Sarah WallockThis Friday, for work, I headed up to Opening Day at Mammoth Mountain to get coverage for my job managing social at Visit Mammoth. I had never snowboarded outside of New Zealand, and didn’t know quite what to expect. I was pretty overwhelmed juggling creating content from my DSLR camera, GoPro, and phone while navigating a new mountain…
Waking Up at the Crack of Dawn
All in all it was a banger of a day! I arrived nice and early to capture the excitement of opening day and had enough time to get some riding in later on.
I was running around being introduced to local business people and mountain employees. And I was stopping the best dressed mountain-goers every chance I got to grab some interesting photos and content for the website.
Snowboarding and Photographing New Terrain
I finally headed up Chair 1 to get content from the mid-way point. The chair lift stopped and I was sitting there with my legs dangling down and thousands of dollars worth of gear on my back.
The chairlift picked up again and for the first time in 3 months, I snowboarded off the lift to strap into my bindings. I snapped a few photos of Wooly and the selfie gang. Then, I adjusted my non-waterproof North Face backpack super tight, strapped into my other binding and flew down the mountain.
In my head, I was nervous I would land on my back and crush my gear. But in actuality, snowboarding was the easiest thing I did all day… It was the networking, photographing, content creating, and mental-gears churning that was the hardest.
As soon as I was snowboarding again, everything was perfect. It was cruisey, comfortable and so fun. And, I got to shred in actual snow! Sorry New Zealand, Mammoth definitely one-ups the resorts out there for this reason alone.
11,053 feet and 400 inches of snow per year on average. It’s a whole new ballpark!
Ultimately, the day was filled with upbeat energy, a passion for snowsports, and Rock ‘n Roll music. Despite some mishaps, I couldn’t have asked for a better opening day.
