Mammoth Mountain ski area in California has announced its 2016-17 ski season – which began in early November last year – will continue in to August.
The announcement comes following the decision of the other Californian ski area that had stayed open since last Autumn, Squaw Valley, to finally end its season the weekend before last.
A Mammoth statement said they’d stay open until August for only the second time in the resort’s long history. However it expects to close on August 6th after a 270 day ski season – but not quite as long as the longest-ever recorded there in 1994-95 when the slopes were open from early October to August 14th.
Mammoth had a very snowy winter, recording record snowfall in January and posting the deepest snow depths in the world for the first six months of this year, almost reaching 9 metres/30 feet in mid-winter. In total it received 15.7m of snow through last winter, again not quite its most ever (just under 17 metres fell in 2010-11).
The past few months have seen high temperatures in California and a rapid thaw but the snow is still 85cm thick and 10 runs remain open.
