Snow Woes : Sierra Merchants Bemoan Delay in Lucrative Summer Tourist Trade

These are flush times in the Sierra for winter sport lovers. The snowpack is 20 feet deep and sprinkled with fresh powder. The calendar may say it’s Memorial Day, the eve of summer, but to look at the mountains it could be February.

Here at Mammoth Lakes, the town is overrun with skiers and snowboarders on this holiday weekend usually associated with water sports and back-yard barbecues. So much snow clings to these mountains that the ski season will almost certainly linger through the Fourth of July. The story is the same at Lake Tahoe, where record-keepers had to go back to the 1880s to find a more abundant winter.

“Any other year, my skis would be waxed and put away and I’d be spending Memorial Day Boogie boarding in the water,” laughed Oceanside resident Nancy Boyer.

She had driven five hours to Mammoth Mountain with other members of the Anaheim Ski Club--all intent on squeezing in one last glorious weekend on the slopes. They succeeded.

After so many years of drought or ill-timed rains, it’s hard to begrudge skiers their long season. But their windfall comes at a steep price for towns along the eastern Sierra that rely on a spring melt to open Tioga Pass into Yosemite.

The pass, which beckons thousands of European and Asian tourists to the national park each summer, is snowbound and may not open until the end of June or early July, six weeks later than normal.

The skiers and snowboarders, whose numbers are sure to dwindle after this holiday weekend, will hardly make up for the loss of hundreds of buses freighted with cash-rich tourists rumbling up the mountain on U.S. 395.

And because the lakes, trails and golfing fairways of this alpine resort are still frozen, it has postponed, too, the arrival of bass anglers, campers, hikers, mountain bikers and weekend duffers.

By some official estimates, the delay in opening the pass will cost the towns of Mammoth Lakes, June Lake, Lee Vining and Bishop $10 million in tourist traffic. “We hate to sound like whiners,” said Peggy Kukulus of the Mammoth Lakes Visitors Bureau. “But this snow is killing us.”

For this weekend, at least, business was very good. Mammoth Mountain ski resort managed to sell more than 5,000 lift tickets on Saturday alone--triple the number sold the same day last year. And in Bishop, about 4,000 feet down the mountain, it wasn’t snow but the mule that brought thousands of flatlanders to town.

The 25th annual Mule Days--a celebration of the varied and often ignored skills of an animal known more for its spite--featured mule jumping, mule racing, mule shoeing and mule pulling, not to mention what locals claim is the “longest non-motorized parade in the nation,” presumably led by mules.

“You can tell a horse to jump off the cliff and it’ll listen,” said one aficionado. “But a mule’s got too much sense.”

Randy Robinson’s shuttle van was making a killing transporting tourists from the airport to Mule Days and up and down Mammoth Mountain. “I’ve been here 20 years and I can’t remember a Memorial Day like this,” said the Redondo Beach native, cruising the steep highway past a line of parked cars that snaked two miles from the main ski lodge to the earthquake fault.

“This is the biggest winter I’ve ever seen.”

It was Robinson’s good luck that the ski resort, accustomed to cutting back this time of the year, had closed its own shuttle service to and from town. The ATM, information booth and several ski lifts were similarly mothballed.

And with the ski resort having said goodby to its in-season temporary workers more than a month ago, permanent staffers were pressed into double duty--architect Bruce Woodward teaching the little kids in their bright colors how to walk on skis, marketing director Pam Murphy working the busy ticket window.

No one seemed to notice or care much about the bare-bones accommodations.

“When I made plans a few months ago to bring the family here, I thought this would be a hiking vacation,” said Don Sokolski, a physical therapist from the Bay Area. When his family decided to see a matinee showing of “Casper” in town, he and a buddy packed their cross-country skis and headed for the back trails.

“The snow conditions near Twin Lakes are really good. I wasn’t expecting this. What a bonus,” he said.

Warm overnight temperatures did spoil some of the fun for downhillers, who had to contend with slushy conditions on most of the lower runs. They had come expecting the snow to feel firm like “corn kernels.” What they got instead were “mashed potatoes.”

“We came up because we heard 12 to 25 feet of snow,” said Wesley Nihei, a USC dental student who caught the snowboarding bug two years ago. “But the conditions aren’t right. So we’re leaving.”

“It’s fine if you’re an expert or stay high up, but it’s pretty sloppy for the rest of us,” groaned George Barclay, who had made the long trip from Santa Clarita with his wife, Marty.

After a minute or two, they seemed to catch themselves. Skiing in California through early summer. Who could gripe about that?

And not everyone came to ski. Carlos Vera, 22, drove up from Baldwin Park with the idea that his family and friends could have the best of both worlds--a traditional Memorial Day with a chicken barbecue and a few beers in an untraditional setting.

“We usually spend the holiday at the Santa Fe Dam or some park,” he said, watching a group of young daredevils ride the lower mountain on plastic sleds. “Here it is almost June and to see this. It’s something else.”