It's a blessing to be able to ski routinely on Memorial Day, but I have been spoiled by the consistent quality of late season at Mammoth going back to 1978. This year's snowpack was unusually low in water and it melted off rapidly in May. Chair 2 has been history for a couple of weeks, and they gave up on chair 1 today. There was a narrow and slushy strip at the bottom of Broadway, but then you had to walk across the street to the gondola to go back up. The only directly skiable runs were Saddle Bowl, Cornice and Climax. Saddle Bowl had over half the traffic and was quite congested, but they groomed and salted it all morning to keep it manageable.

Weather was a bit breezy early and it froze a bit overnight, which it had not for most of the past two weeks. Cornice was groomed but much narrower than normal so it softened quickly with traffic. Climax had more skiable lines and was decent from 10AM on but with very deep moguls and a few big rock ooutcroppings. From chair 3 the only maintained snow went off the back; you had to walk across dirt to ski the face. This is the only time I've ever seen this, including counting 4 July trips, 2 others in June, and May 31 of the 1981 season which had only 245 inches snowfall. From Climax or Dave's (another dirt walk) the lower part of face of 3 was accessible. The best snow, due to low skier traffic, was the upper part of St. Anton. From there you could tuck up the rise past chair 23 and ski around to Powder Bowl, also pretty good, before negotiating the Broadway strip.