Despite skiing most seasons since 1981, I've only skied in 5 places: Mammoth Mountain, Heavenly Tahoe, Snow Summit, Snow Valley, and Mountain High. All of these are either in California or Nevada.
The vast majority of my skiing has been in Mammoth.
After a failseason of skiing this winter due to barely any snow in California/Nevada, they finally received a nice storm which dumped 4-6 feet of snow.
This was the first good weekend of skiing, and it was very crowded. At 10:15am today, there was an avalanche near the top of the mountain. Here's the official statement from Mammoth Mountain Resort, from about 25 minutes ago:
MAMMOTH MOUNTAIN, CA -- At approximately 10:15AM on March 3, 2018, Mammoth Mountain Ski Patrol was performing avalanche hazard mitigation work when an avalanche released on the upper part of the mountain traveling towards the High Five Express [Chair 5] area. The area where avalanche control work was conducted was closed for skiing at the time of the incident. Avalanche debris traveled toward the bottom of the lift and ultimately crossed into an area that was open to the public.
Three people were partially buried including one Mammoth Mountain employee. The three individuals were able to free themselves without injury.
Ski Patrol was on scene with initial rescue efforts within minutes and search operations were put into motion immediately. After a transceiver search, RECCO search and avalanche dog search, no results were reported. A manual probe search is on-going.
We are not aware of any missing persons. If members of the public are aware of missing friends or family, please call 760-934-0611.
Mammoth will remain closed today to focus all efforts on the site.
We expect to return to normal operation tomorrow. Full investigation is ongoing and more details will come.
Here's an LA Times article about it: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/l...303-story.html
The affected run, "Face of Five", is a single-black-diamond run (meaning it's advanced, but not expert) which begins at the top of Chair 5. That chair brings skiers to an altitude of 10,000 feet, but it's not the top of the mountain. It sits below the expert runs on top, which are up another 1,000 feet.
I usually do Face of Five a few times each day when I'm at Mammoth.
The avalanche occurred on an expert run called "Climax", which is above. As mentioned in the statement, they had closed Climax and were doing avalanche control (setting explosions in the area), when it unexpectedly crashed down more snow than expected, and Face of Five was affected.
I never felt Face of Five was ever in avalanche danger, as the run itself is unlikely to suffer from avalanche problems, and I knew they did a great job controlling avalanches above it. However, I've also never skied when they've been doing the avalanche control, as they were today. This usually goes on at night and in the early morning. Presumably they couldn't get it done in time for today's opening (due to the snow being so much and so recent), and they probably didn't want to close the mountain because this was going to be a huge weekend.
That was a mistake.
Three skiers were partially buried but got out. They are searching now for others, but the initial report is that nobody else was buried.
In 2006, three ski patrolmen were killed at Mammoth while doing avalanche control.
Last year, a ski patrolman died due to a explosive accident at Squaw Valley (near Lake Tahoe). In 2012, another ski patrolman died in an avalanche at nearby Alpine Meadows.
Mammoth Mountain is truly located in the middle of nowhere. Those closest city of any decent size is Reno, which is 170 miles away. It's 150 miles from Lake Tahoe, 300-330 from Los Angeles, 250 from Sacramento, and 310 from Las Vegas. It's in central-eastern California.
It was founded by Dave McCoy, who was a water surveyor for Los Angeles. While surveying snowpacks in the Sierra Nevada mountains, Dave found that one area always seemed to get more snow than everywhere else. He had an idea to start a ski resort there, and managed to do so. In 1955, the resort was opened, though it was very small. In the early 1990s, Dave decided he was too old to continue running it, and handed it over to his son, Gary. Unfortunately, Gary was both a cheapskate and a jerk, and the ski resort suffered. They ended up selling it to a company called Intrawest in 1996, and it has changed hands a few times since then. Dave is still alive and 102 years old, as is his wife who is 97.
The entire area is on a volcano which could actually blow at any time, and is constantly releasing carbon monoxide and other gases. In 1980, a series of earthquakes led people to believe the volcano was about to go off, and real estate prices fell extremely low. The volcano never erupted and the quakes stopped, so anyone who took a risk and bought property then made a fortune.
If the volcano ever blows, it's possible everyone in town will die. It last erupted 100,000 years ago.