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Well, our most recent Mammoth weekend was somewhat bittersweet. We were so excited because there was 21″ of new snow from earlier in the week, and we figured with the grooming that Mammoth Mountain does every day, and continuing cold temps, the conditions would still be good.

We drove up late afternoon on Friday, and saw some amazing light in the mountains and high desert as the sun set.

Little did we know that by Saturday morning, winds in town were 40+ MPH and on the top they were reported to be nearly 80MPH! Our condo-mates headed up to the hill right at 8am so they could be in line when the lifts opened, while Jessie and I did our usual, wake up after 8 and relax a bit with a good breakfast and some coffee. This turns out to be for the best… Mammoth only opened 3 of the “beginner” chairs due to the winds all over the mountain - bummer. So basically you could pay $79 and only access the beginner chairs.

With this in mind, we didn’t go up to the mountain until 12:30 - we bought a half day and snowboarded all afternoon on Sat. They still didn’t open half the mountain (the higher chairs) due to the continued winds, so we were more or less restricted to the Canyon Lodge runs and occasional Chair 5 and Gold Rush.

It wasn’t a great day - overcast with flat light, crunchy conditions, freezing wind, and crowds because all the people were clamoring for the same chairs and runs. Check this out… you couldn’t even see the top!

We did Whiskey Creek for half price food and $10 pitchers for apres-ski on Saturday afternoon when we got off the hill, then Saturday night we went out to Hennessey’s where they had a dance floor cleared and a DJ in there. It was pretty fun, definitely an older crowd than our former haunt, Lakanuki. We danced and met some cool people (yes, some hotties on the hill!)

On Sunday we were on the hill by 10:30, and by then conditions had vastly improved!

A gorgeous bluebird day, but sadly, the winds on the top on Sunday were A HUNDRED MPH! Even worse than Sat.! So they still didn’t open the top gondola or Chair 23 (our fav runs) all day. Here’s a pic of the gondolas parked at McCoy; they couldn’t go higher than that cuz of the winds.

Nonetheless, we enjoyed a really nice day on the rest of the mountain - Spook off Gold Rush down to Lower Dry Creek was awesome, we did it at least 4 times in a row. The snow was nice and soft, not even hardpack in many places. A little icy on some of the runs, but we still rocked it.

And capping off the weekend, at the end of one of those runs we ended up seeing Woolly at the Mill Cafe! Sunday definitely made up for Saturday.

Juicy is headed back up for the Roxy Chicken Jam at the end of the month; I won’t be able to make it… but I expect a full report! Look for her post in a few weeks.

More pictures from the trip are available at our Flickr page.

More details on our recent Mammoth weekend to come, met lots of fun people and had a great day on the hill on Sunday, but the best moment of this trip was MEETING WOOLLY!!

We got to the bottom of Lower Dry Creek and I was bent over unstrapping my binding to get back in line, when Jess screamed out “There’s Woolly!” We both started freaking out, making a scene, and yelling “WOOLLY! WOOLLY! OH MY GOD!” like the nerds we are… everyone in the lift line was laughing and pointing, even the lifties! Woolly came over and was dancing with us and taking pics, totally hamming it up. So cute!

Highlight of the trip! WE LOVE YOU WOOLLY!

Bright and early on Friday, Feb 15, we got on board our 7am flights to Denver for our weekend in Vail. I had a rough flight that was very delayed which resulted in basically a 13-hour travel day when I finally arrived!

Wanted to make it an early night that night because of our very early flights, and because we wanted to get on the mountain and get a full day in. But on our shuttle bus back to the hotel from Vail Village, we met the fabulous Tina and Todd, a really fun couple also from Southern California. With their help, we persuaded Joe, our shuttle bus driver, to stop at the liquor store and get some beers! We relaxed w/ a few beers in the hotel but still went to bed pretty early.

Saturday: Today we hit the hill by 10am. It was a beautiful sunny day, and the snow was in great condition - although a little icy at first it softened as the day progressed.

We took a few mellow runs to warm up, and began making our way over towards the section above Vail Village. After a few hours on the runs around Chair 11 and Chair 4, we took a lunch break and I ended up meeting with James, my friend from college and current Vail Mountain employee. He was great to ride with - as a snowboard instructor, he helped me a lot with some turn techniques. It’s like a free lesson! I also like riding with him because he flies down the mountain with great style, and it was really fun and challenging to follow his lines as we carved huge S’s over in the China Bowl. I was stoked to ride with someone better than me, cuz like I always say it makes me step up my game. He even said I had improved drastically since my last trip to Vail last March.

We stayed out till the mountain closed that day! For apres ski we hit Garfinkel’s in Lionshead Village for a few pitchers of Blue Moon and some chili fries (so healthy!)

That night, we were surprised to learn that DJ Z-Trip, the mashup dj who mixes in fun stuff like “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” with Tribe Called Quest, and just kills it on the turntables, was playing in a small bar that night about 5 miles outside of Vail. I had seen him perform in front of thousands at New Years Eve Giant Maximus, and now he was playing to a 400-person club in Avon, CO? We promptly made plans to head over there, and rode with Jonathan from Hummer Taxis of Vail - he kept us very entertained about single life in Vail and offered us healthy advice such as “keep your legs closed” - um, thanks… Anyways, we got to the Agave bar in 15 minutes, and found a table to use as our home base. Z-Trip came on at 11 after DJ Troublemaker, and got the crowd moving.

We danced like crazy till we had to leave. We had such a great time! Had Jonathan pick us up again before the bars closed, so we were back to the hotel by about 1:30am.

Sunday we got up late and aimed for a half-day because we were tired from the Z-Trip show and plus it was snowing so we figured the visibility would be crap. By 11ish it was only snowing intermittently so we got our afternoon tix and headed up to Lionshead after our breakfast of Snack Wraps from McDonald’s. Bad mistake! I ended up getting what I thought was food poisoning from (I think) a packet of mayonnaise that I ate with my Micky D’s, and was doubled over with stomach cramps the entire afternoon. I couldn’t even ride that day… bummer! I took one run and then had to go lie down in the Eagles Nest lodge, and finally made my way back to the hotel where I spent the rest of the afternoon in bed. The other two stayed out and rode the Chair 26 side of Vail all afternoon; they had a good day hitting the Bwana run a few times.

With the help of some Gas-X my stomach pains went away by 6pm and I felt much better. We booked reservations at Terra Bistro and enjoyed a wonderful dinner and some awesome wine (K Syrah, out of Walla Walla Washington of all places!)

After dinner it was back to the Red Lion where it was definitely the mountain town ratio in full effect - probably 8 guys to 1 girl. As I learned in the Virgin Islands though, “the odds are good but the goods are odd.” So true. Lotsa randoms out there and I even witnessed quite a few cougar women. Fun though! We found Antonio, a guy we met at Z-Trip, and hung with him and his friend Nate. I also met a lot of new Hotties on the Hill, who I’ll be posting over the next few days.

Red Lion closes at midnight every night, because they want the drunks out of their bar according to our waitress, so next we headed to Samana. I hung out with some fun guys from Dallas who promised me they’d meet me at 8:30am for a morning of riding before I had to go to the airport. After some dancing, we closed that bar too, and I took the “drunk bus” (nickname for the free city bus in Vail) back to the hotel, with the help of new friends Taylor and Dave.

Monday - I got up at 7am to finish packing my suitcase and get ready to take the 8am hotel shuttle. I was at Lionshead buying my ticket and waiting at 8:30 for those Dallas guys! They ended up flaking out, so I rode the entire morning by myself. I spent the bulk of the day over in the back bowls - hitting China and Teacup over and over. There was about 8″ of new powder from Sunday’s snow showers in many sections of the bowls.

Not hard to find untouched runs! I am not that used to riding in powder, so my first run down a super thick powder section had me falling 3 times in a row. If I was a skier I probably would have yard-saled. But then I got the hang of it again, and was cruising with the bright the blue sky above me just floating through the powder with wide and fast turns. I found a cool tree section and powered through right under the Orient Express chairlift. Watch this YouTube video I took going thru the tree section, complete with a fall caught on tape… haha!

The snow was thick and deep but not heavy, it was cold so it didn’t melt and have a chance to ice up; it stayed flaky and soft! It was a great morning, and totally worth being so tired! I definitely made up for not riding on Sunday. Explored the back side more than I ever had, but I still didn’t make it to Blue Sky as there wasn’t enough time. It was so empty, hardly anybody was riding/skiing that day! I had to cut the day short and meet the girls at noon so we could drive back to Denver and catch our flights home.

We’re all exhausted but agree it was an amazing weekend, and we are going to make it an annual thing! Maybe next time we’ll actually get you-know-who on a few runs

View more pics on our Flickr page.

This past weekend, Jessie and I were in Mammoth again. We drove up EARLY Saturday morning, mostly at my insistence. In spite of a rough start to the weekend, we ended up having a blast!

We left my house in Los Angeles at 5:30am and made it to our condo by about 10:45. By the time we unloaded the car, changed into our gear, and walked up to Canyon Lodge, it was almost 11:45. So we decided to wait the extra hour-ish, and save $20 by doing the afternoon pass.

Well, we found a way to spend that $20 we each saved… “let’s pass the time by drinking some bloodies & beers!” We were at the Canyon outside bar till about 1:30 when we finally motivated to the mountain… but not until after we met some new Hotties on the Hill (more on them later!)

The snow conditions were great - it was about 40 on the mountain and beautiful blue skies on both Saturday and Sunday. It got a little mushy/sticky near the end of the day on Saturday, but we were determined to stay on the hill til the lifts closed, considering we got out so late that day.

It was definitely best at the top, where it stayed coldest - the snow was nicer up there but by the late hour we got up there it was pretty chopped up and mogul-ey. But even on top, on Saturday it was 20 degrees with only 10 MPH winds… a far cry from a few weeks ago when it was gusting as high as 75 MPH!

Saturday night we made it a mellow one… we did apres ski at the Austria House (not the greatest… decent beers but the food selection was crap… we missed Whiskey Creek!) We barely had any time to nap after returning to the condo, doing the jacuzzi, and then cleaning up and heading out to eat. We had dinner at Angels BBQ with the rest of the gang from the condo, and then went out for a beer at the Auld Dubliner. We were sleeping by 11:30 that night! It felt great after 4 hrs of sleep the night before due to our early drive.

Sunday was another bright, beautiful day - thankfully, today we were on the hill by 9am and enjoying the freshly groomed, uncrowded runs. I guess everyone kinda leaves Mammoth early morning for the long drive home, so Sundays stay pretty mellow. Great for us! Luckily, today we went straight to the top, and enjoyed the most amazing snow on Cornice & Scotty’s Run. Once again it was about40 on the hill, and very little wind, with bright sunlight (perfect conditions.)

Midway through the morning, we met up with Chad, Bob, and Wade from the condo and got to do a few runs with them before they had to leave.

It’s always so fun to ride with guys, they make us step it up and ride that much harder just to keep up with them! We did a few runs from Cornice and Climax down Lower Dry Creek… I had my most spectacular wipeout of the day with them. Let’s just call it an “on the mountain 720″ - I did 3 full somersault rotations coming down Climax and hitting a mogul wrong

The guys had to leave at noon; Jess and I headed up Chair 23 and took Road Runner down to Chair 14.  We did a few runs on the backside but agreed that top was better so we headed back up there for a few more Scotty’s and Cornice runs.  The  snow stayed pretty good through the day - we were on the hill until 2:15 then we decided to come down, get changed, and hit the road for our long drive. We both agreed that today (Sunday) was the best day of the season so far! All in all in spite of a rough start to the weekend (the 4:30am alarm clock on Saturday), we had a GREAT time and thanks to Dave for inviting us. Great people, great snow, and all in all great fun! Can’t wait for the next one.

Oh, I almost forgot! We even got to see WOOLLY, the Mammoth Mountain mascot, skiing down to Canyon Lodge as we took the chair up. We love Woolly! Seeing him is always a silly fun highlight of any Mammoth snowboarding trip. We’ll see you again soon Woolly!

Check out the full set of this weekend’s Mammoth photos on Flickr.

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Introducing our first female Hottie on the Hill - Morgan! It’s high time we also showcase some of the hot female snowboarders we encounter! (And some of my guy friends have been asking about that too.)

(Leila and Morgan)

We met Morgan in the “lodge” at Baldy (more like a cafeteria, blech) near the end of the day. Morgan has not been riding in a while, this day was her first outing in two years, but she’s a trouper and made it through… and is ready for more!

She was a super cool, down to earth, fellow snowboarding woman, and luckily lives here in LA, so we will definitely be taking more snowboard trips with her in the near future… plus I’m going to add her to our Hotties on the Hill Recruiting Team. We can never have too many eyes for that job!

So the girlies and I headed up to Whistler in the begining of January. The 5 days were definitely not enough for us, but we got a good taste of both mountains and the village. Whistler is a must for anyone who loves long runs, great pow, and a village filled with renowned restaurants, bars and clubs.

* Best beer- Whistler Brewhouse pub-4355 Blackcomb Way

A variety of microbrewed beer handcrafted right on site. Try the red truck brew! Beers the size of your head, beer tastings and some damn good grub in the bar. The pesto chicken panini and the artichoke dip hit the spot. They had a fire roaring, and we sat in booths next to the windows watching the snow fall.

* Best Apres ski-Garibaldi Lift Company- Base of the Whistler gondola

The GLC is a must! An outside area with heat lamps, snow porn on the big screen, cuties everywhere, a plethora of beer, and not to mention amazing music! The DJ was playing down tempo on Thursday and we saw a band there on Saturday that did Rock requests. I loved that you can ride right in off of the mountain!

* Best Restaurant-Seven Tapas- Main Street

When you feel like munching out on a bunch of different dishes hit this place! We had the pulled pork sandwhich ( spicy goodness!), a warm spinach salad with walnuts, and chicken satay. We didn’t feel too full when we left, the prices were very reasonable and it is open till midnight. Late night munchies are needed before a night of drinking at the club :)  Don’t want to miss riding because your hung over!!

*Best Nightclub - Garfinkles- Main Street

Thursday night is the night to be here, locals night! A huge dance club, 2 bars, and a horseshoe shaped stage for all you attention mongrels (you know I was up there!). The DJ was spinning hip hop, house, and dance. We shaked our booty’s till closing and actually wound up back there again the next night.

* Best run- Franz’s run- Whistler Mountain

Since the top was closed we set out to find a cruising intermediate run that wasn’t crowded. We found the run of the day! You can access Franz’s by the Whistler village gondola to the top. Take Little Red Run to Franz’s then to Lower Franz’s. The 20 minute run ends at Whistler Creekside which had no lines and was perfect for the stormy day.

We also found another run off of Franz’s called Kadenwood, practically untouched and full of pow! WOOHOO! In between runs we hydrated and danced to the Beastie Boys at Dusty’s backside. I actually wondered if this was the best kept secret of Whistler!?

We’ll be back next year I hope!

Be fierce ladies and always stay in control!

See other pics of our Whistler trip on our Flickr page.

Read more about our Whistler snowboarding trip in our other recaps too.

We met these two at Hennessey’s on Sunday night. They’re skiers (what is it with us meeting skier hotties more often than snowboarder hotties?) and Navy pilots.

(Mark, Leila, Pete, me, and Jessie)

They fly jets for a living - were visiting Mammoth for a ski weekend with the guys. Total adrenaline junkies - they like fast things (both own sports cars and motorcycles.)

(Leila, Pete, and Jess)

They were very fun to talk to and just overall cool guys to hang out with. And lucky for us, they knew the bartender at Auld Dubliner, who lined us up with a round of Rumple Minze. (Wait, is that really lucky? I can still taste that shot…)

(Mark and Leila)

Fun meeting you two - perhaps we’ll see you up in Mammoth again soon!

Our first snowboard trip to Mammoth this season!

Had a great time with Stacey (”Miller Time”), Leila, Stacy C., and of course the Juice.

As usual, we stayed in Viewpoint because of its proximity to the village and the gondola.

We arrived on Friday night and chilled with some wine; made it an early night so we could hit the mountain the next morning and be fully rested. Saturday was a gorgeous bluebird day - not a cloud in the sky and no wind. Mammoth had not had new snow in a week or more but it was pretty cold and so the snow stayed nice; there wasn’t too much ice. The mountain wasn’t even crowded! We got a lot of runs in and capped off the day with a break for beer & bloodies at the Mill Cafe.

Saturday evening was a big night of dancing at Lakanuki, where we pretty much owned the dance floor with our party posse of 5. But first, some shopping at Wave Rave - some new
brown Burton Women’s Rodeo Pants for me!

Sunday was freezing cold and it quite frankly sucked. It was 70MPH winds at the top and the temp was listed at 10. (Check out this video of the wind at the top of Mammoth!) The conditions were bad - flat light, lots of ice, and the aforementioned wind. But, we stayed out for a few hours and got a lot of runs in anyways before calling it a day.

Jessie: “It’s how cold at the top?”

Sunday evening was a fun night out starting at Hennessey’s where we met two new Hotties on the Hill who were Navy pilots and in town for a weekend of skiing. Chilled there for a bit and then headed to the Auld Dubliner for irish music & black and tans and a shot of Rumple Minze courtesy of the very friendly bartender. Yikes!

The ride home was uneventful except for our delicious lunch at our new favorite pit-stop - the Country Kitchen! This place was great - definitely a better bet for stopping for a diner meal on the ride home vs. the crazy-busy Schat’s in Bishop. Check it out sometime!

As usual, a fun trip with a great group. And lots of Hotties on the Hill that we’ll be adding to the site soon. Mammoth, we love you… we’ll be back in two weeks!

Check out photos of our Mammoth snowboarding trip this weekend at our Flickr page.

This recap covers Friday/Sat/Sun of our trip last week… (read part 1 here)

The next two days, we enjoyed continual new snow which just kept falling! On Friday we rode Blackcomb. We really wanted to go up to the top of the hill and go over the backside to the Blackcomb glacier and to the back bowl, but the top was closed due to the storm. We were somewhat near to the top, having taken no less than 4 lifts to get to our first run of the day, and the wind was absolutely pelting us with powerful gusts and driving the snow into our faces – thank god for goggles and face masks. It was very hard to see at times, luckily they mark the trails with orange signs at the left edge of the runs, and blue at the right. Just keep yourself inbetween those two markers as you make your way down the hill and you won’t end up off a cliff! Needless to say, we did not go back up to the top of the Exelerator chair due to these conditions.

(Gracie and Jessie in line, and already snow is accumulating on them!)

Further down from these freezing winds, we rode up and down the Solar Express a few times. The snow was really nice here and it was a fun blue/blue-black run that wasn’t too tracked out or bumpy. In some places there were rocks exposed – weird because of the amount of snow that had fallen. I was pleasantly surprised by the small # of people on the hill – it certainly wasn’t like mammoth which gets so busy in places. Maybe the snowfall and wind kept people inside? But it was great for us!

Saturday we went back to Whistler Mountain and were stunned that it was STILL snowing… we noticed when we got up that it had pretty much slowed to a light flurry, but then when we made our way up to the gondola to take our first run of the day, it was once again thick, heavy flakes that quickly added up to a new layer of snow on the sidewalks. And the mountain itself was covered with at least 8″ of freshies.

Each run that we did still had areas of untracked powder although our favorite runs of Thursday (Franz’s) were pretty packed-powder and a little icy in places. Definitely not as good as Thurs. conditions. However, we discovered a secret trail under the Whistler gondola – following the signs to Kadenwood, we ended up on a little pathway that had nobody on it, and was just one of those windy, cruisy runs through the trees, thick with powder. Once the run dumped us out of the trees onto a wide run, we were on the skier’s left of the gondola and found these undiscovered areas where there were nobody else. This is where we really found the powder. Both Jessie and I managed to get stuck in it a few times but for the most part it was light, fluffy, and at least 12″ deep or more in places. This really felt like the run of the day, so like Costanza, I “ended on a high note” and took the gondola back up to make my way back to the Village for another après session at the GLC. The gals met me later for beers and we watched the in-house band, the Hair Farmers for a while, and headed home for rest, hot tubbing, and primping for the evening’s dance festivities.

(Jessie, me, and Gracie always ending on a high note at the GLC)

All in all, I really enjoyed Whistler. First off, it was fun to be in another country to go snowboarding. Having just been to Australia two months ago, it was cool to be surrounded by mostly non-Americans. We met a handful of Americans, all from Seattle (it’s only a few hours drive, comparable I think to Los Angelenos driving to Mammoth.) Mostly we met Canadians, and TONS of Aussies. Everybody was really nice – surprisingly so! On Friday, I even got run into by some douchebag on the mountain who was out of control, but he stopped and apologized and made sure I was OK. Unfortunately, I can’t say that about most riders at Mammoth and Snow Summit!

Another random act of Whistler kindness – on one of the traverses, I was about to stall out when a friendly skier cruised by me and goes “grab my pole!” She pulled me out past the flats and I made it without having to stop. How cool was she?

The village is awesome; as I mentioned, it is a huge village and not just a few blocks of stores. I love that the entire town is more or less easily walkable even in the snow. Once you’ve made your way from your condo into the village, you can meander through and shop or eat without getting snow on your pretty little head – because the walkways are under the 2nd-level businesses in each building (the stores are set back from the open-air.)

(Jessie in the Village, going shopping)

Prices in the restaurants and bars were comparable to LA. And there’s a good range of choices for dining – from cheap-but-delicious made to order burgers at the Splitz Grill, to nice high-end sushi. Music in the bars ranged from standard American top 40 dance music to hip-hop to European style-house… sometimes in the same night! It was definitely interesting last night at the Savage Beagle, when the dj mixed in “Shout” and “Tequila” to the mix of Euro anthems. (But that did give us a chance to do our best pee-wee herman moves.)

As we left today, we saw our first peek of blue sky in the entire 4 days of our stay… looked like it was shaping up to be a beautiful bluebird day! But we got some great riding in, and sampled a lot of what Whistler had to offer. I’ll definitely be back!

Want more about our Whistler trip?
- Read Part 1 of my recap
- View our pics on Flickr
- Watch videos on YouTube

Created a Flickr account to show and share our snowboarding photos and memories from the season. Check out our photos from our recent snowboarding trip to Whistler, Canada!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/snowboard-women/