Mammoth mountain day 1 of 2

---

Up earlish. Home cooked breakfast for the first time in close to a week. Tried to phone the reception for booking the snowcat tour for tomorrow but couldn't get through. Figured we would drive up to mammoth mountain inn and book it there and continue on with skiing. Then halfway there, Tanya rangwe to tell me I left my wallet at home.

Drove back and decided that Tanya would continue to call and the rest of us would go out skiing from Canyon Ridge Lodge which was right next door. Got kitted out with hirehear and on the slopes by 930. The queues in the hire shop where out of this world and their system is not as organized as Big Whites one. One guy serving all of us and walking backwards and forwards through all the gear racks one item at a time. big White had different stations for each piece of gear and pumped you through.

Skied till close to 1. Great slopes. No fresh snow yet has held up well. Busy at the base of Canyon but found good clear slopes to West. Found solitude to our liking, then found a cool gully or natural half pipe run called dry creek bed.

He'd lunch with Tanya back at the lodge. Then headed back out. Went over to the east side of the runs for a while. Then eventually headed back via a couple of chairs and did solitude and the gully one last time. Looked at our watches and figured if we hooned, we could do the gully just one last time. If we didn't do it quick enough, we would miss the last lift back up the top at 4pm. Best run of the day, with Thomas showing his best form of the holiday! Got down with a couple of minutes to spare. Then ran down the home trail and in the gear shop returning our gear by 4.30.

Home for a hot shower and then the kids wanted pizza. Googled up Johns pizza bar as the best n town. Not having a menu, we figured Tanya and I would drive down. It was fairly busy but it out of control. Made an order of 2 large pizzas and started to wait. After about 20 minutes a guy came in and was told that the wait had blown out to an hour. At this point Tanya looked at our invoice and noticed we only had paid for 1 pizza. "my bad" said the girl behind the counter. We now had another hour to wait for 2 pizzas. No tip for her. Went home for 45 minutes and then picked up pizzas. At least they were good pizzas.

---