Skiing : June Mountain--Refuge From the Mammoth Crowds

For many skiers, Highway 395 beyond the Mammoth Lakes turnoff is the great unknown. The pavement narrows to two lanes and takes off up a hill and into the trees, going who knows where.

Adventurous souls, however, have discovered that there is skiing beyond Mammoth Mountain, and they don’t have to drive three more hours to Tahoe to find it.

June Mountain is only about 25 minutes up the road, and frequently the extra time can be made up during the ski day by reduced waiting in lift lines.

June isn’t as big as Mammoth, but then how many ski areas are? With five double chairlifts and a T-bar, though, it is big enough to accommodate 3,000 skiers without becoming crowded. It’s also big enough to offer a maximum vertical drop of more than 2,500 feet from its two 10,000-foot-plus summits.

There are plans for expansion, but Bud Hayward, who founded the June Mountain ski area in the winter of 1960-61, said: “It’s difficult to justify adding more lifts or opening up more terrain when you only reach capacity a few days out of the year.” Hayward is a part-time resident of Tustin who commutes by flying his own plane into Bishop.

Weekends and holidays are busy here. But during the week, there may be only a couple of hundred cars in the parking lot. This is the best time to ski and to savor the simple pleasures afterward.

From the bottom, June Mountain appears somewhat forbidding to the average skier, with a steep face looming above. The No. 1 chair, however, provides transportation both up and down, and the rest of the mountain is carved into runs for all levels of skiers.

At the top of No. 1, the Grand Chalet Schweizerhof is the center of June’s activity. From its lunch deck, there’s a sweeping view of the Eastern Sierra and Mono Lake to the north, as well as the closer June and Gull lakes, which are frozen in winter.

The ambiance is faintly Swiss, by design. Hayward was inspired by visits to Grindelwald and has also applied some of the names from that region of Switzerland--Eiger, Lauterbrunnen and so on--to the Interlaken condominiums that June Mountain has recently built nearby.

A couple of other condominium developments are also under construction or planned, but the primary lodging facilities are still in several motels and larger hostelries such as the Boulder Lodge and Heidelberg Inn, all in this genuinely rustic town just a couple of miles off the highway. To the west of the ski area, or “down canyon,” as they say here, is the Normandy Inn and its gourmet restaurant, the Red Lyon.

The entire June Lake loop is a livelier place in the summer, with fishermen and campers around every bend. But in winter, especially midweek, there’s nothing Mammoth about the crowds.

Of course, this is something that Hayward finds to be a mixed blessing. “It seems like everyone who discovers June Mountain tries to keep it a secret, so it won’t become overrun,” he said.

Skiing Notes Both June Mountain and Mammoth Mountain received additional snow from last week’s storm. June’s base measures 84 inches, Mammoth’s 98 inches. All other High Sierra resorts are also in full operation, with packed powder on most slopes. . . . Southland ski areas also picked up some powder and now report depths ranging from 24 to 60 inches. . . . The Peugeot Grand Prix men’s pro ski circuit will be at Snow Summit this weekend for the $15,000 Bridgestone Cup, with Cary Adgate of the United States and the three Halsnes brothers of Norway--Jarle, Edvin and Stein--among the favorites.