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Because it's what we do

(Editor's Note: This story first appeared in the Festivals 2007 issue of Mammoth Monthly magazine.)

It's nearly 8:30 on a blustery November morning and Mammoth's young and restless have been at it for nearly an hour.

A keg of beer is open in the Main Lodge parking lot; pancakes are cooking on a makeshift truck-bed fry kitchen and there's a buzz in the air reminiscent of the hour before the top opens after a week-long January dump.

But on this occasion, it's not deep snow that has had the truck-and-Subaru crowd out since dawn.
It's Opening Day at Mammoth Mountain Ski Area -- a daylong festival that turns into a weekend-long party, no matter what the ski conditions are.

In fact, Opening Day usually not an exceptionally high-quality day of skiing at all, but a day when the slopes are busy nevertheless.

According to Bill Cockroft, the senior vice president of operations and an Opening Day regular, conditions don't really matter; the first hours of the ski season are always going to be a momentous occasion in Mammoth.

"It's like the opener for football season or the first big waves of the year in Hawaii," Cockroft, who figures to have skied on opening day at least twenty times in his thirty-nine-years at the ski hill.

"Opening Day is a proud moment for a lot of people. It's a badge of honor and people do whatever they can to be here for both opening and closing days."

In recent seasons, the opening day has typically been on a Thursday with Saturday seeing the official opening party, complete with a Rusty Gregory-led sparkling wine toast and live music. Such entertainment isn't always necessary though, especially in years like 2004, when the mountain opened October 21 with 82 inches of snow.

For local legend Dave "Cave Man" Fitzpatrick, a snowboarder who often logs in a minimum of 120 days a year and makes snow angels around the mountain to mark his turf "for peace," minimal opening day conditions are a hindrance at the very worst.

"This last year, Opening Day was a challenge for me because the snow was so hard," Fitzpatrick said, regarding his daily bas-relief snow sculptures.

"I had to carve my angel into the ice with a ski pole, but it was beautiful. It looked right down onto Crowley Lake and up at the Minarets. But I don't care. I need to be there opening day. It's peace of mind. I don't care if I'm watching snow fall from the sky or fall from a machine, it makes no difference to me."

Cockroft concurred. Although he missed opening day in 2005 to be in Hawaii with his family, he said he will do his best to make Opening Day in the future no matter what mother nature brings.

"Clifford [Mann] and I went out this year and it was actually great," Cockroft said. "It wasn't an epic powder day, but then again you can have those days anytime during the winter."