Mammoth–a where’s Woolly adventure!

Two girls take on an epic Mammoth ski adventure, filled with hot springs and epic things–read along to see what Mammoth CA is all about!

Annika

2/18/20268 min read

Okay, so I know what you’re thinking–another ski blog. But ummmm hello, do you remember how the last one went? Yeah, mighty eventful so you’re going to want to stay tuned to see how this one (equally as eventful) goes. Plus, this one is in Mammoth so all of you California and Icon baddies better tune in.

Lets run it back, so Christmas rolls around and my wonderful friend Chloe gets a few day passes to Mammoth but has no one to go with, well not yet anyway. Enter, Annika: 5’3”, funny, skier, oh and she’s friends with Chloe. Well, moral of the story: Annika gets herself an invite. A few scheduling calls down and boom we have ourselves a silly little trip plan for a girls long weekend getaway.

As the day came to head to Mammoth, I packed up my car and made the drive down to June Lakes. Ahhh, well you may be thinking June Lake? I thought you were going to Mammoth? Hold on babe, I’m getting there. So I make my way to June Lake and check in to stay at the cutest little cabin! P.s. cute is a quaint way of saying the cabin is small, but for two girls who don’t need much you really don’t need more than a cute cabin.

Chloe drove separately as she headed up from SoCal and we prepared some dinner before snuggling up in bed before our very fun first day of skiing. And, as all sleepovers go, when the lights went out we obviously still had to chat. This was initiated on my part when Chloe, unassumingly, turned off the lights and got into bed and attempted to head right to bed. Ohhhhh, was that far from what was about to happen, because after about a solid 30 seconds of the lights being out I ERRUPTED into laughter. Which, by the way, if you do not live in my head, as Chloe does not, would scare the ever loving shit out of you as you are mid drift off into sleep in the pitch black darkness of our cabin in the middle of the woods (whoops).

What was so funny, might you ask? Well, I was doing my pre-bedtime checklist in my head of making sure the cars were locked and we brought everything inside, the lights were off, alarms set, and that the front door was locked. That last one stuck with me as I thought, is it? Probably? I mean well what if it isn’t? What if someone walks in? WHAT IF SOMEONE WALKS IN! Well, I’d shout “Chloe, kill ‘em”. This mental scenario was funny to me. So funny I could not stop laughing at this inside joke with Chloe that Chloe was so very much NOT privy to…whoops. Well, we shared a laugh at that after I let her in on what the hell was going on and hit the hay.

Up bright and early the next morning, we made our way from June lake to Mammoth for our first day of skiing! Day one we made our way up and down and all around the mountain. We then, as absolute and complete icons, had a charcuterski lunch (yummies). So this made us the most popular girls on the mountain for about the whole 20 minutes it took to set up this charcuterski, take some pictures, and then scarf down the yummy meats and cheeses. Day one on the slopes was wildly successful! We made our way to all of the lodges and found Woolly Mammoth (very important to Chloe btw). The day couldn’t have been more perfect. Well, okay it was about 20 degrees with a wind chill so maybe that could have been a bit better but other than that it was a pretty great day!

Day two we were so back baby! Today we attempted to ski the ski races and ended up getting lots of fun film. We also skied a cutie baby chute and I learned that I absolutely love mogul skiing, and not the baby moguls, the BIG moguls. Why may you ask? Well, you really just have to plant your poles and the route is practically chosen for you, you just have to follow it. I also learned that loving mogul skiing is rather quite ridiculous (oh well, to each their own). More important than my new found discovery of my love of mogul skiing, was a CAVE! This is rather quite important because how often do you go skiing in bounds and get to find yourself exploring a cave mid run?! Yeah, that’s what I thought! So we found our cave nestled in our baby chute and made our way to explore. It’s a small cave, but magical nonetheless! Well worth it in my opinion.

Now you see, we were absolutely firing today. We had a good warm up under us from the day before and well, the mountains were calling. Who exactly was calling? Satan’s spine? Or the devils back? Dragon spine? You see I’m actually not so sure because by the time we passed all of the warning signs and made our way to the top of the run we decided ABSOLUTELY NOT and did the side step of shame back to the top to find well, any other way down the mountain lol. We ended up rather quite happy with this decision and we ended up having the best time staying alive and well. After our day of smart decisions and wild explorations we headed to the village! We made it to the Mammoth store, and I got some stickers and a keychain and a sweater (boy I am a sucker). Anyway, we walked around the stores and then Chloe took me to a cutie dinner spot (delicious). Then we continued our way around and made sure to get a little sweet treat from the Rocky Mountain Chocolate factory (yum). After some time cruising the town we made our way back to the cabin to wrap up day two of or girls trip!

Day three, well now we have a blackout date, soooooo we got to go on an adventure. The adventure of choice was skinny dipping at Wild Willy’s hot springs! There were unfortunately many people there after our mile and a half walk so we did indeed end up being, well, not naked. After taking many photos along the way and stopping behind some large rocks for a scenic nature pee, we made it to the hot springs. The springs we chose had several pools going from warmest at the top to cooler along the way down. After spending some time there and some people coming in and out we were greeted by some new friends. We chatted it up with them for a while prior to leaving and they mentioned they would be skiing Mammoth the next day, what a coincidence…so were we. They posed the idea that hey, maybe we’ll ski together tomorrow we were like yeah sure. Poor saps, we were certain to never see them again. Well, anyway we were out of the pool and determined to not walk back with our wet swimsuits on. TIME TO STRIP. Well, kinda. We held up towels for one another and got buck naked and put our clothes back on to be able to hike back up to the car. Ahhhhh commando, what a freeing feeling. We headed back to Mammoth in anticipation of some yummy yummy PIZZA! Now here’s the thing about Giovanni's Pizzeria, if you aren’t there 20 minutes before they open you’re late! So we made our way to stand in line with the other lovely 30ish people and when the doors opened we knew what we had to do. We immediately read the menu and made sure to have our orders in first thing. And I’m glad we did because we were so hungry and tired we couldn’t even speak. We NEEDED food ASAP. Also, there’s a pretty great reason that there was a line outside 20 minutes prior to them opening. They rocked! Well, we were still game to party after our delicious pizza adventures so we headed to check out the Mammoth Lakes Brewery. What did we have? None other than a Rootbeer and a sprite (yeah I know, we party hard). Well, after our hard core adventures we made it back to our cabin for one final night’s sleep before we hit our final day on the mountain!

And for our last trick…

Well we head to the Mountain for our last day (booooo) of skiing (yayyyy). We hit our warm up lap and, sure enough we ran into the guys from the hot springs who we were sure to never see ever again (funny how that works). Well, boy did we end up skiing with them the entire day. Even when we parted ways we kept bumping into one another. We even parted ways and then bumped into one another at the lodge for lunch. Well once we spotted our lunch companions we decided, no better way to end the weekend than by doing a shot ski with your new bestie strangers! Chilllllll, water shots, for me anyway. On yeah and since they were sans step stool I had to yell at everyone to hit a squat so I didn’t splash my shot all over my face. Well after our lunch, we took one final ride with our 24hr friends and then we ditched those suckas. Well, we had to go home but same same lol. So ultimately, we had the best and most iconic baddie ski trip equipped with new friends, skiing the WHOLE MOUNTAIN top to bottom, and some pretty rad memories.

So, what might you want to check out in Mammoth when you go there?