VIDEO: Mammoth Snow Report, March 17, 2012 | The thrill of a Mammoth powder day… Awaking to the sound of bombs going off, the snow’s stacked higher than expected, the wheels whir in your head… Reality hits, it’s game on! The excitement and anticipation are like fuel, propelling you to the Mountain, driving you to that next moment of exultation.
No doubt, today was a blast. Friday night the snow hit and it didn’t relent until Saturday evening. In that short window the Mountain received roughly 3 feet of new snow, more than most had expected.
The pow was not blower, nor cement – a nice, satisfying medium. It was a fast, surf-able snow, yet rather blast-able/slash-able when it came time to shut ‘er down.
It is worth mentioning though that there were signs of a considerable amount of slide activity around the hill. Many zones loaded and released (primarily triggered by control work) yet, as best we could tell, all slides on the lower mountain only affected the new layer/snow. It shall be interesting to see what slide activity has occurred at the top of the mountain once the clouds give way.
The snow continued to come down hard all day long Saturday, preventing the Mountain from opening the top and the backside. Yet with 3, 5, 12 and 22 available and the week-end crowd thinning as the day grew old, there were fresh turns to be had from bell to bell. Yup, not a bad St. Paddy’s Day…