🚀 go-pugleaf

As of 1620 this afternoon (Thu, 20Feb) Mammoth was reporting 220 inches of
"fresh packed powder" [whatever that's supposed to mean].  Lifts expected
to be open Friday:

		T-bars		1,2
		Gondola		1
		Chairs		1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19,
				20, 21, 22, 24, 25

Temperature today had reached 25, with light to moderate winds, and apparently
it was not snowing at the time.  Chains required.

That's a lot of snow on the ground, even for Mammoth (i.e. skiing *down* into
chair 2 instead of sidestepping up, skiing directly onto the main lodge sun
deck, etc).  I seem to remember that Mammoth changed from measuring snow depth
at the top to measuring it at the mid-point Chalet, or maybe even the main
lodge; does anybody know for certain?  What's significant, however, are the
lifts that are closed:

	Gondola 2; Chairs 3, 5, 9, 11(?), 13, 14, 23

(I can't imagine 11 is really closed; I probably just missed it on the report.)

Which means the whole top, "face of 5", *both* sides of 3,  and the back of
the mountain are all closed.  The question, of course, really is whether that's
due to avalanche conditions, or whether Uncle Dave is simply saving the snow
for the weekend crowds.  My suspicion is that it's the latter (since that's
common practice), but I've never seen the front of 3 or chair 12 closed for
that reason except in late April and May, so there may really be avalanche
danger.

				John Pierce, Chemistry, UC San Diego
				jwp%chem@ucsd.edu
				{decvax,sdcsvax}!sdchem!jwp