A good Chair 23 day in May goes like this.
You wake up at 6 in the Sherwin Plaza parking lot, because you slept there. Coffee from the Looney Bean. You can already feel it’s going to be warm. You walk to the lift in your shell unzipped, because the lot is at 7,800 feet but the sun is already on it.
First chair on 23 is the last cold ride of the day. The top is breezy, 30 degrees if you’re lucky, and the snow off the back is still firm. You ski one warmup top to bottom. By the time you’re back on the chair, your jacket is in your backpack and you’re skiing in a T-shirt. By 11 you’re putting sunscreen on the inside of your nostrils because the reflection off the snow is going to find every angle.
The snow cycle in May at Mammoth runs about six hours. Hard in the morning. Skiable corn by 10. Hero corn from 11 to 1. Mashed potatoes by 2. Slush you can barely turn in by 3. The trick is to follow the sun around the mountain. North-facing in the morning. South-facing later. By the time the bottom is dust, the back side might still be holding.
The bumps on Stump Alley by mid-afternoon are not bumps anymore. They are features. You can rest in the troughs. You ski them with bent knees and a lot of forgiveness.
You eat lunch on a rock. You don’t go inside. You don’t pay $19 for chili.
By 3 you take the last lap on the gondola side, slow and warm, and roll out to the Mobil station in Lee Vining — the one that’s a gas station and a restaurant at the same time — for a fish taco. If Tioga is open, you sleep in the truck on the east side of the pass. If it’s still closed, you sleep at Convict Lake.
This is the whole appeal. It is one tank of gas, a $90 lift ticket (or whatever it is now), and the cleanest air in the state. You don’t have to plan it. You don’t have to be good. You just have to show up before the parking lot fills.