Wildlife, sport and activities, sometimes all at once

(Editor's Note: This story first appeared in the February 2005 issue of Mammoth Monthly magazine.

It is the shortest of Mammoth's sports seasons, and some years it doesn't happen at all.

It is the ice skating season, the season in late fall when the lakes freeze but snow has not accumulated on them.

Conditions have to be just right. The freeze optimally happens in the absence of wind, so the ice isn't bumpy. The freeze should be sudden, and last at least several nights.

The result, for a few nights at least, is thick, smooth ice.

The best lake for skating? It depends on how hard you want to work to get there.

Aficionados are particularly fond of Ruby Lake, one mile up the Mono Pass Trail from Little Lakes Valley, south of Mammoth in the Rock Creek drainage.

Ruby Lake lies at the bottom of a north-facing slope (Lookout Peak). It is remote and, at 11,040 feet, is about as high as a skater could want to be.

Soon, the inlets and edges of Crowley Lake will freeze, and there's nothing quite like skating below the Eastern Sierra escarpment.

The Lakes Basin, of course, is dreamy in the right conditions.

Any day now, those conditions might come about. Maybe. Possibly.

Mammoth isn't just about snow, you know.