Photo: Mammoth Mountain
This winter hasn’t felt very wintery out West, but Mammoth Mountain announced this week it will be open “through at least Memorial Day” 2026 despite a warm season with grueling dry spells for most resorts. The news came after a massive storm upped Mammoth’s February snow total above seven feet (the resort reported 87″ officially as of February 27) and locked in the mountain’s “second season.”
Mammoth holds the title of California’s highest lift-served resort, and in the winter of 2022-2023 it enjoyed 715 inches of snow. That allowed the resort to stay open until August 6 — just the third time it stayed open into August (1995, 2017). This winter got off to a rollercoaster start when a mid-November opening day was postponed twice due to conditions.
The original opening was supposed to be November 14, 2025, which would have beaten Tahoe’s Heavenly by one day as California’s first resort to open (Heavenly has base areas in both California and Nevada). Mother Nature didn’t cooperate though and lifts finally started spinning on November 20, 2025, just before Thanksgiving. That means this Memorial Day closing date would give Mammoth Mountain 188 days of operation this season.
Mammoth’s average seasonal snowfall can reach around 400 inches, but like many resorts, this 2025-2026 winter has been a slow one. The season total currently sits at 243 — about three-and-a-half feet short of last winter’s total. In 2024-2025, December and January were unbearably slow in that part of the Sierra, recording less than 50 inches for both months combined, but 150 inches fell over February and March of 2025. Paired with the fact that Mammoth stays cold enough (thanks to its elevation) to keep a lot of that late-winter snow, the resort was able to extend its season to June 15 that year.
The announcement this week from the Eastern Sierra helps take the sting out of a slow winter for a lot of skiers and riders who now might get to enjoy the classic Mammoth spring season.
