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Ski Trip: June Mountain
New location for this year's Spring Ski Trip... June Mountain, a smaller resort 20 miles north of Mammoth.
Trip sizes seem to be shrinking-- I missed the first two years, but this year was only six people... planned was seven, but Alan got nailed by traffic out from the Bay Area and didn't make it. His 200-250 mile drive would have been 350-450 miles had he known about actual road conditions (whoops!), considerably longer than the 320 miles it was from Los Angeles...
Keith and Kanita arrived separately... about 2am. Ouch. The rest of us-- Sophia, Carley, Justin, and Brian-- got in about midnight after some difficulty in finding the cabin, but we unpacked fine and it was a cozy little place. Brian and Keith unloaded Keith's truck after they got in... then... man... far too little sleep that night. We had a delicious, highly fattening breakfast then found a gigantic line to get to the top of the mountain at 10:30am or so.
To our surprise, June Mountain was a little small, and they had nothing at the base-- instead you had to go up a single 2-person lift to the actual base camp another 1,600' up the mountain-- and it was a 45 minute wait! Ouch!
By the time we got up there, all five of us (Kanita stayed at the cabin) tried to grab gear... then the three guys found that they were OUT OF SKI BOOTS in our sizes. Pissed doesn't quite describe it. We almost headed back down the mountain for a refund, but instead tried snowboarding. We expected four skiers and one snowboarder on Saturday, but Carley was the only skier while Keith, Justin, and Brian got to figure out snowboarding with Sophia trying to teach the three of us... Keith and Sophia barely made it down one run... then Sophia ran off to do a few runs... Justin made three runs... Brian made two runs (and was ok on his heels, but couldn't figure out turning for the life of him...)... Carley had fun on her own for the most part since everyone else was too busy trying to figure out what the hell a snowboard was, other than a target for skiers. =þ
That night was a yummy meal of salmon and frozen veggies, and surprisingly not much alcohol-- as Justin later noted, if we had any more than a glass each, we all probably would have been passed out instead of playing Uno and Seven all night...
Sunday... got to June Mountain around 8:30ish, much shorter lines, and this time we had the full group with us. The rental shop manager (thanks Pat!) held ski boots for Brian the night before, so we were up to three skiers (Carley, Kanita, Brian) and three snowboarders (Sophia, Justin, Keith) for Sunday. The groups promptly ditched each other since Justin and Keith were first-time snowboarders (despite being good skiers) and everyone else was intermediate-level skiers/boarders. Kanita, Carley and I ran around and hit almost all the beginner and intermediate runs. Both groups met for lunch around 12:30pm, then semi-randomly met each other at Matterhorn after lunch.
The skiers did okay, but Keith and Sophia both took pretty good spills. Keith clipped on Kanita's skis and went down hard. Sophia was taking some bumps/jumps off Lottie Johl or something-- hit the first three bumps then was going a little too fast off the big jump at the end and the next thing Justin reports is that he saw her snowboard up above her head in the air and that was it! (Justin ate it on the 3rd bump before the jump) Ouch!!!!!
That night was pizza (yum! no thanks to the balky oven, though) then more Uno and Seven.
Our Uno and Seven games are vicious, full of malice, hate, retribution, treachery, and vengeance. Turns out our Uno rules aren't quite stock either. Suffice it to say, tons of fun! And death. Don't ask.
Next morning was a slow one... we cooked, ate, and cleaned up in record time, then ran off back to Los Angeles, stopping in Bishop at Schati's Bakery on the way (yum) and then a Bill's (?) BBQ for lunch (YUMMY!)...
Headed back to Los Angeles, beef stew for dinner at Sophia's place, then a very successful trip ended.
Tomorrow, Sophia and Brian subject themselves to our usual weekly rock climbing session. Oughta be interesting...
