MINDING THE MOUNTAIN : Lynn Newcomb Turned His Passion for Skiing Into the Low-Profile but Popular Mt. Waterman

A half-century ago--when the Los Angeles area was even less of a skier’s paradise than it is today--Lynn Newcomb persuaded his father to erect a rope tow on a mountain in the Angeles National Forest. A book-taught skier, Newcomb intended to share the newly accessible runs with a few of his USC classmates, but word quickly spread among the public and pretty soon he was charging 10 cents to pull skiers up the hill.

“We had a guy at the bottom with a coin changer, the kind conductors used on buses,” Newcomb recalled.

Now 70, Newcomb is still getting paid to transport skiers to the top of the same mountain. Owner of Mt. Waterman Ski Lifts, he has seen his small operation grow into a favorite among local skiers, with its runs favorably compared to Mammoth’s. The rope tow, however, is long gone, replaced by modern chairlifts, and an all-day lift ticket has risen to $30.

Still skiing after all these years, Newcomb remains king of the mountain. Working “eight days a week” during the season, he runs a crew of from 10 to 35 employees and often stays up “half the night” to operate a huge grooming tractor along slopes with names like “Wallbanger” and “Kiss-n-Run.”

“You get into it,” said Newcomb, who has become a fixture on the mountain, a familiar face to most of the skiers. “People who run ski areas do it from the heart, not out of any business sense.”

But Newcomb’s heart is no longer in it. Southern California’s severe drought hit ski operators extremely hard this winter, but Newcomb was really clobbered--he doesn’t have snow-making machinery. Hoping for the traditional Thanksgiving opening, he was not able to “turn a wheel” on his three chairlifts until March 2, when the same storm that dropped an inch or so of rain on the Valley sprinkled Mt. Waterman with four feet of snow.

“We’ve had poor years for the last five years,” he said, “but this year is the worst. We’ve just been hanging on through this period.”

While the drought has taxed his resources and energy, it was the death of his wife last October that drained his spirit. Lynn and Virginia had been married 48 years, and after she died, he examined his life, concluding that he should be enjoying himself more.

“Judging by my friends, I should be retired,” he said. “But I have a demanding job. I asked myself, ‘What the hell am I doing this for?’ So I decided to sell the business.”

Whoever comes up with Newcomb’s asking price of $2 million will be buying a slice of ski history: Mt. Waterman is the site of Southern California’s first chairlift. Working on weekends beginning in 1941, Newcomb’s father Lynn Sr. and an uncle built the half-mile-long contraption themselves, using sketches they had made of a chairlift in Sun Valley, Ida.

The Mt. Waterman chairlift officially opened Jan. 1, 1942. To get publicity, the Newcombs cajoled the old Los Angeles Examiner into sending a reporter and photographer. At the historic moment, a switch was thrown, a gas engine yanked 300 single chairs upward and skiers took their first effortless ride, until the thing broke down, which was duly noted by the Examiner.

“People were stranded up there,” recalled Burt Sims, the Examiner reporter who covered the opening. “The Ski Patrol had to throw ropes over the cables and lower people down. It took hours. The Examiner ran a page-one photo the next day.”

And Sims got an angry call from the Newcombs. “I said, ‘You wanted publicity. Now everybody will remember that chairlift,’ ” said Sims, a veteran ski writer who now lives in San Juan Capistrano.

While the Newcombs never planned to be in the ski business--”I saw it as a place for me to play, not a business opportunity,” Lynn said--their choice of Mt. Waterman was certainly calculated. The 8,039-foot mountain was within sight of a 160-acre parcel of land that had been in the family since 1891, when a relative acquired it under the Homestead Act.

Long before Angeles Crest Highway was built, a cabin on the property served as a weekend retreat for the family, and young Lynn knew the area well. He even skied on Mt. Waterman the hard way--by hiking uphill. But when the road finally reached Mt. Waterman in 1939, he got his contractor father to put in the rope tow.

Timing has been important for the Newcombs. Their relative got in on the Homestead Act a year before the Angeles became a national forest--and off limits to homesteaders. And Newcomb’s father was able to get permission from the U. S. Forest Service for the rope tow at a time when the environment was not a sensitive issue.

“We didn’t need plans or permits back then,” Newcomb said. “Now, the Sierra Club objects to everything. Today you couldn’t even build that road into the Angeles (forest).”

Newcomb operates Mt. Waterman on a permit from the Forest Service, which leases him the land in exchange for a percentage of his gross profits. But his plans to improve the facility have been frustrated by pressure from environmental groups.

A 10-year-old development plan includes lights for night skiing, six additional chairlifts, a 900-car parking lot, another base with a lodge, and a five-million-gallon reservoir to supply well water for artificial snow-making equipment. But Newcomb has had trouble getting the projects approved by the Forest Service, blaming the Sierra Club for ‘holding things up” even though the Angeles Forest Master Plan designates Mt. Waterman as a recreational ski area.

“I respect the environment tremendously,” Newcomb said. “I’ve never taken out a tree or altered the terrain without studying it for years.”

The mountain has a fierce hold on Newcomb, filling him with memories. On Dec. 7, 1941, he climbed the hill to tell his father about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Lynn Sr., who never swore, did so, then gave his son permission to join the Air Force.

Newcomb was an instructor during World War II, teaching pilots how to fly the Lockheed P-38 Lightning. He intended to stay in the Air Force after the war, but his father died in 1946 and Newcomb decided to get into the ski business. Newcomb, who lives in La Canada, also had a welding-supply business until retiring from it nearly 20 years ago so he could fish between ski seasons.

Newcomb takes pride in having built most of Mt. Waterman’s buildings by himself, with the help of a small crew. In 1975, he replaced his father’s chairlift, quadrupling the capacity to 1,200 people an hour. The new lift came in a kit “like an Erector Set,” and Newcomb had to put it together.

Newcomb can be found on Mt. Waterman every day during this truncated ski season. A walkie-talkie strapped to his chest, he is never out of touch with his employees as he trouble-shoots on the mountain. His face red from a 15-m.p.h. wind on a subfreezing afternoon, he rips the starter cord on his Yamaha snowmobile and glides to top of chairlift No. 3, virtually the highest point on the mountain.

Finishing a task, Newcomb looks out over vast stretches of snow-covered forest and beyond the frozen peaks, where the Antelope Valley shimmers under clear blue skies. Climbing aboard the snowmobile, he emits a wistful sigh. One day soon, he realizes, he will be coming down from his mountain for the last time.

“This is a great business,” he said, “if you can survive.”