Skiing : What a Difference a Year Makes at Mammoth

Mammoth Lakes, on Jan. 1, 1987, was like a ghost town. The ski area at Mammoth Mountain was deserted, chairlifts suspended motionless over brown dirt and gray granite.

The Christmas-New Year’s holidays were about to become history, and there wasn’t enough snow for a good, old-fashioned snowball fight, let alone skiing.

Today, the place is jammed, and it has been that way for the last two weeks, as about 16,000 skiers a day ride Mammoth’s 31 lifts, ski the 66 inches of powder and packed powder, then congregate in the evenings at Whiskey Creek and the other restaurants and watering holes.

Leading the way down the hill is founder-owner Dave McCoy, who still skis every day at the age of 73. He easily survived last season’s poor start--Mammoth finally opened on Jan. 4--and spent another $10 million last summer on improvements. There was nothing major, just some subtle refinements such as clearing trails and adding facilities here and there.

The big development was at June Mountain, the ski resort about 30 minutes to the north, which Mammoth purchased more than a year ago. A new aerial tramway, with seven cars that carry 20 passengers each from the parking lot to the chalet, has been erected and should be operational before the winter is over.

June, near the town of June Lake, offers a slower-paced skiing experience, and is currently running five chairlifts for about 1,800 skiers daily. The mountain is 95% open, with a 50-inch base.

Both Mammoth and June have been operating this season since before Thanksgiving, and one $27 all-day lift ticket is good for both resorts.

The action slowed during the first couple of weeks in December, a Mammoth spokesman said the other day, “because everyone seemed to be waiting for the holidays.”

A small pre-Christmas storm added some needed powder, and then about 30 inches fell last Monday and Tuesday, creating excellent conditions for the peak week of the winter.

As one might expect, lodging in both Mammoth Lakes and June Lake is booked solid through this weekend, and one reservations agent said, “There’s not much left in Bishop, either.”

It’s still 300-plus miles up U.S. 395 to Mammoth, but the last four or five miles into town, on California 203, are now all four-lane blacktop, following completion of an off-season widening job.

You can also get there from here again by air, via Royal West Airlines, which offers direct service from both Los Angeles and San Diego.

Mammoth-June is doing just fine, of course, catering to the throngs of skiers from Southern California, but the local business folk also would like to make it a major international destination resort, mainly to keep all those beds and chairs filled during the week. The mountains are there and the uphill capacity is in place, but the problem seems to be the lack of a major gateway airport. Reno-Cannon is the closest, and that’s nearly 200 miles to the north, with many distractions in between, such as several Lake Tahoe ski resorts.

Regardless, plans are proceeding for a third ski area to the southeast of Mammoth, in Sherwin Bowl, with enough lifts and runs for another 8,000 skiers daily. It’s a few years away, of course, but this merely reinforces the belief that somehow Mammoth, along with its suburbs, is destined to be a destination.

The World Cup Alpine schedule has been scrambled by a lack of snow in Europe.

The men’s downhill that had been set for Thursday at Schladming, Austria, was canceled, and the men’s slalom that was to have been held next Tuesday at Bad Weissee, West Germany, was postponed until Jan. 12, in hopes of a storm. The women’s giant slalom on Tuesday will be held at Tignes, France, instead of at Megeve.

Races scheduled for Jan. 9-10 are also being shuffled, with both the men’s downhill and super-G being transferred from Garmisch-Partenkirchen, West Germany, to Val d’Isere, France, and both the women’s downhill and giant slalom at Les Diablarets, Switzerland, probably being postponed.

Dorice N. Taylor, who chronicled the goings-on at Sun Valley, Ida., for more than 30 years, died Dec. 23 after a brief illness, at Moritz Community Hospital in Sun Valley. She was 86.

Mrs. Taylor began writing about Sun Valley in 1948 while working for Florida publicist Steve Hannagan and later became the resort’s public relations director, continuing in that position until she retired in 1971.

In 1980, her book, “Sun Valley,” was published. It traced the history of the resort and its many notable visitors and residents, including W. Averell Harriman, Ernest Hemingway, Gary Cooper, the Kennedys and others.

She is survived by her husband, Everett Taylor of Sun Valley.

Skiing Notes

All Southland ski areas are operating daily throughout the holiday period, with 12 to 54 inches of snow--both man-made and natural--on their slopes. . . . Richard Wickline has released a sound track cassette and a 45-r.p.m. single of his “World of White” video, which he introduced last winter. . . . The annual Miller Lite Ski Fest, a kind of “winter break” for college students, begins a weeklong run at Mammoth Mountain Saturday. . . . ESPN will show two hours of skiing Sunday, starting at 2 p.m., PST, with a tape of the 1987 World Championships, and followed at half-hour intervals by “Subaru Ski World with Bob Beattie,” with Alf Engen of Alta, Utah, as Beattie’s featured guest; the U.S. Pro Ski Tour races at Waterville Valley, N.H., held Dec. 12-13, and speed skiing from Portillo, Chile, taped last September.