For the last week of March, 2004, Jim Dow and I went to Mammoth and Heavenly Valley for a great ski trip. After Southwest Airlines flight from BWI to Reno, we drove 1 1/2 hours to South Lake Tahoe for a day of skiing at Heavenly and found great improvements. They have built a new gondola that leaves a recently built village just on the California side adjacent to Harrah's and goes 2/3 of the way up the mountain. To return you have to ride the gondola down, but this puts you in good a position to ski both the Nevada and California sides. The old tram that runs beside Gun Barrel and only goes 1/4 the way up still runs on the California side. It was quite warm and we had a good day of spring skiing on the upper slopes.

A three-hour drive south down highway 395 put us at Mammoth where we joined friends with whom I have skied for many years. Mammoth is indeed a spectacular and mammoth mountain with lots of open slope runs topping at 11,000 feet with a base at 8,000 feet. They have just built a new village at an excellent location that gives easy access to the mountain. A short gondola takes you to Canyon Lodge where five lifts start you on a journey across the mountain. There are 28 lifts and a gondola that goes from Mammoth Lodge to mid-station and the wide-open top. Our four days at Mammoth gave us two sunny days and two cloudy days. There were spring skiing snow conditions and the sunny days were outstanding.

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