January | Best Time To Ski And Play With Snow In Mammoth Lakes, California | Video

Mammoth Lakes, a town in the northern part of California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. A small town is known for its beautiful lake for fishing during summer and popular for skiing and snowboarding during winter. My wife and I don’t know how to ski or snowboarding but we love to travel and see snow during winter time. That’s why we decided to head up to Mammoth Lakes and spend a couple nights to visit the town. We brought Ruben “My wife’s brother” and his girlfriend Jacqueline.

We left about 4 am in the morning from San Diego and drove 6 hours to reach Mammoth Lakes. We only had to stop once for a bathroom break before we reached the town.

Mammoth Lakes has an elevation of 7,881 ft and before we reach the town, we had to stop to install the chain for our tires.

Yes, you need chains in your tires to drive on a snowy road at Mammoth Lakes or else you will be slipping and sliding to the hill.

When we arrived, we stayed in an apartment hotel called Mountain Shadow. It does have a kitchen and living room. It’s perfect for 4 people.

It was almost dark that time when we got settled to our hotel and the only thing we want to do is to find something to eat.

Good Life Cafe, that’s the restaurant we decided to try because it’s near to our hotel and we don’t have to drive our van. The food was good and very comforting. After we ate, we headed back to our hotel and rest for the night.

Next morning, we visited the mall near the town where you find gift shops and souvenir shops and other branded company but only few of them open.

Right beside the mall is the tramway going to Canyon Lodge, one of the ski area at Mammoth. The ride was free so we decided to head up there. The area is packed with skiers and snowboarders, unfortunately, none of us knows how to ski except Jacqueline.

My wife and I love to learn but it there was a lot of people and we still haven’t visited some other places in the area so we just took some selfies and head back down to the mall.

When we were walking back to our car at the mall, we took some pictures and play around in the snow.

Rea was ecstatic to see some snow.

We then decided to find some areas where we can sled. Check out our short videos at the end of this post. We spent the rest of the day sledding and playing in the snow in Mammoth.

Next day, we headed to Main Lodge to learn how to ski and we spent pretty the rest of the day learning to ski. We rented all the gears and cost us less than $50 per person all day. I forgot the prices already but you can always check out the Mammoth website for the prices.

Here are some of the our pictures in Mammoth mountains learning how to ski, thanks to Jacqueline for teaching us. Although we probably need more time to basically be good at it.

I just can’t figure out if she was smiling or what in this picture… Because she complained about her ski boots that won’t fit her.

Next morning when we woke up, the snow was so high that you can see the cars parked outside was covered with snow.

We used our hands to removed the snow in our car because we didn’t bring a shovel.

Because of the winter storm, they closed the highway going out of town. So we decided to stay another night.

Before we headed back to our hotel, we ate at this bakery called Schat’s Bakery Cafe to get some coffee and delicious breads and cupcakes

Next day, the storm was gone and the highway was open and they also cleared the rest of the snow in the main road. Then we all came back safely.

Overall, our stay in Mammoth Lakes was fun and memorable. That’s why I recommend you to visit Mammoth in January if your really want to ski and play with snow.