Musings: Ski Safari 2017 - Mammoth, Snowbird, Alta

Mammoth Mountain / Lakes is hard to get to from Northern California. We drove up to Reno, and then down the Eastern Sierras, across the high desert. This had the advantage of driving on big slab interstate/highways, with no mountain winding roads, so the kids did not get car sick. However it adds a at least an hour / 60 mi to the journey. Realistically Mammoth is not a weekend nor long weekend type of place to visit; one should go for a solid 5 days at least.

I was glad that I used the extra day on our Mountain Collective pass at Mammoth, because walk up lift ticket prices are expensive. They are priced as if they are offering a Vail or Aspen like experience, but its not anywhere in that realm. I suppose they have no competition so they can price the service as they wish.

There are very few lift lines at Mammoth, at least when we went. I think I had the total of one wait over three days. But there are also very few on mountain personnel - lifties, ski patrollers, hosts, really anyone. It seems kind of strange to see the lift ticket prices and then not see anyone around.

There are four base areas that stretch all along a winding mountain road at Mammoth. The lower two had terrible snow, and the upper two were good. There was a striking difference between them. The upper ones also have some nice long cruising trails, with good soft snow, and no one on them. It was a big contrast to the fairly crowded / cramped days in Utah at Alta and then Snowbird. However Mammoth has some real issues with wind, and plenty of areas were wind scoured, or lifts were on hold.

For a remote mountain town like Mammoth Lakes, there are a lot of restaurants, with a wide spectrum of food choices. Prices are pretty full, but at least we were generally satisfied. We went out for pizza/pasta the first night (those leftovers were on mountain lunch for the next 3 days), and then a fancy counter service gastro pub place. The next two nights were a Japanese ramen house, and then finally we ate at our hotel, for an Austrian Christmas dinner. The last seemed authentic, but you realize when eating that they had taken some shortcuts, and it was more some kitchen staff working off picture cards or something. My red cabbage was better than theirs. Same with my schnitzel.

We stayed slope side at a hotel called the AustriaHof, which had a fabulous location. I skied back to the hotel on the last day having figured out how to optimally go from village to village on the ski lifts and carrying my backpack. 4 miles on a mtn road could take 20 minutes, or 5 minutes on skis. It also had a hot tub which overlooked the slopes, which was another nice amenity. It was built like an old Alpine chalet, so there was no elevator and the staircase was narrow. Unloading the car there was a pain, and there were no carts nor bellboys. In any case, that's usually the trade off for a good location.

Our drive from Mammoth to SLC was on US6 and then 93 which are extremely desolate Nevada rural highways. I don't think I've ever seen more remote roads; one could travel 50 miles and see only a couple of cars and cows. These are not normally trafficked roads; most people going between LA and SLC would take I15. But we were going in the daytime and good weather so taking this route saved 100 miles of driving and a couple of hours. Every stop we made across that long 550 mile drive, I filled up the tank, never letting it get below 3/4. Plenty of signs saying "next gas 163 miles" which generally makes me nervous, even if the car's trip computer and estimated mileage remaining seem accurate. The girls were very good on this tiresome leg of the journey.

We used our new Thule roof top box to store skis and gear on the drive. So far after 1500 miles it has worked well. There is a little more road noise when dealing with cross winds at high speeds, but its not that noticeable. It hurts the gas mileage a little, since its like adding a big wing on top of the Honda, but we took a lot of stuff with us on this ski safari and this made it easier. REI was a good source for this, with lots of help measuring, and very fair deal given a coupon and our membership dividend. These are too large to ship cost effectively, so shopping on line doesn't work for items like this. The kids would compare the Thule and Yakima boxes in all the ski areas we visited, since those seem to have a oligopoly in the US market.

Alta has lots of lift lines, but doesn't allow snowboarders, which seems to keep the snow in better condition. The reduction in uphill traffic also seems (because of old/small lifts) also plays a part in that. Parking is difficult there.
I used the UTA ski bus ($4.50 each way) twice, once to Alta and once to Snowbird. It's convenient from the Sandy/SLC hotel, and given that the bus drops riders at the main entry points, so skiers can quickly get going, they also are equivalent to driving (time wise). Stress wise, since the Little Cottonwood Canyon road is narrow, winding, and not always protected by guard rails, its much lower anxiety going to the mountain. I used the bus when the kids were doing other things during the day, so that was a helpful option. Utah has surprisingly good public transport in this dimension.
Snowbird is a steep mountain, that is difficult to ski without fresh snow. On the day I went it had been about a week since snow, and many lifts/runs were closed. The blue level trails I tried were steep, icy, and uncomfortable. They declared most of the upper mountain 'expert only' which makes sense given the conditions, but dramatically limited what I could enjoy. It also forced lots of crowds onto a small set of trails so it was very crowded. I only used one of my days there, figuring the 7th day of skiing on this trip would not be any fun, if the web reports were basically saying today was going to be worse than yesterday. Despite its reputation for great snow (500" averages per year), the two - three times I've been to the Bird over the years have all been plagued with crummy snow. And unfortunately, this place really needs light fresh new snow to be enjoyed.
It might have been a little too ambitious to try skiing 7 days and drive 1500 miles in one trip. We've had a couple visits to local doctors here since we are sniffling a bit and its finally caught up to me on the last day. I've gone through a half box of Kleenex in the last 12 hours, along with plenty of sneezing. The dry air out here doesn't help. Our last day, we all decided at breakfast after bouts of sneezing/coughing that we would find some other activity for the last day of the school holiday. So the kids had a trip to an obstacle/Ninja course, and then some awesome potstickers for lunch.
We have had two nice counter service style dinners here in SLC. One at SlapFish a sustainable seafood type of place where I had a shrimp roll and kids had bacon / clam chowder. Then another night J. found a Mexican place favored by the locals, where I had a half burrito, that was as good as anything from California. We also had takeout salads on arrival that were good (if salty). And amazingly, only night we found an authentic South Indian place in Midvale (we had to drive 5 miles) where we had dosai, idli, and various curries. It was quite good, and I was the only Indian person there, other than the staff/owners. Flavors/spices had not been detuned for the local palate. There must be a lot of local South Asians here now if this kind of place can be supported. Sadly Carmichael struggles to support more than one of these kinds of eateries.
Driving home on I80 went smoothly, since the weather was cooperative. We left at 7am MST and got home at 6pm PST with a couple of stops for lunch, gas, snacks, and then Raleys to get some fresh bread. With the roofbox, and a full loaded car, we got 21mpg coming back from Utah. It's good to be home.
It seems we were very lucky to get to some snowy resorts, when the rest of the west is suffering with a lack of fresh snow, and also having a warm spell, unlike the East Coast, which is bitterly cold. When I planned this all out -- knowing December is a dodgy month for skiing -- I'd hoped that Mammoth and LCC would be good. It turned out they were more functional than great, but in the context of what was happening at other areas, that was still a pretty good outcome.