Mammoth Mountain Sticking to Its Guns : Skiing: Snow-making system might not be necessary this year, but proprietor says the $5-million investment was worth it.

It’s like old times this week at Mammoth.

Snow is blowing, chairlifts are whirring and skiers . . . well, they’re skiing.

All it took was $5 million out of Dave McCoy’s bank account to build a state-of-the-art snow-making system.

“He bought us a $5-million insurance policy,” says Jeff Irons, public affairs coordinator for the town of Mammoth Lakes, which is one of the main beneficiaries.

As with many insurance policies, however, there is always the question of whether it was really necessary.

McCoy, the proprietor of Mammoth Mountain, does not hesitate in his reply--although it’s not even Thanksgiving, and the third snowstorm of the season is howling outside the Mammoth Mountain Inn.

“Well, I think this is what we want to have, anyway,” McCoy says. “If it was to snow 10 feet tonight, I would still say it’s the best investment we could make, because it has boosted the morale of our employees. It has brought us closer to the town and the industry. And it’s just worth it to have it. If we never use it again, it’s cheap insurance.

“We’ll have about 50 guns going all day. It really helps. We can make the snow just a little wetter now and set a really strong base. We’ll gauge before the storm lets up, then we’ll dry the snow up, and it will be just like skiing in beautiful powder.”

Sure enough, the guns of November keep firing round-the-clock, shooting right into the teeth of the natural blizzard and sounding to slopeside lodgers like a mix of crashing Pacific surf and traffic on the San Diego Freeway. By midweek, Mammoth is reporting a 36- to 60-inch base with 600 acres open for skiing.

It’s quite a contrast to last season when, after a late-November mini-storm, snow didn’t fall in any appreciable amounts until March.

“(Last winter) was definitely the worst in our history,” McCoy says. “I did things that I’d never, ever hoped to do, or ever (want) to do again--cutting back on good employees and cutting back on the good things we would like to develop for the skiing public.”

Mammoth, about 325 miles north of Los Angeles in the Eastern Sierra, had a snow-making capability last season, but it was sort of like a prototype Scud missile.

“When we built Chair 1, we experimented with our own guns and a small compressor,” McCoy says. “But for so many years we’ve never, ever had any use for it, so we put off (installing a system) as one of the last priorities. Last year being what it was, we figured that in order to have security for us and the town and the industry, we’d better put in snow making, so we could give a guaranteed opening date.

“We’ve kind of been pointing toward this for a long time. That’s why we’ve sculptured the trails like we have. We widened the trails and smoothed them out and made them for snow making.

“This year, in snow making alone, we invested $5 million. The system was completed on Oct. 20, and we didn’t start (work) until last July 25. So, we put it in really fast, and it’s a super, super good system.”

Clifford Mann, who supervised the system’s installation, boosted the size of his construction crew from seven to 60 during that three-month period, finishing the job ahead of schedule.

Says McCoy: “The industry was very, very surprised that we could make the size of plant we did and complete it in one summer. There were a lot of bets going around that we wouldn’t complete it, we wouldn’t stay within budget, And we did both. We started two months late, we had it finished two weeks earlier than we expected to, and we did it for considerable dollars under budget. So, we accomplished everything we set out to do.”

Asked if he had always hoped he would never have to go to this expense, McCoy says: “That’s exactly right. But last year forced the issue, and we’re glad we did, (because) it’s given us the security that we need. I think it’s long overdue that we did.

“We have six lifts going. We can run as many as nine (on terrain covered by snow-making equipment) now. We cover from the main lodge up to the top of (Chair) 3. We cover 22 runs, over 200 acres. It covers all varieties (of skiing ability), expert to beginner. Chair 11 is an extremely good lift for beginners, the children, and it’s at the base, right close to the facilities. Parents are finding out more and more what a family ski area we really have.”

Now that he has been bitten by the snow-making bug, McCoy apparently is finding it hard to stop. More is on the way.

“We call this Phase I and we finished Phase I,” he says. “We have roughly five phases, and some of those phases will commingle. We’ll add probably (Phases) II and V together one of these days, which takes in from here (the main lodge area) to Warming Hut II. And then we’ll expand over to Chairs 12, 13 and that direction. Then, oh, to St. Anton and the face of (Chair) 3, which is in a later phase.

“But we want to keep a lot of the skiing concentrated right here by the main lodge. And the chief reason for going to Warming Hut II would be access guaranteed after snowfall in that area--a natural snowfall.”

The timetable is vague, but McCoy’s goal is certain.

“It’s just like when we build our chairlifts,” he says, “It took 40 years to make what we have on the mountain now, in the uphill facility. Now, the downhill facility we can accelerate. We can do it faster. We can meet the demands of the public, and what we want to give them in service, much faster. So, I would say within five years we’ll have pretty much total coverage.”

Besides sub-freezing temperatures, two ingredients are needed to make snow--air and water. The water comes from wells that Mammoth has long used for irrigation in the summer.

“We built a lake virtually from scratch,” McCoy says. “There was a little settling pond up there to take runoff on the mountain, but it didn’t amount to anything compared to what it is today. (The water) comes from the wells down by the bottom of Chair 10. They pump the water up there (to the lake) and store it, and it gives us roughly 25 million gallons of water immediately available when the temperature changes where we can use it.

“So, we can make a tremendous amount of snow really fast.”

McCoy says that his snow-making operation differs from others around the country in one important aspect.

“It’s how and where Mammoth sits,” he says. “There are long hours of dry, colder snow, and the mountain has an angle to the northeast and west that saves what snow you make. (Since) Mammoth seldom ever gets any precipitation other than snow, we don’t have to worry about it being rained off or melted off or anything. So, once we make a good base, we’re here to stay for the season.

“Other areas seem to make it, lose it, make it and lose it. We’re not faced with that, and that’s really expensive. I think our product may be just as expensive to make the first time, but it’s going to stay with us.

“The snow is very dry here. Snow is snow, no matter what you say, and even though it’s made from guns, air and water mixed, you can adjust it any way you want. And we can get snow out there so dry that you can just blow it around. You just cut the water to a bare minimum. Some of those guns, we’re only putting 30 gallons (of water) a minute out of them, and we’re putting full-bore air.”

Mammoth has a base elevation of slightly less than 8,000 feet and rises above 11,000 feet.

Despite the huge outlay this year, after a lean winter and coming in the middle of a recession, its basic all-day adult lift ticket remains $35.

Irons, speaking on behalf of the town, is happy that skiers are coming back in force.

“Everyone is a lot more optimistic,” he says. “There’s an upbeat mood in the town and in the business community. Bookings for Thanksgiving are up. It looks like it’s going to be at least a normal winter. We’re really happy that the mountain is doing so much for the skier, and we’re going to try to make everyone comfortable down here.”

From his vantage point, McCoy concludes: “There are hardly words to say how much anxiety there was in people toward the winter. They were all betting their lives on it--their futures. And we were, too.

“We were out there gambling, we had our neck on the chopping block.”