Yesterday (Monday) was our first day on the hill and what was initially meant to be a cruisy day on the mountain ended up being a quick cruise followed by some kickers and rails in the parks. Of course no day on the hill can go completely smoothly as proved by Steve. Before we left for this trip Steve went to Sputnik snowboard shop for some binding screws and left with a brand new Eddie Wall snowboard (and no screws)….so you’d have thought that in the weeks leading up to the trip he’d have worked out which was the front of the board and which was the back. It seems not, after the second run Steve realised that he’d set his bindings up the wrong way round and was having to ride his directional board tail first.
On the bright side Mammoth is well equipped for these kind of issues……at the top of each chair lift you can find benches to sit on and strap in, and tied to these benches you’ll find screwdrivers! Pretty impressive I think, especially when you consider how hard it is to find a screw driver at a UK slope. What I’m also highly impressed with is the way that they slow down the chairlifts as you get off, unlike France where they seem to take great delight in throwing you off the chair at 50mph into a steep icy shoot and then laugh as you one-footedly slide into random skiers.
We all had a good day anyway, hopefully there’ll be many more to come.