia. There was also a race of dwarf woolly mammoths on Wrangel Island, north of Siberia, within the Arctic Circle. Based on studies of their close relatives, prehistoric mammoths probably had a gestation period of 22 months with a single calf born. Their social structure was probably the same as that of African and Asian elephants, wherein females lived in herds headed by a matriarch and bulls lived solitary lives or formed loose groups after sexual maturity. The woolly mammoth was the last species of the genus. Most populations of the woolly mammoth in North America and Eurasia, as well all the Columbian mammoths in North America, died out around the time of the last glacial retreat, as part of a mass extinction of mega fauna in northern Eurasia and the Americas. Until recently, experts believed that the last woolly mammoths vanished from Europe and southern Siberia about 10,000 BC. New findings show that some ancient mammoths were still alive there about 8,000 BC. Only slightly later, the woolly mammoths also disappeared from continental northern Siberia. A small population survived on St. Paul Island, Alaska, up until 3,750 BC, and on Wrangel Island until 1,650 BC. The definitive explanation for the mass extinctions of the mammoth is unknown. Experts believe the death of the mammoth might be due to the warming trend that occurred 12,000 years ago, accompanied by a glacial retreat and rising sea levels. Forests replaced open woodlands and grasslands across the continent. The changing habitat reduced available mega faunal species, such as the mammoth. However, such climate changes were nothing new; many very similar warming episodes had occurred previously within the last ice ages of in the past million years without producing comparable mega faunal extinctions. Experts believe that climate alone is unlikely to have played a decisive role in the extinction of the mammoth.