Following intensive discussions among the Far West Masters board, we have reluctantly
decided to cancel the planned masters training camp and races at Mammoth the
first week of December, and most likely the planned SL doubleheader day at Alpine on Dec. 19.
There are too many uncertainties, too many pressing challenges for our host areas, and
consistent direction from state and local authorities at this time discouraging non-essential travel.
Given the number of factors to consider, we believe the responsible action is to cancel our
planned events for December. Our ski areas have difficult challenges right now and
all are working hard to establish the necessary processes to safely operate.
We are acutely aware that navigating these early season issues is critical for the areas
if they are to be able to continue to operate through the season and
the additional complexities of running races in the current environment
could stretch key resources to the limit.
We want to emphasize that Mammoth Race Department and MMSA have been very positive
and supportive of our event planning and we fully expect a good season of skiing and
racing to ahead of us. Mammoth opened on schedule (a day early even!) and is
aggressively working towards opening as much terrain as possible as quickly as possible.
While the 2020-2021 ski season has started, it is definitely different.
Mammoth opened on Friday Nov. 13 with good early season conditions on a mix
of natural and man-made snow. Mt Rose has also just opened and other Tahoe areas have or will
open this week for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Reports from our folks
who have gotten out on the hill have consistently described unexpectedly large crowds
and lift lines at a time that is ordinarily a slow period at the ski areas.
It is still too soon to tell if the larger crowds will continue or fall back to more
"normal" patterns, but unquestionably there will be unusual stresses on ski areas
and mountain communities over the next few weeks. Covid infection
rates and hospitalizations are rising significantly, threatening the capacity of both
local and regional medical facilities, and government health guidelines in both
California and Nevada are moving back to stricter restrictions.
So let's take December as an opportunity to ski at our local areas, do some
training, work on skill development, and look forward to a more stable situation
(and more snow!) in January when hopefully we'll be able to resume racing.
[23-Nov-2020]
