A Place for Mogul Skiing

Only now, with skiers in T-shirts and 70-degree afternoons eating into the mantle of snow that has hugged the serrated peaks for seven solid months, is the mountain catching its breath.

Last fall, shortly before ski season began, a Connecticut-based investment firm bought a controlling interest in Mammoth Mountain.

A defining conversation was supposed to begin regarding Mammoth’s transformation from unaffected retreat to swanky resort -- not about whether it would happen, because it almost certainly will, but about how quickly, what it might look like and what protections might be offered to the 7,500 people who live here largely because they do not want to live in Vail or Aspen.

Instead, Mammoth was plunged into the most triumphant and tragic season in its 53-year history -- a season marked by record crowds and a record snowfall, by a surge in pride over sending three local athletes to the Olympics, but also by the stunning deaths of four skiers and four members of the ski patrol. Amid the turmoil, said George Shirk, editor of Mammoth Monthly, “people didn’t have the luxury” of addressing the future.

“Everyone here is exhausted,” he said. “A lot of us are mighty glad to see summer.”

Though skiers are expected to remain on the mountain through July 4, the “winter” season is winding down and the dialogue is underway again. Mammoth, sometimes called the farthest suburb of Los Angeles, must decide what it’s going to be when it grows up.

The debate now seems to play out in every corner of town. At community forums, residents pore over planning documents released by Town Hall officials, and worry about phrases like “destination brand” and “mature resort town.” Eight candidates are running for three seats on the Town Council -- a reflection, observers say, of the surge of interest in Mammoth’s future.

Rick Wood, 54, an attorney who has been mayor of Mammoth Lakes for five of the last six years, is stepping aside after Tuesday’s election. To some degree, he said, the debate over Mammoth’s future is a foregone conclusion. It will be, he said, “a high-quality, destination, year-round resort,” and “everything else follows that.”

The key, he said, will be in pursuing development without erasing Mammoth’s rugged charm and driving rent and property values to prohibitive levels. Wood said Mammoth can pull it off -- “but it’s not an easy trick,” he said.

“How much do we need?” he asked. “Is our vision the right vision?”

Not everyone is sure that it is.

“The town is fractured,” said Marshall Minobe, 44, a network administrator at a local research laboratory connected to the University of California system, a community activist and one of the Town Council candidates.

“There is a difference of opinion about whether they are really balancing priorities or just emphasizing development. We are going to have a town that has a very different set of people in it. And the community’s values will be different too.”

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Mammoth’s tumultuous season began in October, when the Starwood Capital Group, led by luxury hotel mogul Barry S. Sternlicht, bought a $365-million controlling interest in Mammoth Mountain, including 185 ski trails and 35 lifts, from 90-year-old Dave McCoy, the resort’s iconic founder who launched operations there with a rope tow powered by a truck engine.

The Mammoth area was already poised to grow; executives had hoped to double the number of skiers on the mountain during the week. Though another corporation, Intrawest, has owned a portion of the resort since 1997 and played a significant role in its operation, Starwood made it clear that its investment would mean a significant acceleration of growth.

Soon, the snow began to fall, and for a while it didn’t look like it was going to stop. As of last week, Mammoth had recorded 664 inches of snow -- that’s about 55 feet -- the most since it began keeping records in 1968. Largely as a result, Mammoth is on pace to record its busiest season, with about 1.5 million skier visits.

In January, however, a series of unrelated disasters began to unfold in uncanny and devastating procession.

Four skiers died on the mountain, three in skiing accidents and one after suffering a heart attack. On Feb. 1, an eight-year veteran of the ski patrol died in an avalanche while skiing in the backcountry north of the resort.

And in April, three more ski patrol members died during an attempt to secure a geothermal vent on the mountain; two fell into the vent and the third died while trying to rescue them.

“It was the best of times and the worst of times,” said Rusty Gregory, Mammoth Mountain Ski Area’s chief executive.

Now, the town’s attention is turned to its future.

Earlier this month, Mammoth Lakes officials produced a blueprint of sorts for the future, and the resort expects to produce a parallel version by the end of the summer, Gregory said.

There is a constant hum of construction: A large crane is towering over Main Street, crews have broken ground on a large hotel near the bottom of the gondola and new phases of condominium developments are underway. Plans are being laid for new nightlife, more shopping, towering hotels, new high-end restaurants and a potential overhaul of the main lodge at the foot of the mountain.

Those developments have been met with a blend of excitement and apprehension. Most projects would require the approval of town officials, but those officials have been accused in some quarters of rubber-stamping development. And to critics, the plans carry a whiff of the excess that has seeped into some ski resorts, whether it’s Aspen’s Prada and Malo shopping or Vail’s faux-Bavarian motif.

Starwood has begun wedding the management of the resort with the business of real estate by purchasing a significant chunk of remaining developable land in Mammoth Lakes. Suggesting the sorts of changes that can be expected here, Sternlicht recently told business and civic leaders that Mammoth Lakes should have a spa/hotel -- “You’re supposed to have one,” he told them -- and should consider pitching itself as a revitalizing “wellness town,” according to the website MammothLocal.com.

Gregory called Sternlicht a visionary and said concerns that Mammoth is preparing for an onslaught of development are unfounded.

“The market will determine how fast all of this stuff gets done,” he said. “It’s much more important to do it right than to do it fast.”

According to Wood, the pace of building condominium units will soon double from about 155 a year to about 300. But some civic leaders have predicted that the pace could be far greater.

The town’s permanent population, Wood said, will probably rise 20% to 9,000 people within five years. At some point after that -- no one is sure when -- the town is expected to reach “build out” at about 12,000 people. On the busiest weekends, about 40,000 people crowd into the 4 1/2 square miles of Mammoth Lakes; that number will soon rise to more than 50,000, Wood said.

“It’s very easy to live here and think: ‘I don’t want to share this with anybody.’ But that’s not a realistic way for a community to survive,” said Mammoth Mountain Ski Area spokeswoman Dana Vander Houwen. “People come to Mammoth, ski hard, go home, sit in their condo, drink beer and go to bed. You need to have more to offer than that.”

At least two community groups are meeting regularly to monitor development plans and ensure that residents have a voice in drafting the future.

“Every development has been looked at on its own, not at how it affects the whole town,” said Jo Bacon, a Town Council candidate and a member of one of the community groups, Advocates for Mammoth. “Every new development affects everything else.”

Minobe said new development poses a host of challenges; one patch of condominiums, for instance, threatens to block access to the Sherwin Ridge, a popular site for backcountry skiing and hiking. A sinewy, ponytailed man, Minobe should know; he estimated that he hiked up and skied down the ridge 15 times this winter.

“It’s been a favorite spot for generations,” he said. “And I don’t know what the solution is.”

Many residents said their greatest fear is that the town is not making enough provisions for affordable housing.

Town officials insist otherwise, citing a host of programs designed to increase workforce housing, including a strict ordinance requiring builders to provide housing for every employee generated by new development. Wood said Mammoth Lakes will probably have 1,000 workforce-housing units within the next 10 years.

Elsa Themistocleous says she has not seen the fruit of those efforts. She moved to Mammoth Lakes in March after buying the Edisto Gallery and Tea Room, which serves tea and sells art, jewelry and pottery made largely by local artisans.

Since April, Themistocleous said, she has lost two employees who left town because they could no longer afford rent, which has generally doubled in Mammoth Lakes in the last 10 years. Two out-of-town applicants withdrew after discovering that they could not afford to move to Mammoth, she said. Rental houses typically start at $2,000 a month -- which doesn’t sound alarming in Los Angeles but does in a mountain community 300 miles away -- and two-bedroom apartments start at about $1,200.

“It’s a problem for small businesses,” Themistocleous said. “There is no room for the locals.”