00:00 Let's head out to Emily Van Groening,
00:03 PR Manager at Mammoth Resorts,
00:04 who is joining us this morning.
00:06 Emily, thank you so much for being here.
00:07 We appreciate it.
00:08 - Yeah, thank you for having me.
00:12 We are standing here at the base of the mountain.
00:14 We have about 230 inches of snowfall this year.
00:18 As you mentioned, December and January,
00:21 it started off a little bit slow,
00:24 but we are currently sitting at 11 feet of snow
00:27 for February, so we are very excited about that.
00:30 We have clear skies, and for the whole weekend,
00:33 it looks like it's gonna be beautiful, light wind,
00:35 and we're super excited about it.
00:37 And with the crazy snowfall that we've had for February,
00:42 we are actually going to be stay open
00:44 all the way through Memorial Day.
00:46 - Oh, wow, so you're already making that call.
00:48 You know what, you must have read my mind a little bit,
00:51 because I was gonna ask, considering last year
00:53 you guys had that record-breaking snow,
00:55 you stayed open all the way to August,
00:57 you're already calling for Memorial Day?
00:58 I didn't realize you could do it that early.
01:00 That's so exciting.
01:01 - Yeah, we actually are.
01:04 Just because February has delivered so much snow for us,
01:08 there's a little bit more in the forecast,
01:10 but it's been so amazing this February
01:13 that we feel pretty confident that we're gonna be open
01:16 at least through Memorial Day.
01:18 - Well, I know you just made a ton of our viewers,
01:19 including myself, very happy.
01:21 Love to see that extension of ski and snowboard season.
01:24 Now, I do have to ask, considering how stormy
01:27 it's been in California the past few weeks,
01:29 what are some of the challenges in terms of heavy snow?
01:31 Does it make it tough on the mountain
01:32 when it all comes down at once like this?
01:34 - Yeah, it's definitely difficult,
01:37 but we have some of the best in the business.
01:40 Ski Patrol is always on it.
01:42 We definitely have to do lots of avalanche mitigation,
01:46 that kind of stuff, just to make sure
01:48 we're opening all of our terrain safely,
01:50 but in a timely manner.
01:52 So there's a lot of that that goes on
01:53 through the operations team, lift ops, and all of that.
01:57 And then besides that, it's kind of just making sure
01:59 that everything around town is accessible,
02:02 making sure the roads are plowed and all of that.
02:04 But we're definitely, it's not our first rodeo,
02:07 so I think we're pretty good at it.
02:09 - Yeah, you're not kidding.
02:10 You know, Emily, I'm glad you brought this up.
02:11 I actually did wanna mention the avalanche safety aspect,
02:14 just because, look, we have a lot of viewers
02:15 who head out that way.
02:16 Maybe they're not typically skiing
02:19 or snowboarding out in California.
02:20 It's a new experience for them.
02:22 Can you speak to that avalanche danger and mitigation
02:24 that you guys do a little bit,
02:25 just to kind of give people a look at what happens
02:28 if there is any avalanche risk in the forecast?
02:30 - Yeah, so usually what we do is we try to open
02:35 the lower lifts first, and then as we have the resources
02:40 and time, we will move to each different location,
02:44 make sure that it's ready to go.
02:46 We will have some avalanche mitigation.
02:48 We'll rope off the area, and then we will only open
02:51 things one by one as we deem it safe.
02:55 So that's kind of where we're at with that,
02:58 and it's just to make sure that everyone is safe
03:01 and that we're doing everything that we can
03:03 to make sure we can open as much terrain as possible.
03:07 - We love to hear it.
03:08 Thank you so much for joining us, Emily.
03:10 We appreciate your insight, and we're so excited
03:13 to hear how long ski season's gonna last already.
03:15 Have a great day and happy skiing.
Comments