Will Mammoth Take Off?

Here’s one way to start a ski season on a merry note. On the same early November weekend that Mammoth Mountain resort opened its doors for winter, a sudden storm dumped about 18 inches of new snow. And so, while workers raced to complete $25 million in resort renovations and additions, three lifts lurched into service and a few hundred skiers and boarders, myself included, got to play in a little powder.

But as this winter gets started and the snowpack accumulates on Southern California’s longtime leading ski destination--by last week, the base was 3 to 4 feet, with 11 lifts open--a few larger questions hang in the chilly air: Will the post-El Nino drought that everyone fears leave this place with a rotten snow year? Will the owners of the Mammoth Mountain resort and Sierra-watching environmentalists ever reconcile their competing ambitions? And can the aged and unglamorous Mammoth reinvent itself to compete with North America’s leading ski resorts?

All are impossible to answer now. But on the question of Mammoth’s evolving identity, there are physical clues to inspect. And if a proper inspection requires a lift ticket and a few days in the mountains, well, somebody’s gotta do it.

The old Mammoth began in the 1930s, when a ski-crazy water worker for the city of Los Angeles named Dave McCoy came upon the 11,053-foot mountain, gathered a few friends and started running a tow rope. Chair 1 came along in 1955. The biggest glory days for the resort arrived in the mid-1980s, when skier visits reached 1.4 million per season.

Through the decades, millions of California youths, myself included, started their skiing lives with frenzied three-day bus excursions to Mammoth. From Los Angeles it’s a 300-mile drive. Thus, from most of Southern California, a Mammoth weekend meant a long Friday-night ride north and two days of marathon skiing and minimal sleep, followed by the long Sunday-night ride home.

But the ski industry is wicked these days. No new major resort has opened in North America since 1981, largely because of real estate costs and environmental regulations. Beyond that, the National Ski Areas Assn. estimates that combined skier and snowboarder visits in North America have been flat for a decade. (Snowboarders are roughly 20% of lift-ticket buyers in North America, the association says.) To succeed, resorts must steal one another’s customers, and Mammoth has lost a lot of ground to more amenity-rich rivals such as Vail in Colorado and Whistler-Blackcomb in British Columbia. Meanwhile, Big Bear, which cannot match Mammoth’s most advanced runs, has exploited its more convenient location and cultivated a following among snowboarders.

Now Mammoth’s annual skier-visit number is just under 1 million. McCoy, still a part owner, is 83. Ski magazine calls the 5,500-resident town of Mammoth Lakes “unpretentious, ill-planned and slightly shabby,” and its lack of upscale shopping may make it a disappointment for someone accustomed to Colorado resorts. In a Conde Nast Traveler magazine readers’ poll this month on favorite North American ski resorts, Mammoth failed to crack the top 50.

Intrawest Corp., a Vancouver-based resort and residential developer with half a billion dollars a year in revenues and a strategy of turning under-performing resorts into “animated four-season destinations,” stepped into the picture four years ago and now owns 58% of the Mammoth resort. Every waitress and bus driver in town, it seems, can explain the subtleties of the deal, so dependent is the community on the resort.

To put Mammoth on a footing comparable to other Intrawest ski resorts (one is the front-running Whistler/Blackcomb), the developer has laid out more than $43 million over the last two years.

Among the latest changes:

* Lifts: A new high-speed upper gondola (dubbed “Panorama”) is scheduled to begin service between the Chalet (halfway house) and the summit in mid-December. The eight-passenger cabins, which feature 360-degree views, will travel almost twice as fast as their predecessors. Two high-speed quads (chairlifts whose higher speeds will increase uphill capacity) were expected to begin running in early December. One of them, dubbed Roller Coaster, replaces the old Chair 4. The other new quad, dubbed Gold Rush Express, will run from the base of Stump Alley Express to a saddle between the top of Chair 5 and Lincoln Mountain.

* Lodgings & eats: The Canyon Lodge, a brick and glass box that serves as headquarters for skiers sleeping in a nearby cluster of condos, is being spruced up with $1.5 million in renovations. Open since Thanksgiving, the updated lodge includes a fourth-floor Grizzly Square food court and a sundeck with barbecue and stage on the third floor. At the bottom of the Stump Alley Express and the new Gold Rush Express lift, a new restaurant called the Mill Cafe is scheduled to open by Dec. 19, seating about 50 indoors and about 200 on a deck, serving California cuisine, continental breakfasts, big lunches and appetizers.

Next year, the main lodge undergoes top-to-bottom renovation. And in the next two to four years, the resort plans three new restaurants, including one on the summit, and new children’s facilities at the main lodge, Canyon Lodge and the resort’s Juniper Springs condo development. In town, a championship golf course is to open in May 1999, with the 174-unit Juniper Springs condo complex to follow around Thanksgiving 1999.

Another crucial element in raising Mammoth’s profile--and a handicap in recent years--is the airport. Though it’s roomy enough for 737s, Mammoth Lakes Airport lost its most important carrier, now-defunct Alpha Air, about three years ago. It gets no scheduled flights from LAX, and the only scheduled service from Southern California is offered by Mountain Air Tours, which flies to and from Long Beach (in a nine-passenger plane) on Fridays and Sundays. Round trips run a hefty $279 per person, excluding tax. But airport upgrades have begun, and by next winter, airport manager Bill Manning says, he hopes to land a new carrier to offer daily service between Mammoth and Los Angeles. (So far there are no commitments.)

The flurries had just died down when my friend Doug and I rolled up to Mammoth Mountain last month. Drifts lay a foot deep on the main lodge’s patio chairs, and a blanket of white coated the summer climbing rock behind Chairlift 27. The sky was deep blue.

We jumped into our Mammouth Mountain Inn room, scrambled to get into our skis, passed two exhilarating hours on the slopes and broke no legs. Victory, all the way around.

But settling into the new Mammoth was a bit strange. I hadn’t seen the place in 20 years. Now half of those who zipped past me on the slopes were doing so on snowboards instead of skis. That first day, a few dozen boarders gathered around the year-old half-pipe of sculpted snow between the Broadway and Thunder Road runs, waiting turns to zoom, twist and flip from the edge of the half-pipe. Meanwhile, the Austrian ski team hung out by Chair 1, honing technique for the World Cup season.

For years, Mammoth’s slopes have been classified as 30% advanced, 40% intermediate and 30% beginner, with the most demanding runs, such as Climax, Cornice Bowl and Huevos Grande, concentrated nearest the summit. (On one lift ride up the hill, a Mammoth old-timer complained that since the rise of snowboarding, it’s tougher to reach virgin powder before some young Turk on a wide board has defiled it. But this is a battle being fought at just about every resort.)

Doug, an accomplished skier with thousands of runs in Oregon and Colorado, zipped along. Gradually adjusting to my rental skis, I began by plodding and gradually worked my way up to half-hurtling.

“I see flashes of competence,” Doug said after an hour, causing my chest to swell with pride. Then I realized he was resuming a chat about his own tennis game. I put my head down and half-hurtled some more.

The next couple of days were cloudier and brought more snow as workers labored to finish various resort improvements. The real beginning of the season, when virtually all services are up and running and an adult lift ticket jumps from $39 to $49, is Thanksgiving week.

By night, rushing through the cold air from my room to the whirlpools in another wing of the hotel, I heard the roar of manmade snow being born. Thanks to added snow-making machinery, Mammoth’s management now can cover 23%, or 370 acres, of the resort’s ski area with manmade snow, an increase of 80 to 100 acres over last year.

The soundtrack by day, on the other hand, was a throwback. Most of the daredevils turning flips on the snowboarders’ half-pipe seemed to have been born since 1980, but the music blaring from that area’s speakers was from my youth, not theirs. As I picked my way down the mountain, the pines echoed with the plaintive wails of Steve Miller, Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull. Maybe they were drawn by the presence of that other prehistoric beast, the familiar old bronze mammoth sculpture that stands in front of the Mammoth Mountain Inn, its shiny tusks pointed toward the lodge and the slopes.

Just in front of the lodge lay a landmark I didn’t remember: an elevated railway track that runs from the lodge past the parking area to the bottom of Chair 2 (a.k.a. Stump Alley Express). This was the Yantrak Automated People Mover, an experiment in mass transport that the resort undertook in 1995. But where, I wondered, were the railcars?

“There were issues,” said one of the resort marketing persons.

On March 9, 1998, one of the system’s toaster-shaped cabins rolled through a barrier and off the end of the rail near the lodge. Traveling at 12 mph, the cabin landed on the snow 4 feet below the end of the track. Two passengers were treated for injuries, and at least one resort worker has taken to calling the system “the people remover.”

Mammoth officials don’t know whether the people mover will run this winter or not.

But plenty of other additions and improvements are in place.

We stayed at the Mammoth Mountain Inn, across the street from the main lodge, in a loft room that was drably furnished and afflicted with broken towel racks (until I complained twice), but with a great view of the slopes. (Capitalizing on the early date, I talked a reservationist down from $130 to $110 per night. The regular winter rate is $210, higher during the Christmas week holiday.)

From the outside, the 213-room hotel looked about the way I remembered it. But I’m fairly sure that my dinner options in 1978 didn’t include any free-range antelope (is there another kind?) in wine-reduction sauce. This year’s menu at the inn’s Mountainside Grill does. Dinner there, conducted beneath bleached antler chandeliers with the counsel of a top-notch waiter, was a treat.

And an even greater treat came two nights later, when we arranged for a hotel shuttle bus to drop us at the Tamarack Lodge, about three miles outside town. The lodge, a rustic compound on six acres at Twin Lakes in the Mammoth Lakes Basin, includes 25 cabins, 11 hotel rooms and a cross-country skiing center.

I didn’t spend the night, but I inspected rooms and cabins, which have walls and ceilings covered with knotty pine paneling--it was spare, but very clean and far more atmospheric than the Mammoth Mountain Inn. Opened in 1924 as a family retreat, it has long been beloved by fishermen in summer and cross-country skiers in winter, and its Lakefront Restaurant is perhaps the most romantic dinner spot in the Mammoth area. The Mammoth resort bought the lodge last May.

Doug and I were more interested in mushrooms than romance, but we did toast our absent wives. Then I filled my belly to bursting, first with an expertly concocted appetizer of chanterelle, shiitake and oyster mushrooms, then with the halibut special and finally with a blueberry tart. After all, we had been burning calories all day long. (Dinner for two, with a couple of beers, ran about $120.)

Tamarack might be less convenient to the slopes, but on my next trip to Mammoth, I may well call Tamarack first. This year the lodge will be added to the resort’s shuttle-bus route, with buses arriving every half-hour to carry skiers to town, where they can connect with a shuttle to the base lodges.

Not every meal was a joy. At breakfast one morning in the Mammoth Mountain Inn, I had to place my order three times, and it took the kitchen more than half an hour to produce a glass of orange juice and a bowl of cornflakes. By the time my food arrived, Doug had abandoned the table to get in on the virgin powder. The manager, embarrassed by such a snafu in a half-empty dining room, comped our meal. (He didn’t know we were from a newspaper.)

The kitchen did a bit better the next day with our room-service breakfast order, which arrived 15 minutes late but tasted good and eased our departure day.

By then, we’d skied for four days, tasted the affordable Mexican food at Roberto’s Cafe on Old Mammoth Road and played a little pool at Grumpy’s, a sports bar and restaurant half a block from Roberto’s. And I had not only refined my turns, but rediscovered the subtle art of clomping around a cafeteria in ski boots. These may be modest skills, but at least I can count on them to remain relevant at the old and new Mammoths alike.

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GUIDEBOOK

Snow Bound in Mammoth

Getting there: About 300 miles north of Los Angeles off Interstate 395, Mammoth is a five- to six-hour drive from Los Angeles. Also, Mountain Air Tours, telephone (800) 788-4247 or (562) 595-1011, offers twice-weekly flights between Long Beach and Mammoth Lakes Airport on nine-passenger Fairchild planes. Morning flights leave Long Beach Airport on Fridays and Sundays at 8, arriving Mammoth at 9:30. Return flights leave Mammoth at 5:30 p.m., arriving at Long Beach at 7 p.m. Fares are $189 one way or $279 round trip, plus 7.5% tax. Extra flights are tentatively planned around Christmas.

Where to stay: Condos heavily outnumber hotels in the Mammoth area. One clearinghouse source of lodging information is the Mammoth Lakes Visitors Bureau, tel. (888) GO-MAMMOTH or (760) 934- 2712, Internet https://www.Visit Mammoth.com. Other lodging services include several clearinghouse operations: Mammoth Properties Reservations, tel. (888) MAMMOTH, Mammoth Country Reservations, tel. (800) 255-6266, and Mammoth Reservation Bureau, tel. (800) 462-5571. At the Mammoth Mountain Inn, tel. (800) 228-4947 or (760) 934-2581, fax (760) 934-0701, winter rates run $115-$490. At the Tamarack Lodge, tel. (800) 237-6879 or (760) 934-2442, fax (760) 934-2281, rooms and studio cabins run $65-$155, with larger cabins fetching $130-$360 depending on season.

Where to eat: The Lakefront Restaurant at Tamarack Lodge, tel. (800) 237-6879 or (760) 934-2442. The dining room holds about a dozen tables, and the menu is Continental with some game. Dinner main courses cost $16-$25. At the Mountainside Grill at Mammoth Mountain Inn, tel. (760) 934-0601, the menu is mostly Continental, with some game. Dinner main courses $14-$23.

Snow conditions: Call 888-SNOW-RPT or use the Internet to reach https://www.mammoth-mtn.com.