We’re one of the only mountains in the country that’s still open for skiing. So make Mammoth your Summer Base Camp and enjoy all your favorite sports for just $99.
Get your Ski-Bike-Golf Challenge Pass now. ]]> http://www.insidesocal.com/snow/2013/05/17/ski-bike-and-golf-in-one-day-at-mammoth-mountain/feed/ 0 http://www.insidesocal.com/snow/2013/05/09/three-days-of-skiing-for-147-at-mammoth-mountain/ http://www.insidesocal.com/snow/2013/05/09/three-days-of-skiing-for-147-at-mammoth-mountain/#comments Thu, 09 May 2013 19:09:58 +0000 Richard Irwin http://www.insidesocal.com/snow/?p=2190 Continue reading →]]> It’s not too late to get your snow fix in! While other mountains have closed for the season, it’s still snowing at Mammoth Mountain.

They’re staying open through Memorial Day weekend conditions permitting. Sunny days and great conditions for skiing and riding what more could you ask for?

How about 3 days of your choice on the mountain for only $147? That’s only $49 dollars a day!

This deal is good for any day during the rest of this season- whether you come for a 3 day weekend or come 3 different days.

Just follow these simple steps:
1. Act now! Purchase your tickets online or call 800.Mammoth.
2. Choose any 3 dates you want to visit Mammoth.

The Club of the Year Award is presented to a USSA competition club in each sport that has distinguished itself in providing direction to young athletes through high-level competition programs resulting in athletic success. The USSA athletic management team manages the selection with direction from each USSA sport director.

“The Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows teams have a remarkable history, yet we’re striving to achieve so much more and have set our sites on being, consistently, among the top programs in North America,” said Andy Wirth, president and chief executive officer of Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows. “This award is an important affirmation of our work to date, but there’s more to accomplish.”

In the resort’s nomination, USSA’s Alpine Sport Committee noted, “The Squaw Valley Ski Team wrapped up a year marked by tremendous growth, athletic success and excellence in event production. As one of the largest youth programs in the country, if not the largest, over 33% of its USSA members were new USSA members this year, a signal of movement through its development programs.”

At its top levels, Squaw Valley had eight skiers qualify for the U.S. Alpine Championships, not counting its named U.S. Ski Team members. At the U-18 National Championships, Squaw Valley skiers claimed 15 front page finishes, more than any other club. Eight top 10s at the Western U-16 Championships and an impressive 15 top fives at the Far West U-14 Championships show the depth of talent in the program, according to a press release from the resort. In addition, the Squaw Valley Ski Team helped host the successful U.S. Alpine Championships.

Under the leadership of Todd Kelly, the program this year joined with the neighboring Alpine Meadows Ski Team to combine resources and enhance opportunity for a larger group of skiers as they move through the pipeline. Veteran coaches, including last year’s USSA domestic coach of the year, Konrad Rickenbach, direct high-level training opportunities, including more focus on year-round conditioning.

A snowboarder takes full advantage of the snow, slopes and scenery at Heavenly Mountain Resort on Christmas Eve. (Heavenly Mountain Resort photo)

Associated Press

Skier visits this season at Vail Resorts Inc.’s seven resorts in California and Colorado and have risen 5.5 percent from last season, with growth picking up through spring break and the Easter holiday, CEO Rob Katz said Monday.

Meanwhile, season-to-date lift ticket revenue, including

some season pass revenue, was up about 10 percent from the comparable period a year ago. Dining revenue was up about 13 percent, ski school revenue was up more than 11 percent, and retail and rental revenue was up almost 9 percent, the company said.

Exact revenues and skier visit numbers weren’t released. The results were for the season through April 14 and didn’t take into account the reopening of Vail and Breckenridge resorts last Friday through Sunday for one more weekend of skiing and riding after both resorts got hammered with new snow.

The results don’t include recently acquired Afton Alps in Minnesota and Mount Brighton in Michigan. Results were adjusted as if Vail Resorts had owned the newly acquired Kirkwood resort last winter too.

Katz said season pass sales for next season are off to a strong start. He didn’t release details.

Vail operates the Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge and Keystone ski areas in Colorado; Heavenly, Northstar and Kirkwood in the Lake Tahoe area; Afton Alps in Minnesota; Mount Brighton in Michigan; and the Grand Teton Lodge Co. in Jackson Hole, Wyo.

Colorado
Aspen Highlands will open for one last weekend, this Saturday and Sunday. The resort has received more than 20 inches of new snow in the past week.

Loveland Basin will be open until May 5, and until then the resort is inviting skiers and boarders with passes from any other ski area to bring those passes to Loveland where they may purchase a lift ticket for $36.

Maine
Sugarloaf Mountain has an impressive 134 trails still open. No closing date has been announced, but the resort will be scaling back on its grooming efforts mid-week.

Oregon
Mt. Bachelor will be open daily through May 26, but only from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Mt. Hood Meadows will be open daily through Sunday, then for one final weekend of the season, May 4-5

Utah
Alta has one final weekend, this Friday through Sunday.

Snowbird will be open daily through May 12, then it shifts to a Friday-Sunday schedule for the remainder of the season (likely until the end of May).

Vermont
Jay Peak, which is expected to close for the season on May 12, has 59 trails and seven lifts in operation.

Killington Mountain Resort– with two lifts and 39 trails open earlier this week – plans to be open every day until May 5, then weekends only beginning May 11.

Sugarbush Mountain Resort will be open daily through Sunday, then opening for one final weekend on May 4 to celebrate its Kentucky Derby/Cinco de Mayo weekend. Two lifts and 24 trails are currently open.

Set for March 19-23, the championships will be staged after the XXII Olympic Winter Games, which will be held Feb. 7-23 in Sochi, Russia.

Athletes expected to compete at Squaw include Julia Mancuso, who won the Olympic gold medal in the giant slalom at Turin in 2006 and claimed two silver medals at the 2010 Games in Vancouver; Ted Ligety, Lindsey Vonn, Bode Miller and Mikaela Shiffrin.

“It’s great to get to race at my home mountain, and it’s awesome to have Squaw’s support for ski racing,” Mancuso said.

“We had a hugely successful event this year, but will be offering even more programming in 2014 as we welcome our American Olympians home from Sochi with a community-wide celebration honoring athletes across the winter disciplines,” said Andy Wirth, Squaw Valley CEO and president.

The last time I wrote an entire column about my son and skiing was 14 years ago. He was 8, and I was the admitted bad guy in the column.

The gist of the column that ran in The Daily Breeze that day was that I had tried to enforce my skiing standards on my son on a day when the weather was miserable and getting worse. I was still living the hard-core skiing life in those days, believing that any day on the slopes was better than the alternative, and if it was snowing and blowing, you just dressed warmer.

That approach works well for adults. But it did not work for 8-year-old Randy then, and I’m sure it rarely works with young skiers or snowboarders at any time. While adults may appreciate driving five hours, spending serious dollars on lodging and lift tickets, and the need for some redemption on the hill, kids rarely do.

It probably took me halfway home from Mammoth that day to get over the hours of skiing I missed, or the lack of toughness I perceived in my son. Or maybe it was just the nurturing all-knowing approach of wife Nancy, who finally said something like, “Get over it. It was miserable out there and Randy wasn’t the only one not enjoying himself.”

So I got the message, and after mulling it over for a few days, talked to a couple of experts in the Ski School, who pointed out the obvious: Nobody learns very well when they’re just trying to stay warm and dry. The column was headlined: “Randy was right: Stay inside when it’s storming.”

At the age of 8, he probably did not appreciate the vindication. But a lot of friends who were parents confirmed the obvious.

So flash ahead to this past weekend, and while weather was not the focal point, Randy was on the slopes of Arizona Snowbowl, where he is a part-time ski instructor. He was participating in a three-day Professional Ski Instructors of America clinic for Level 1 certification along with 11 other Snowbowl instructors.

Randy is a senior at Northern Arizona University, and in his second season teaching mostly kids ski lessons at Snowbowl. If you are surprised to see skiing and Arizona in the same sentence, join the club. NAU is located in Flagstaff, where the elevation and weather are similar to Mammoth’s. The base lodge at Snowbowl is at 9,000 feet and the top peak is 11,200 feet.

The PSIA Rocky Mountain region staff travels around to different ski areas, giving clinics for instructors, checking out their teaching and learning skills, and bestowing a coveted PSIA pin on those who measure up.

Certification of ski and snowboard instructors is one of the services performed by the PSIA through its various regions. Instructors start with Level I, then progress through the ranks as their skills increase. Level 4 instructors can pretty much pick their spots in the industry because these are the trainers of trainers. They are the individuals who ski schools market as their top teachers.

While good instruction can happen without PSIA certification, the professionalism offered by ski schools with rated instructors is an important asset to a ski area.

In reaching his current level of performance on skis, Randy also spent time learning to snowboard and has occasionally taught that form of snow sliding when there is an increased demand at Snowbowl. But skiing is his strong suit, and we are proud of our son the ski instructor.

Does this mean he’ll put his degree to work as a ski instructor for the first few years of his working life? That’s unlikely. But it does validate a family’s commitment to skiing, as passed on from parents to son, and a passion for the sport. While his parents were able to give him a number of years of skiing experience, he has taken his expertise to a new level as a professional ski instructor.

It was apparent two years ago when he and I visited Whistler, Canada, that the hierarchy of family skiing had changed. No longer was it obvious that the better skier was the most experienced one. In fact, after one challenging powder day at Whistler, the mantle had passed. Randy was clearly the stronger skier.

Earlier this winter, the family was in Arizona to celebrate Christmas and Randy was in a position to show us around his mountain. Role Reversal of the first order. The son was leading the pack and there was no question he belonged out front.

While graduation from college will warm the hearts of his parents as much as anything Randy has ever done, certification as a ski instructor is certainly validation of a lot of days sharing a love for the outdoors.

bcskis@aol.com

Thirty Canadian skiers pulled off a crazy stunt on the slopes at Mont St. Sauveur in Quebec, and they hope it will land them in the “Guinness Book of World Records.”

Led by freestyle-skiing world champion Mikaël Kingsbury, who reportedly came up with the idea a month or two ago, members and ex-members of the Canadian freestyle skiing team took part in the adventure on April 14 when they got together on the mountain, trained for a couple hours, then joined hands and went for it.

Record or not, the video on YouTube has more than 74,000 views.

It was the group’s second attempt, according to Jerome Berneche, one of the skiers who talked to a local news station. “On the first try, the line broke, because we had problems with the angle of the slope that was steeper on one side than the other, so some people did not have the same speed,” he said. “On the second try, everyone landed and the line didn’t break, everybody landed hand in hand.

“We were pretty stoked, I don’t think anybody really expected it to work that well.”