Corn Snow Season in Disarray
Too much friggin’ snow

May 5, 2005

By Bump Diamond
Man About Town

    What does it take to get a decent corn snow season around here, anyway?
    This past week or so, the spring skiers in Mammoth have been busy reassessing just what the heck is happening with the beloved season o' corn. 
    Instead of May corn snow up top, there’s still powder!
    For corndoggers, enough already, huh?
    “May is the corn month,” opined backcountry skier John Dittli today. “If it keeps snowing, you lose May, and that’s just the way it is.”
    At lower elevations, such as on Mammoth Mountain, there’s been plenty of corn snow this season, but that doesn’t exactly get the high-country skiers excited, and no wonder.
    The whole point of spring skiing is that the snow at high elevations loosens up and begins to melt at about 10 in the morning, and the corndoggers ski this luscious, virgin concoction for two or three or four hours, then wait for the next day. Overnight, the slushy snow melts, creating tiny ice balls that, when loosened up the next day, has the texture of creamed corn, and off they go again.
    A good corn season can be just about the grooviest thing since early winter pow.
    This year, though, it keeps snowing, as it did today on El Cinco de Mayo, and the long winter has just baffled most of the backcountry cognoscenti.
    With seven inches of new snow on the ground between 6 a.m. and 2 p.m. today, Mammoth Mountain has recorded 576 inches of snow this season—at 48 feet the second biggest snow year in Mammoth since 1993-93, when the town got buried under 617 inches (51.4 feet).
    It’s not that the corn season has been entirely absent. The thing is, you had to have your timing right.
    “We had some corn three weeks ago between 12,000 and 6,000 feet,” Dittli said, “and we’ll probably have good corn in June and July, but you’re going to have to go much higher for it.  You’re going to have to hike for it.”
    This is the second straight down year for corn. Last season, summer came roaring in really fast, wiping out the season in about 10 days.
    Two years ago, same thing.  Summer just hit: Wammo.
    This season, the reason why we aren’t seeing a lot of corn?
    “Because,” Dittli said, looking out his window, “it’s snowing.”