I go to USC and have been the secretary of the ski team for the past 3 years. This year our team took #1, #2 and #3 in slopestyle for skiing, and our team pretty much consists of a bunch of skiers. about 10 people on the team only had class mondays and wednesdays so they'd ski thursday-sunday and surf tuesdays. yeah the drive sucks, but if you ski as much as we do and are actually looking for a good education you will use that drive to do homework. Anyway, i'm from hood and used ot get about 30 days a season, now i'm getting about 60 days on the hill, staying up in the house thanksgiving, christmas, spring break, etc, while doing engineering.
Also, this year i think the only team that had a house besides us was long beach, but their house was down in crowly which is about a 20 minute drive to mammoth. Our house was a 5 minute walk to the gondola. The rest of the teams only come up pretty much on race weekends and get condos which is 6 times a year.
Now to respond to your rail jam thing - we came to mammoth with the idea, and the guys there pretty much took it over, but put it on us to get everything organized for them - permits, activities, whatever. Then they came in and told us exactly when it was going to take place (we wanted it at night, not in the middle of classes) and how the format was going to be. Believe me, I of all people thought it was ludicrous i'd get 3 hits all day after planning the frickin thing for 2 months. But yeah it was more about exposure for our team and getting people at school to experience what we get to. I'm sorry you think it sucked but we're going to start planning this summer for the next one and hopefully it will be a bit better. We're going to have a college kid only rule so no randos from mt. high show up, or have the sponsors continually hitting it while all of us get to sit and watch.. no fun.
ANYWAY long story short, come to USC if you want an education and a sweet ski team. Otherwise all of the schools around here are pretty decent and we all have a good time up there together in mammoth.
but yes, LA is a shit hole, i agree 100%. but we can surf?