| Matt
McCullough, of Huntington Beach, takes a picture of
a Woolly Mammoth while vesting Mammoth Mountain ski
resort. |
 |
MAMMOTH
LAKES, Calif. — Before we get to the early snow, the new
businesses, the zipping skiers and beaming boarders at
Mammoth Lakes, let’s remember how bad things have been
this year for this corner of the Eastern Sierra.
First,
Mother Nature delivered scant snow in the 2011-12 season,
driving tourism down just as the larger economy seemed to
be recovering.
Then
in June, management at Mammoth Mountain, the resort that
dominates the town, trimmed staff, cut salaries and
announced the shuttering of its June Mountain ski
operation — a painful blow to the tiny mountain
community of June Lake, 20 miles north of Mammoth.
Oh,
and in July the town of Mammoth Lakes declared bankruptcy
after it lost a breach-of-contract lawsuit. Recovery, town
officials said, would depend on layoffs, pay cuts and a
plan to make debt payments of $2 million a year for 23
years.
These
have been hard times, especially in June Lake, where local
businesses are doing without their own ski mountain for
the first time in decades.
Yet
the winter of 2012-13 has begun in Mammoth Lakes with a
happy bang, because nothing dilutes red ink faster than
real snow.
On
Nov. 8 — the same day the Mammoth resort opened its
season with a handful of trails covered in manufactured
snow — a storm started dumping the real thing. By the
following Saturday afternoon, more than a foot of fresh
powder had fallen and about 2,800 skiers and boarders had
hit the slopes. By Sunday six lifts were open, serving a
dozen trails, and at least one local was using the word
"dreamy."
Hovering
above the flocked pines, you could almost make out a
community thought balloon saying: "Maybe this year
..."
Another
storm arrived the next weekend, and then another. By early
December, the mountain had a base of four to six feet. A
great start.
If
Mammoth seems like a winter possibility but you haven’t
been here for a while (or ever), here’s what I learned
on a quick visit last month.
The
5-year-old Westin Monache Resort Mammoth, which stands on
a hill towering over the condos, shops and restaurants of
the Village, is the ritziest hotel in town. The Westin’s
Whitebark bar and restaurant, a contemporary space full of
dangling round stones and sleek wood paneling, is a fine
venue for a round or two of drinks, but the kitchen’s
too-rich fusilli didn’t do much for me.
My
favorite meal, in fact, was a flavor-packed veggie lasagna
at Toomey’s on Minaret Road, a tiny, year-old place that
specializes in catering and takeout and looks like the
Kansas City Royals’ dugout. (Owner-chef Matt Toomey is a
big baseball fan.) Whether you order to go or sit among
the handful of tables, Toomey’s serves memorable
breakfasts, lunches and dinners, from coconut mascarpone
pancakes to wild buffalo meatloaf. And as locals will tell
you, Toomey is already a U.S. 395 celebrity, having wowed
serious eaters for more than a decade as the chef at the
Whoa Nellie Deli in the Tioga Gas Mart in Lee Vining.
After
a few days of nosing around, I predict that after dark in
Mammoth this season, hard-partying twentysomethings will
be watching snowboarding videos while doing shots amid the
tiki-tinged tumult of the Lakanuki Bar in the Village, as
they have for years. Locals will be spooning up hearty
albondigas soup at Roberto’s Cafe (on Old Mammoth Road),
as they have for decades.
In
the morning, serious coffee consumers from near and far
will queue at Black Velvet Coffee (opened this year on
Main Street), a spare white space where baristas labor
over their concoctions like post-docs solving DNA riddles.
At least a few foodies will nip into Bleu Handcrafted
Foods (which opened in July a few doors from Black Velvet
Coffee) to gather artisan beers, wines, cheeses and meats
for the larders of their rental condos.
As
is often the case in ski resorts, some of the worst
bargains are found closest to the slopes: A slice of pizza
at the Mammoth Mountain main lodge’s slope-adjacent
Broadway Marketplace costs you $5.25, and a 16.9-ounce
bottle of water costs $4. (Four steps beyond the cash
registers, savvy skiers and boarders get tap water in
paper cups for free.) Then again, the lift line is right
outside.
Mammoth
Lakes was born as a ski town in the 1950s, when Dave McCoy
started the resort on U.S. Forest Service land on the
slopes of 11,053-foot Mammoth Mountain. The slope-side
Mammoth Mountain Inn went up in 1959, and McCoy continued
to build the resort and town before selling the resort to
Starwood Capital Group in 2005.
Nowadays
the town’s year-round population is about 8,200,
swelling to as many as 35,000 in winter. In town the ski
area also owns the Village Lodge condo-hotel, the Juniper
Springs condo-hotel and the rustic Tamarack Lodge, a haven
for cross-country skiers that dates to 1924. I stayed
anonymously in a pleasant one-bedroom condo at the Village
Lodge, just above the shops and restaurants along the
pedestrian paths of the Village at Mammoth. (Arriving on a
weekday in early November, I got a rate of less than $180
a night.)
Just
about every local I talked to had something to add about
how and why the last few years have been tough in Mammoth
— the faltering national economy, the town’s lawsuit
liability (which stems from a broken promise to a
developer about airport-adjacent land) and, most of all,
the fickle snow.
In
December 2010, on the way to a 661-inch season, the resort’s
ski patrol logged about 200 inches of snow. The total for
December 2011: 2 inches, on the way to a much-lamented
season total of about 240 inches. (Or 263, depending on
who’s counting.)
Since
last winter, the Village’s Hyde Lounge nightclub and
Auld Dubliner pub have closed. An upscale Italian
restaurant, Campo Mammoth, is expected to open in the
former Hyde space about Dec. 20. A new Greek restaurant,
Jimmy’s Taverna, is expected to open soon above the Red
Lantern restaurant on Old Mammoth Road.
As
for the town’s municipal bankruptcy, it was officially
dismissed Nov. 16, and out-of-towners are unlikely to spot
any signs of it. Though the number of police in town could
be cut from 17 to as few as 10, the Town Council (knowing
that local government gets most of its income from taxes
paid by tourists) is so far leaving hotel tax rates the
same (about 13 percent) and continuing to pay for the free
shuttle buses that carry visitors around Mammoth Lakes.
Management at Mammoth Mountain continues to bankroll the
shuttle buses that carry skiers and boarders four miles up
the road from the town to the ski area’s main lodge.
I
was surprised to hear that last summer, while the Town
Council was struggling with a bankruptcy and settlement
plan, many of the innkeepers and restaurateurs of Mammoth
were doing pretty well, enjoying a long season of sales.
Stuart
Need, owner of the Lakanuki bar, said his summer income
was up about 12 percent over the year before. John Urdi,
executive director of Mammoth Lakes Tourism, reports that
the town’s hotel tax revenue from June through September
hit an all-time high this year, up 6.5 percent from the
summer before.
"The
events were packed, and you couldn’t find a place to
park. It was great. And it was a long summer," said
George Shirk, news editor of the Mammoth Times. Among
local entrepreneurs, Shirk said, "Nobody’s
complaining about the summer."
Meanwhile,
20 miles north in June Lake, this winter looks daunting,
whether snow comes or not. With about 800 residents in a
community surrounded by four scenic lakes, June gets many
summer fishermen and families. But for decades its winters
have been dominated by June Mountain, the ski area (on
U.S. Forest Service land) that has been owned by the
Mammoth Mountain resort company since the 1980s.
In
June, when Mammoth Mountain was struggling with the red
ink from the previous low-snow winter, management decided
to shut June Mountain for this winter, leaving the
community’s eateries and lodgings with plenty of
gorgeous scenery but no tourism centerpiece.
The
embattled community responded by creating a series of
homespun special events, including a village-lighting
ceremony Dec. 15, a February winter-sports triathlon and a
March snowmobile rally (for details, go to visitjune.com).
At
June Lake’s Double Eagle Resort & Spa, owner Connie
Black has cut her prevailing winter rental rates by $100
— from $369 to $269 a night for a two-bedroom cabin. At
the Sierra Inn Restaurant, owner Candy Logue said she
would drop prices about 15 percent and open only for
winter weekends and holiday weeks, not regular week days.
Ernie’s Tackle & Ski Shop will cut back its hours
similarly.
Many
in the community took comfort in Mammoth Mountain
management’s vow (made in early November by Chief
Executive Rusty Gregory) to reopen the June Mountain ski
operation in the winter of 2013-14. But there’s no
denying a difficult winter is ahead.
"Everyone’s
working together to make this winter as good as we can
make it," Black said, but "there’s a fine line
between optimism and hallucination."
———
IF
YOU GO:
WHERE
TO STAY:
Westin
Monache Resort Mammoth, 50 Hillside Drive, Mammoth Lakes;
(760) 934-0400,