A Beautiful Sight...
Allison Mann
Photos by Justin and Allison Mann

After a busy summer, nearly complete with a trip to Whistler, two trips to S.W. Utah, and a few runs up to local lift-assisted riding near Big Bear, we’d only been up to Mammoth once this year. It was a great trip in late July, for lift-assisted downhill with a few friends on the state’s best pumice.

Naturally, I saw closing weekend coming up near the end of September and knew it was a must-do trip. I posted the trip on our local forum and quickly had a few interested people. About two weeks before the trip there was even more interest. I ended up booking a 10-person room at the Mammoth Mountain Inn for Friday and Saturday night. We’d get in a bit of riding Friday, meet up with everyone driving in Friday night, throw back a few beers, and have two days of beautiful gondola-driven downhill runs.

Flash forward to Thursday, September 20, 3 days before closing day. I get up in the morning and my husband yells out that I need to come see his computer screen. I’m busy, but go in there anyway, where I see the image of the Mammoth Mountain webcam. The Main Lodge is covered in SNOW. It’s not even 7 am and already one guy is on the brink of canceling the trip up there.

We spent most of the day checking the weather reports and watching to see if anyone else decides to bail. We try to assure everyone that the weather won’t stop the fun! It’s getting close to the 11th hour when people are going to be heading up there, and it’s an 8-hour drive!

Not to worry, at 3pm on Thursday the webcam image is gorgeous. Blue skies, green grass, no sight of the white stuff at all. The only guy that threatened to bail has been talked back into the drive and the trip. We’re all set. In addition to our motley crew of 11 or so, there will probably be about 5-10 other people that we know up there. The worst that can happen is we are stuck hanging out at the Inn watching movies, or drinking beers at the brewery. With this group we’d have fun with a case of Fat Tire and a deck of cards. It’s that kind of group. Everyone can work together; we can split up, or ride in a group. No one gets left behind, everyone ends up with a smile on their face, and we all have a blast riding our bikes.

A buddy drives over Thursday night to crash at our place and carpool up with us. We’re set to meet a new kid at 4:30 am. 4:30 a.m. Friday rolls around. No new kid. Turns out, he fell back asleep; his dad will drive to meet us. We get lost in Ontario, but quickly are on our way/ I called the Inn, as we drove through Bishop, before 11 AM to find out if we can get an early check-in. Turns out they are ready for us! Rock on. We drive straight up there and drop off our gear. We phone several friends that had stayed Thursday night in Bishop, they were already hitting the lifts. We decide to shuttle Lower Rock Creek Friday afternoon, and attempt to miss the thundershowers that were threatening on the nearby peaks. It’s cold up at the Main Lodge / Inn, but it’s clear. We head down to Mammoth Lakes for lunch around 11:30, check out Footloose (bike shop), and change into bike clothes to get our shuttle on. The trailhead is about 35 minutes south of Mammoth, and it sprinkles part of the way there. While we wait for the shuttle truck drop-off it starts to come down pretty good. e just try to stay dry. The boys show up after dropping two of the trucks at the bottom of the trail and we head out at the trailhead to start our way down. Before we know it, the rain stops and we start to shed layers. The sky was threateningly dark the rest of the way, but didn’t open up on us again.

It was a blast! The rocks definitely make the trail live up to its name. Aside from the kid tacoing his front wheel three turns down the trail it is all good. He needs a rental bike for the weekend and a front wheel replacement at home, but otherwise everything is great. The sand that might be loose mid-summer is packed and grippy, and we all had a great time on the trail.

Friday night I hit the hay around 10, totally exhausted after getting up at 4 am. A few other people show up a little after midnight, but I didn’t even hear them come into the room. The older folks wonder if we’ll all be up in time for the 9 am gondola opening.

It’s a little before 8 and breakfast is being served. BaconSpokes has her groove on and everyone’s stomachs are satisfied. Most of the group is out there and we all get on the gondola right around opening. The ground is slightly wet, and it’s a bit cloudy out, but there’s no snow or running water on the trails. The trails should be in prime condition. We’re all geared up for winter though because it’s around 27°F and windy at the peak, which is where we are headed.

We start to ascend in the gondola. We pass mid-mountain. It’s almost white-out. In some spots, where the gondola stretches far above canyon floor below, we can’t even see the bottom. It’s hard to see the other chairs in front of us, behind us, or going the opposite way. It’s windy. The wind howls outside the gondola. We all stand in the chalet as long as we can, until the gondola operator says we need to keep moving. The stairs are covered in snowy ice, and the ground outside is covered in about an inch of snow. There will be no breath-taking views seen from the peak today. We’re all laughing, wondering if we are crazy. There are others up here, though, so at least we aren’t alone.

We head out to Skid Marks. The ground has patches of snow, but isn’t completely covered. It’s cold and windy, but we keep moving to keep ourselves as warm as possible.

Eventually we get down to mid mountain where it is absolutely gorgeous. We took off our jackets, extra gloves, and started to warm up in the sun.

After our first run we decided to head back up to the peak to do it again, only with slight variations on the descent. The second time up there is much more snow on the ground. It’s no longer sunny as we pass through McCoy station (mid mountain) on the gondola. It’s tough riding over to Skid Marks due to the blowing snow and the wind. The ground also has started to hold the snow. Our tire marks easily cut through the white to reveal the pumice, frozen, below.

Whooping and hollering ensues and we all laugh like mad men (and women). We all make it down safely, albeit most of us with tingling fingers that hurt as they warm up. The rest of the runs will be to McCoy station, and consist of staying on the lower runs, without the wind, and with less snow. By our last run, the tires hardly make a mark in the snow. I look down a trail and can see tire marks going off in the distance, and that’s the only way I can tell if I am on a trail at all. It’s silent, snowing, and I’m riding my bike.

The evening’s festivities were a blast, with 25 of us taking over an Italian joint and drinking way too many pitchers. We all end up in bed at a decent hour, though.

The next morning is a filling breakfast yet again, only the majority of the people in the room are getting dressed a bit too slowly to hit the 9 am gondola opening. It’s 9 and they are still in PJ’s questioning the weather. There’s snow on the street outside, and the sky is half gray, half blue, with clouds and the threat of more snow. Four of us are fired up about the epic conditions and head up in the first few gondola’s after it’s open. We hit up McCoy station for our first run down Lower Velocity. There is snow everywhere, and we are concerned with snow blindness. It’s gorgeous white snow with bright sun and the most amazing blue sky imaginable, where there weren’t clouds anyway.

I fell early on in the trail on some ice and deeper snow, and was extremely nervous riding down all of the wooden ladders. The only thing that kept me moving and on my bike was the knowledge that if I was walking down the ladders I’d really fall and get hurt.

We picked up a few more people for our second run down Velocity. My fingers started to freeze again. I couldn’t feel my brake levers at all. Eventually there were about 15 of us standing around watching others hit a drop. A crash followed, causing the deep pumice to come to the surface. As the minutes ticked by the ground thawed and some of the snow melted. Woohoo, time to hit up the peak!!

We were in for a big surprise. We got off the gondola at the top of mountain, all 11,053 ft of it, to complete white-out. We rode a bit toward Skid Marks and found ourselves trudging, with our bikes, through at least 5 foot snow drifts. We went for high ground, but were surrounded by the drift fence on one side, and huge drifts on the other. My legs went in mounds of snow up to mid-calf a few times. It wasn’t long before I couldn’t feel my fingers. This was crazy!

We got to the switchbacks on Upper Skid Marks and I stopped to look out ahead of me. It was an amazing scene of winter wonderland, here on my bike, in September. It was gorgeous. The sparse trees were weighted down with powder, and it looked like a postcard. I took a token handlebar shot, and one down to where the others were stopped in what little sun was available, waiting for the rest of the group. There was gorgeous blue sky; a great contrast to the white and red/brown pumice.

Down at mid-mountain the skies were blue and the pumice was back to its normal dry and dusty self. Aside from being slightly chilly, one would never know that only a few hundred feet up, at the peak, there were snow drifts and crazy people with freezing fingers and blue faces. We did one run down DC-10, which I renamed A River Runs Through It, since it was essentially a mud river the entire way down. Aside from that, our last few runs were all on dusty dry ground, with no sight of snow or puddles on most of the trails.

I never would’ve thought that riding in the snow would be so much fun. I attribute it partly to the adventure, and partly to the great group of riders.