So you think you know the town?

It’s always 1971 on the deck at Canyon Lodge. Oh sure, you can order a 21st century Red Bull, but you’re still going to be listening to the Allman Brothers playing “Statesboro Blues.”

The Mammoth Scenic Loop has nothing to do with being scenic. It’s really an escape route. The mountain is an active volcano, as evidenced by the stinky, sulfuric steam vent at the bottom of Chair 3’s face runs.

That howling guy dressed like Captain America isn’t crazy. He’s Dave Fitzpatrick, a.k.a. the Caveman, who boards all over the mountain, making snow angels under trees for adventurous kids to find.

Keith Dawley has skied the eastern Sierra year-round for 133 consecutive months. A trails supervisor for the U.S. Forest Service, the Mammoth resident spends lots of time on tele skis in the backcountry for work, which has helped him set a local record of skiing at least once a month for 11 straight years.

A worthy new buzz-grinding website is about to launch. George and Jean Shirk, who publish the hip Mammoth Monthly, will start https://www.mammothlocal.com on Nov. 15 with a mountain-lover’s blog, inside information on the runs and profiles of the town’s best skiers and boarders.

Most likely to be voted Mr. and Mrs. Cool: Keith and Kim Erickson. As most residents readily acknowledge, Keith is one of the best telemark skiers in the Sierra, known for his bandannas, low, sweeping turns — and his Type 1 diabetes, which requires constant blood-sugar testing and insulin shots. Kim is a cross-country ski tourer who holds one of her poles with a prosthetic hand, which a local fundraiser helped pay for.

Mammoth is a literary haven. One of the world’s largest collections of ski-related literature is at the Mammoth Ski Museum. The oldest book in the 2,500-volume research library is a 1555 history of the Goths, Swedes and Vandals, with the first printed images of skiers.

Three Mammoth boarders just made the U.S. Olympic snowboarding team. More locals are still vying for spots to join Molly Aguirre, Tommy Czeschin and Luke Wynen this winter at the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, Italy.

The town boasts a small cadre of intrepid lake ice skaters. They go on alert right about now, waiting for that magic moment when the smaller lakes freeze but aren’t yet covered with snow. Some years that never happens; right now it’s still anyone’s guess.

Sorry, those shiny side-cut skis you got last Christmas are ready for a garage sale. Mammoth Monthly reports that the town’s ski shops are loading up on 88-millimeter-wide fatties, which locals say are hands-down the best skis for Mammoth’s famously soft (and sometimes slushy) snow.

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... and the mountain?

Christmas is a great time to ski Mammoth. No, not the week between Christmas and New Year’s when lift lines bring on bad ‘70s flashbacks, but the week before, when most people stay in the city to shop and go to boring office parties.

Wind is your friend. The wind that blows ice needles up your nose on chair rides smoothes out the snow and blows it into fluffy caches that pile up on runs like the face of 5, Dave’s and Back for More.

Secret runs, especially on busy days, come in handy. The Merry-Go-Round for beginners, East Bowl to Coyote for confident intermediates and, for the highly skilled, any top run that isn’t Cornice (the best snow often hides in the Wipe Out Chutes).

Private lessons are cheaper than group lessons. Five people (kids or adults) can share a private class for $34 apiece, instead of paying $60 each for a group lesson that might well include 10 people.

Mammoth shakes — a lot. In a typical week, a dozen or so earthquakes rattle the mountain and its surroundings. Most are small and therefore unnoticed. But Mammoth and the Long Valley are geologically volatile, and it’s just a matter of time until a big one hits.

Follow the sun. On packed-powder days, savvy locals start on the east side of the mountain, the Little Eagle side, where the sun first softens the snow. They follow the sun’s trajectory the rest of the day, heading first to Chair 5 and Facelift Express, then the top and, in the afternoon, the backside (Chairs 13 and 14).

When fresh snow hits on a weekend or holiday, flee. Drive 20 minutes north to June Mountain where fewer folks means the freshies will last for hours instead of minutes.

Two runs are named for people who died on the mountain. Scotty’s honors Clifford Owen Scott, who was taken down by an avalanche above St. Anton’s in the ‘60s; Terry’s Run pays tribute to Terry Smith, a ski instructor who died in a bulldozer accident at Chair 3 in the ‘70s.

No, that’s not Yosemite Valley that you see from the top. On any given clear day someone is always standing at the top, pointing southwest and bellowing, “See? That’s Half Dome right there.” It is not possible to see Yosemite from the top; that’s Balloon Dome.

Starwood doesn’t know a high-speed quad from a half-pipe. So regardless of what’s going to happen to the town, the mountain will remain a skier and boarder’s paradise.

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Colleen Dunn Bates is the author of “Mammoth from the Inside: The Honest Guide to Mammoth & the Eastern Sierra.”