More Skiing - Of Course!

It's that time of year.
If I'm not working I'm likely skiing.

Friday Steve and I headed up to "Habbegar's" which is a series of nice glade runs above the small community of South Fork in the South Fork of Bishop Creek.

The slopes are moderate and the runs are short (500' - 800'), but the snow stays nice for a good while after a storm and the trees are handy when the visibility is limited as it was Friday.

Low clouds, light snow showers, and light winds greeted us on the way up.


The glades once again delivered some nice skiing on 4" to 6" of new snow on top of the previous, denser powder. Old ski tracks occasionally threw us off a bit, but didn't dampen the fun.


Saturday Mary and I headed up to June Mountain for some lift skiing. June is the small, somewhat neglected local ski area just north of Mammoth and is the perfect place to find lasting powder.

Mary rallied and joined me up on the hill. This was her first ski area outing in over two years due to her hip injury and subsequent surgery and she was justifiably nervous.

The snow was perfect though and she found her groove instantly. Here she is enjoying the 6" to 8" of fresh, light snow on top of the groomed snow.
I hooked up with a coworker, Brian, and we had a complete blast. I hadn't skied that hard that long in quite a while and by the end of the day my legs were totally gone.


To top off the weekend I joined Steve and an ex-local friend Chris for a tour back up in the Mammoth Lakes Basin. Chris had toured with our friend Anne up to the TJ area the previous day, so I knew a skin track was in.

Although the track was drifted in here and there, we had easy traveling up to the top of TJ Bowl. We all felt good about the stability so we gave it a go.

The skiing was simply superb on a good foot of light, dry snow.

Here's Steve enjoying himself.
There was just enough light to see the texture in the snow. Here's Crystal Crag with Chris barely visible bottom left in a cloud of snow.
After a short breaking admiring our tracks and smiling a lot, we headed over to the boot track that heads up to the Sherwins. The views up were stunning. Crystal Crag is just right of center and TJ Bowl is just left of center.

We expected to see other folks on the boot track and we did. Friendly types.
Even ran into an ex-coworker friend of Chris', Mike, who joined us. Mike and Chris catch up while hiking the windswept top of the Sherwins.
We dropped into this little bowl then headed right into the trees where the skiing was nothing short of outrageous.

Chris dropping and rocking!
A cloud rolled in just as Steve started.
Play time!
What a day.
Thanks guys!