He’s Just Beginning a Mammoth Job : Skiing: At 74, Dave McCoy has already done enough to earn a life of leisure. But he won’t stop working on his mountain resorts until all his dreams become a reality.

Bring me men to match my mountains. --SAM WALTER FOSS, “The Coming American”

As he approaches 75, Dave McCoy might be excused if he suddenly chucked it all, bought a set of clubs and moved to a condo on a golf course at Rancho Mirage or some other resort.

His monument, Mammoth Mountain, is secure in its position as one of the world’s great ski resorts, its day-to-day operation in the capable hands of his son, Gary McCoy. Mammoth’s recent acquisition, June Mountain, is being managed efficiently by his daughter, Kandi McCoy. So, why not relax and enjoy the remaining golden years in a balmier climate?

“It’s too late for me to retire now,” McCoy said the other day. “And besides, I’ve never seen anyplace that I like near as much as this. It has the four seasons. It has all the things that go along with each season.

“I’m here seven days a week. I put every ounce of effort into it I possibly can.”

Just kidding, Dave. Nobody thought you would really ever retire. There are too many irons in the fire:

--Connecting Mammoth with June.

--Helping to develop North Village.

--Working with Snowcreek Resort to interconnect with the proposed new Sherwin Ski Area.

--Providing support for the Juniper Ridge project.

Obviously, Mammoth, which already has three day-lodges and 30 lifts serving more than 3,500 acres of skiing terrain, is far from finished--and neither is McCoy.

THE MAN AND HIS DREAM

Dave McCoy was born in Los Angeles, but he said, “My father was a highway contractor, and I lived probably in 95% of the towns in Central California.

“When I was 12 years old, I was over here, and saw the area and just fell in love with it, and said that’s where I’m going to spend my life. My folks separated before my 13th birthday, and I really didn’t see them after that for quite a long time. I worked on some ranches in the (San Joaquin) Valley, and then went to Washington where my grandparents were, up by Mt. Rainier.

“I visited here twice, until I graduated from high school, and the minute I graduated, I headed for here.”

This was during the depths of the Depression, and jobs were scarce.

“I went to work on a WPA project, an aqueduct,” McCoy said, “and in the winter it snowed quite heavily, and they needed somebody who could ski, so I just transferred from the WPA project right into the regular (Los Angeles) Department of Water and Power.

“I was a laborer but I was doing hydrographic work and cement work and rock work and everything else.”

As he skied throughout the region for the DWP, McCoy noticed that 11,000-foot-high Mammoth Mountain, because of its location, exposure and bountiful snowfall, would make an ideal ski resort, but he had more immediate concerns, such as providing for a family.

Just as it was love at first sight with the Eastern Sierra, his choice of a wife was equally quick and decisive.

“Roma is a native of Bishop,” he said, “and the first time I saw her, (I said) that’s the gal for me.”

Before Mammoth, there was McGee Mountain.

“I started (in the ski business, part-time) in 1936, working for . . . Courtlandt Hill when he had a cable lift on McGee,” McCoy said. “I was just a handyman, so to speak. . . . And the Eastern Sierra Ski Club had their ropetows on McGee. I belonged to the ski club and helped with all the mechanical things there.

“Corty (Hill) quit in ‘38, and the ski club sold me all of their ski lift equipment, I think it was ’39. But from then on, I just used portables and put them wherever we wanted to put them. We had a roving permit from the Forest Service.

“I had a full-time job (with the DWP) for 18 years. I didn’t quit the city until ’53. (But) we were skiing in here (on Mammoth Mountain)--we had pretty good-sized ropetows--prior to that.

“We built the No. 1 chair in ‘54, and in ’55 it was running. Our first little warming hut here was about 12 x 24, and we called it the Snake Pit.”

From that time on, there was no stopping Mammoth, as the post-World War II skiing boom, fueled by the 1960 Winter Olympics at Squaw Valley, and the population explosion in Southern California created the demand for first-class facilities.

McCoy grabbed on and rode the tiger’s tail.

Asked when he was finally convinced that Mammoth would make a go of it, McCoy didn’t hesitate. “1953,” he said, which was when he left the Department of Water and Power.

“I don’t think there’s ever been a time that I haven’t questioned whether I’ve overextended (myself) or not,” he said. “I just keep going as fast and as hard as I possibly can all the time. I never took anything out of the company, really, other than just to provide subsistence for the family.

“Me and the bank have a good relationship. And the Forest Service. And the skiers.”

McCoy got the chance to develop Mammoth almost by default.

Not long after World War II, he said, “a team of European and American ski groups and the Forest Service looked at Mammoth. (This was) before I got the permit to build the first chairlift. And their survey said that Mammoth was the least likely to be successful, of any other mountain in the country, because of its inaccessibility, its Alpine and high-altitude area--and it’s in a storm belt.

“So, I put all those things together and kept working with them while everybody else ignored us.

“The Forest Service had put out a prospectus for a big development here, but that (survey) scared everybody off, so the Forest Service asked me if I wanted to try to do it. I said sure, I’ll try. I had nothing to lose. It was left wide open for me.”

THE MOUNTAIN

Mammoth Mountain averages about 335 inches of snow a year, and it’s not unusual for it to open by Columbus Day, in October, and close on the following Fourth of July. The terrain is about 30% advanced, 40% intermediate and 30% beginner, and the maximum vertical drop is 3,100 feet.

The two gondolas, 26 chairlifts and two surface lifts have a total uphill capacity of 43,000 skiers an hour. Of course, not that many are ever on the slopes at the same time, although it may seem like it on a crowded holiday weekend.

Mammoth, however, has never had to cut off lift-ticket sales.

“We don’t (set a limit),” McCoy said. “They just kind of seem to set their own quota. Even if they’re here, they’re skating or they’re bike-riding or cross-country skiing or just hiking or shopping. There’s so many things that they can do, and they seem to just take turns, on their own.

“We have never limited the skier. We always thought we’d have to, but they do a good job (on their own).”

Although Mammoth, located about 300 miles north of Los Angeles via California 14 and U.S. 395, attracts its biggest turnouts on the weekends, McCoy has no special plans for trying to boost midweek business.

“If you look at Mammoth during top season,” he said, “how many (midweek skiers) does any other destination resort, say Sun Valley, have--2,000 to 3,000 people . . . It’s not uncommon for us to have 8,000 to 10,000 people on a weekday. . . . And 10,000 people on the mountain is nothing. We cover about 3,500 acres, and they just have all kinds of Alpine open skiing on the upper part of the mountain. You can’t count those as acres or runs--that’s just space. So, you don’t even know that there’s anybody here with 10,000 people.

“Just from our driving range of 300 miles--well, San Diego is a little farther than that--we must have 14 million people. So, we’ll never get away from that weekend influx.

“Even with all the acreage and all the lifts we have, we still don’t try to go out and bring people outside of California in. We don’t have to. We’re happy the way we are, really.

“But there will be a day as we expand and make what we call a “ski circus” out of it (that we will do that).”

THE MOUNTAIN II

June Mountain is another half-hour north on U.S. 395. It is about one-seventh the size of Mammoth and has seven chairlifts plus a state-of-the-art QMC tramway that carries skiers from the parking lot to mid-mountain.

McCoy’s plan is to eliminate the half-hour drive and enable skiers to ski and ride lifts between Mammoth and June, which he purchased in the summer of 1986.

Explaining how he happened to buy June, McCoy said: “Bud Hayward (of Tustin) had June Mountain for 23 years, and it was actually one step from bankruptcy. Bud and I always got along real good, and he didn’t want to turn loose of it for love nor money. I kept telling him that if there was ever a time when he wanted to get out of it, I’d see that he got a fair deal. And I would look at him as the pioneer who saved it for somebody to develop in the future.

“We just had a handshake deal that if it ever came to that time, he would approach me, and that’s exactly what happened. I made him a deal he couldn’t turn down. I was glad to do it, because I felt he had put his heart and soul into it.

“Now, even though June is small, it has the greatest percentage of any ski area in the business today of high-capacity units. It has two high-speed quads and the QMC, which we put in.

“We’re really happy with it, and now, it will make it more possible to connect the two.

“Probably 12 or 15 (lifts would be needed to connect Mammoth and June, at a minimum). You could do it like a sawtooth, going up and down. (Or) you could actually connect them with one transportation system. We could take a baseline lift and go from here to June so that wherever you got up high enough, you’d ski down into a station on the transportation system.

“So conceivably, you could build that lift and then pick one or two of the most desirable canyons or ridges or peaks, whatever, and develop them first, and you could do it with three or four lifts. . . . It would be a cable system of some kind. You can have angle stations and on-and-off stations. (Eventually,) that’s what I see, that every major collecting point, like a canyon, may have five lifts in one big canyon, and where it would funnel out, then that would hit the transportation system.

“You could do it with a smaller number (of lifts), but I would think before it’s over, there are so many places out there to ski, you’d probably put in 50 lifts. There’d (also) be some base facilities out there. Just like here, we have to put a base facility over at Chair 15 and probably another at Chair 4. We have to make skiing more convenient, easier and more enjoyable.”

Asked if he thought there might be any opposition to such a project from environmentalists, McCoy said: “I really don’t think so. I think they’ll just keep an eye on us like they always do and make sure we do it, in their eyes, the way that it’s right and proper, and to the best of our ability.

“The Sierra Club realizes just like everybody else does that there has to be a place for the numbers of people to recreate and get out and really enjoy it.”

THE FUTURE IS NOW

The three new developments--North Village, Snowcreek with its proposed Sherwin Ski Area, and Juniper Ridge--are in various stages of development by other entrepreneurs.

Asked if he was in favor of all three going ahead as planned, McCoy said: “You betcha.”

He also foresees the day when Mammoth Lakes Airport will be expanded to accommodate the larger jets of a major airline or two. At present, Alpha Air offers daily small-jet service from LAX’s Imperial Terminal, Burbank, San Diego, Oakland and San Jose.

“A 727 can land on this strip now,” he said. “It’s adequate. Occasionally, you’ll see one down there (with a charter group).

“I think when we get the bigger hotels, the full-service hotels, then (expansion of the airport) will happen. It looks like they’re sitting there, ready to come on--(the airport would) just piggyback right on that.

“That’s what the North Village is all about, and Juniper Ridge, and then Tom Dempsey out in the meadow is figuring on three full-service hotels--at Snowcreek. They’ll make a regular center out there. It will be beautiful.”

As for Mammoth’s potential involvement in the proposed Sherwin Ski Area, which would be adjacent to Snowcreek and southeast of Mammoth, McCoy said: “If Dempsey doesn’t (develop the ski area), and he comes to us to see if we’ll do it, we would maybe consider. I don’t know.

“We’re going to try to interconnect (our lifts) regardless, and I would hope (the first lifts at Sherwin) would be ready within two years.”

A hearing was held by the Inyo National Forest here last Saturday to obtain public reaction to the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Sherwin Ski Area, and written comments on the proposal will be accepted by the U.S. Forest Service, c/o Dennis Martin, 873 N. Main St., Bishop, CA. 93514, providing they are postmarked no later than today.

Regarding Juniper Ridge, McCoy said: “Whenever the hotel and condominiums, and all that, go in over there (adjacent to Mammoth, between the Lake Mary Road bridge and the base area of Chairs 15 and 24), then we would build a base lodge at the same time (at Chair 15).

“North Village is right at the bottom, in town here. That’s going to be a great development, a walk-around village. We have people now bidding for the project.

“We owned a lot of the base land right there. That’s the only land that I ever held onto. I gave properties away and stayed out of the real estate in town, because I wanted the people there to kind of guide their own destiny. I don’t want any involvement with them, other than to help or support them wherever we can.”

BUT IS BIGGER BETTER?

McCoy acknowledges that one of the appeals of skiing is that it allows people to find some elbow room outdoors, away from the crowded freeways and housing developments. So, why is he in favor of all this intensive development, and how can the congestion be minimized?

“That goes back to your (talk that Mammoth needs to be more of a) destination resort,” he said. “The destination resorts that we know of, like Sun Valley or Aspen or Vail, that’s what they are, they’re really a congested area where people get really tight together. Mammoth is spread out, and you do have that quiet and that enjoyable privilege of being private, you might say, when you’re off the hill. And I think a lot of people really like that about June, also, because it’s very much the same way.

“I think that’s why Mammoth spread out like it did. Otherwise, we’d have just had two or three great big base hotels, and each one take 3,000 or 4,000 people apiece, like they do in Europe.

“North Village . . . will be a walk-around center with underground parking. You bring your car in and leave it. (But) I don’t see making a parking lot near 395 and bringing people in, because of the numbers.

“That would really be a problem (for Southern California people). They live with their cars, they really do, and I think the more convenient we make it for them to use their vehicles, the more they’re going to like it.

“But once they get settled in, if we can get transportation systems into the higher-density areas--they like that, also. And they’re now using our free shuttle (buses) a lot.”

WILL SKIERS KEEP COMING?

On the negative said, one of the raps against skiing is that it is too expensive. It’s easy to spend $2,000 or more just to get started--with one pair of skis, poles and boots and one outfit. Throw in the travel, lodging, meal and apres-ski costs, and the price of an all-day lift ticket actually becomes a minor item.

At Mammoth and June, it’s $35, which McCoy said is less than adequate to keep pace with rising expenses, although he believes the overall costs are not especially exorbitant.

“I don’t really see (skiing) being too expensive (when) you compare it with any other recreation, or anything else like a car or food costs,” McCoy said. “We’ve kept within that same area, and we’re still able to develop a little, but slower. We don’t have near the income to develop like we used to . . . say, up to three years ago.

“The expense now is . . . like our power expenses have changed. It used to be, the more kilowatts you used, the cheaper it got. Now, the more they have to supply you, the more it costs you, averaged throughout the year. And the equipment demand that the skier puts on us . . . like grooming equipment we used to buy for $25,000, now it’s $175,000 for just one piece of machinery.

“The chairlifts that are being replaced, some of them we bought years ago for a couple of hundred thousand (dollars), and some recently--the fixed grips--for $500,000. Now, a good quad detachable costs you three to four million bucks.

“(Lift-ticket increases) haven’t kept pace. So, our margin is a lot less. I thought there was (skier resistance) to paying more, but apparently there really isn’t, because they see the quality, and we’re trying to give them what they want. The sport is actually growing, as far as we’re concerned.

“Skiing has been so good to us here at Mammoth that I can’t help but just want to return it to the skier and see that they have a better place to recreate.”

Dave and Roma McCoy show no signs of slowing down, but they have gradually concentrated more on enjoying themselves, turning over some of their duties to their children, all of whom grew up on skis, racing and learning all facets of the sport.

“We’ve got six kids, 16 grandchildren and a great-grandchild,” McCoy said, “and we still ride bicycles and ride horses and ski all day and just have a ball.

“I hurt myself pretty bad about six years ago on a motorcycle. I tried to get right back out there (on the slopes) and stayed with it, but it took me awhile to feel comfortable again.”

Four of the McCoys’ offspring are still around.

“Gary is the manager of Mammoth,” McCoy said. “Kandi is the manager of June. Penny is in special events both here and at June, and Randy is the pilot for Mammoth.

“Poncho raises cattle. He has a big cattle ranch in Montana, and we use a lot of his animals. We use them for hamburger and steaks in the restaurant . . . all of the meat we can. And Carl--”Peanut”--is up in Canada. He has a little ranch and just kind of likes the quiet; he likes the outdoors very much. It’s just too populated for him here.

“In racing, Penny and Poncho did the best, because they could put up with the politics.”

In the late 1960s, McCoy was mentioned as a possible coach of the U.S. Ski Team, but he said: “I never even let ‘em think that I would consider it, because I was too busy here.

“When any of the kids left here (to race on the national level), I didn’t interfere at all. I didn’t try to coach them or anything, but we’d always communicate. I probably got more telephone calls from Europe than anyone could imagine.

“They’re still all great kids. They’ve all grown up. They’re in businesses for themselves and all had good eductions. That’s what I really pushed more than the skiing.”

So, Mammoth remains in good hands, according to McCoy, who has one other goal, improbable as it may be: “I hope I live another hundred years so I can develop Mammoth as big as it should be.”