A Time of Lasts

So, as Phil and I head to Colorado, we are experiencing (and have experienced) many lasts in our time in California. Before Phil left, we went to Mammoth Mountain for one last time. It was a long drive and we were a bit tired from all of the move prep but we had a wonderful weekend together. As many of you know, when we traveled to June Mtn. or Mammoth, we usually slept in our car to save money. Since we'll be living so extremely close to mountains in CO we will probably not have much need for sleeping in our car anymore. So, this may have been our last time sleeping in our car for a snowboard trip. Many of you who are not as strong in heart, might wonder how one sleeps in a car in sub-freezing weather. I will show you in the following pictures. :) Don't worry, we stay quite warm (as long as the sleeping bag stays zipped up). It was really windy this night as a storm was coming in and it felt like the SUV was going to blow over. The wind was crazy that night!

That storm that came in during the night made our last Mammoth trip one of our hardest. Phil has a BRIGHT orange jacket and the visibility was so low that a few times at the top of the mountain, Phil was only 10-15 feet away from me and I couldn't see him at all. It was scary at times. Most of the mountain ended up being closed due to high winds and low visibility. We only managed to do about 10 runs or so before we had to head off the mountain. We took the shuttle back to our car (thankfully we had chosen not to drive to the lodge). The traffic in town was CRAZY because no one could see to drive and the cops were guiding people onto the freeway about 45 cars at a time. See pics of us sitting in traffic. It took about 1-1 1/2 hours to go about 2 miles out of town. Just sitting in traffic, sometimes the winds would blow up the snow so we couldn't see the car in front of us. Once we finally got to the freeway that happened one time and it was quite scary because we were moving. However, within about 2 mins of getting on the freeway, the sky cleared up and we had blue skies overhead. It was really weird. One minute we were in a storm and the next we were under blue skies. There wasn't much of a transition. I hope you enjoy the pictures of our LAST trip to Mammoth...at least for awhile.














Packed and ready to go.





















Phil just finished waxing my board. Looks beautiful huh? He does a great job!
















THIS is what we look like when we sleep in the car. Baklava's keep us warm (as well as a zero degree sleeping bag!)















Phil looking through the "luggage" in the front seat. Everything goes in the front when we go in the back.
















Looking out our window after we wake up. Here's our storm!

















This is what it looked like as we headed out of Mammoth. This is the car in front of us during a "good visibility" moment.















"Poor visibility" on the road. This is why it took over 1 hour to go such a short distance.
















Moving out of the storm. Blue sky ahead. Crazy huh?















Some of the interesting clouds we saw on the 395.















A pic of the mountain with the storm and the blue sky valley.

Now, if you want to sleep in your car, you'll know exactly what to do!