Not much to add on my part... I skied Wed. Afternoon, Thurs & Fri., but decided to leave at 1:30 Fri...
The crowd size was EPIC on Friday !!! Thankfully the upper Mtn was clear (expect for Cornice, which became the usual people bowling alley...). D1 and D3 were quite good, upper D3 being some of the best snow. Dave's also quite good, consistent. The exit on China Bowl, as Tony noted, was best done straight line (once you've scoped the rocks... LOL!)
Upper CLimax was super!, Lower Climax had some of the best, most consistent rock ... LOL! Very doable, but best to have a well defined line. Being the 1st skiing in almost 2 seasons, I did keep it reasonable and only played around on the fine surface of the lower dropouts...
Face of 3 was fun. It had been left ungroomed, so some round bumps developed, which made it much more interesting than usual. Directly under Chair 3 was good on Wed afternoon, but set up a bit firmer on Thurs....
Tony's photos did a better job showing the conditions, than the few I took...
What convinced me to leave on Friday afternoon, were the swarms of skiers coming down Saddle bowl (trail behind Upper rock formation of Chair 3 offload) - it was CRAZY !!!! On my final run I watched 3 collisions there ( stopped behind the patrol red poles indicating poor cover...) . Way TOOOO many skiers/boarders straight-lining with no obvious ability to make corrections to their trajectory... It was the scariest I've ever seen up there.
When I drove down, on Friday, the cars were parked down past Woolly's Tubing Park and more were lined up, coming up the road. Holiday weekend crowds, all packed into 25% of Mammoth. Scary...
Still, the skiing I had was awesome fun! Looking forward to another trip as soon as they get another solid snowfall. But it'll only be mid-week... NO Fri-Sun Ski trips planned for me... LOL!
Ski On
Yuri