MAMMOTH UNDERTAKING by Jackson Hogen
[reproduced from SKI Magazine December, 2001]

There was a time, not so very long ago, when Mammoth Mountain was Babylon West. The high priests of partying at Playboy portrayed its swinging slopes as the ultimate in winter indulgence. Images of bright sun, bronzed skin, mirrored shades, mustachioed instructors and tie-dyed and halter-topped waves of grooving hedonists lured skiers by the millions. Back when skier visits consisted of just skiers, Mammoth was the undisputed king, pulling in 1.5 million visitors in the mid-Eighties. Skiing was booming, and Mammoth was at the epicenter.

Since that time, the epicenter has drifted north. Like helium slowly leaking from a birthday balloon, the town gradually lost its pizazz and the party moved on to new venues, most notably Whistler/Blackcomb, B.C. It's no accident that when Mammoth set about to reverse its fall from grace, the company they looked to for help was none other than Vancouver-based Intrawest, the same visionaries who developed Whistler into the New Babylon of Boarding, Booze and Babes.

The birth of Mammoth Mountain is the stuff of legend in American skiing. Back in 1941, Mammoth consisted of no more than several portable ropetows powered by Ford Model A truck engines and the dreams of Dave McCoy, one of the tow operators and a hydrographer for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Primed with knowledge of local snowfall patterns, McCoy obtained permits from the U.S. Forest Service to erect a permanent ropetow. Over the next half century, McCoy and his family added lodges and lift after lift after lift. There are presently 30 iterations of ski lifts scattered across Mammoth's broad expanse, a staggering number when one considers that almost all of this hill can be fairly described as frontside.

But while the mountain increased its capacity and allure, the town splayed around its base-Mammoth Lakes-did not. Sure, there was a Main Street lined with shops, and the Whiskey Creek bar attracted the party-prone, but there wasn't enough gravitational pull to create a true community center. The villain in this tale is also Mammoth's lifeline to the tourist trade: the automobile. Mammoth's history is overwhelmingly as a day-skier resort, not a vacation destination. The resort's main feeder market, Los Angeles, is a six-hour drive away, and the nearest city of consequence, Reno, Nev., is a nearly three-hour trip over narrow roads. Mammoth (like L.A.) became defined by an infrastructure designed to serve a driving public.