California is a very unique place especially LA where you can basically find anything that you could possibly want. Here at USC I know that I can walk a mile to the staple center, take a twenty minute Uber to the Santa Monica pier, and take a five hour scenic car ride with some friends to Mammoth Mountain. Like my title says, when I am not trying to ace my midterms, I adventure with the ski/snowboard team up to Mammoth Mountain to take a break from busy LA life to get in touch with my snowy side.I have been snowboarding since the 8th grade and ever since then I have been obsessed with going fast and attempting to jump on metal objects without falling off (keyword: attempting). Mammoth is a beautiful place especially coming from Maryland where all we have are large hills.  The season starts around November depending if there is any natural snow formed, otherwise they start blowing snow on the mountain as soon as it gets a little cold. The mountain is so large with so much varying terrain that you have plenty of time throughout the day to explore the mountain or adventure down the terrain park if you are brave (I attempt some things). Unfortunately, the mountain doesn’t allow night skiing, so you have to get up bright and early to get a full days experience.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Last year I wasn’t able to make it up there during first semester since I just had my second shoulder surgery, but now that my arm is healed, I will be heading up on the first sign of snow. I try and get up there as frequently as possible even when my friends aren’t going up. The team has so many different people that you meet cool people every time you go up to Mammoth. The Ski/Snowboard team is a very close group that spends a lot of time together and has become so close based on the fact that a lot of the team spends every weekend at the lodge. We are a team of about 100 people that just love the snow and have fun with each other. We have carpools willing to take people up every weekend starting in November till the last day of the season. Every year we rent the same house and try to keep as clean as a group of college students can (pretty clean actually). We also have a large presence on campus where we host weekend events and have snowboarding companies visit our campus. The ski team combines one of my favorite hobbies while also including a good network of interesting people at USC. I can’t wait for the season to start.

[author title=”Author” author_id=””] href="#" data-color-override="false" data-hover-color-override="false" data-hover-text-color-override="#fff">Button Text
frankie-2017

frankie-2017

Chemical Engineering, Class of 2017, Learn more on his profile here!