I must retract my pessimistic prediction from April 6-7. Late April storms allowed the lower mountain base to hold up for a fairly normal Memorial Day. The bonus was the 7 inches new on May 20-21. On Saturday some of that snow was still in evidence up top, though it had been well baked on Friday. Dave's Run had been churned by midweek powderhounds and was tough to ski as still unconsolidated mashed potatoes. But skier packed lines on Climax and confined runs like Drop Out, Wipe Out and Hangman's were almost packed powder in consistency on Saturday. Those runs were much better than on April 6-7. The whole weekend was very warm, and by Monday the upper runs had a more normal late spring surface. Hangman's was the only run I skied on Monday which might have frozen Sunday night.

Mammoth did its usual fine job of grooming and salting most runs on Ch. 1 & 2. Friday night had a light freeze, so most of the groomers had good corn on Saturday for awhile until the traffic chewed it up. Due to the midweek snow, the mountain was open full operating hours until 4PM. I made the error of blasting down Fascination at full speed at 2PM as I had just before lunch. By then it was sticky, so I caught an edge and had a complete yard sale, fortunately with just some minor road rash on my nose and elbow.

On Monday the groomed runs were soft right away with no overnight freeze. But skier traffic was about 1/3 of Saturday's, so many runs had a better midday surface than before. St. Anton's was excellent on Monday as Chair 23 was closed so few people skied down that way. With the warm weather and traffic some areas were much thinner on Monday than Saturday, particularly the top of the face of 3 and the base area around Chair 2.

Most of the Unbound terrain park was still functional, excepting the halfpipes. To compensate, they built a huge halfpipe at the bottom of Climax, which my 17-year-old son reported was very well maintained.