MAMMOTH MOUNTAIN: LAUNCHING PAD OF CHAMPIONS
Snowboarding central: Sierra resort has been hub for sport since its invention Some of biggest names take advantage of top facilities, edgy spirit
MAMMOTH LAKES >> Three-time Olympic medalist Kelly Clark left Vermont 17 years ago to cultivate her snowboarding talent on the powdery slopes of Mammoth Mountain.
Now 34, Clark is taking her high-flying circus act to the Winter Olympics for the fifth time as a long-time Mammoth local. Four other snowboarders competing in the Pyeongchang Games call Mammoth home, including halfpipe rock stars Shaun White and Chloe Kim.
The Eastern Sierra peak has become the triple-flip launching pad of American snowboarding as the sport celebrates its 20th anniversary as
an Olympic discipline. The popular snow resort that on weekends feels like an L.A. suburb has been grooming airborne talent for decades because of supreme facilities, a long season with plenty of sun and snow and an innovative spirit.
“Mammoth’s history of snowboarding is as long as the sport itself,” said Jeremy Forster, U.S. Snowboarding and Freeskiing director.
While Lake Tahoe has produced more than 30 Olympic skiers since the inception of the Winter Games in 1924, Mammoth has fed the American snowboard teams with the likes of past Olympians Danny Kass, Greg Bretz, Tommy Czeschin, Trevor Jacobs and Michele Taggart. Onetime Winter X Games goddess Tara Dakides still lives in Mammoth.
White, a Carlsbad skateboard phenom, has been commuting to the 11,053foot massive volcano since childhood. The two-time Olympic champion’s Mammoth connection underscores the mountain’s close proximity to Southern California’s surf and skate scene.
“It really captures the culture of the sport here,” White said.
Embracing the sport
The community of about 8,000 full-time residents has embraced snowboarding as much as skiing since the 2000s. A hearty crowd rimmed the superpipe on a refrigerator-cold night to watch the recent final 2018 Olympic qualifier before being treated to exploding fireworks above the black Sierra skyline.
Many of those cheering for the pro riders had spent the day shredding the 100acre Unbound Terrain Park themselves because it offers courses for all levels.
Most aficionados attribute the mountain’s reputation to the snowy playground with three halfpipes and 11 parks — “the facility is always on another level,” said White, who owns a minority stake in the resort.
The main park has a Mavericks-like 22-foot superpipe that allows for the world’s most skilled practitioners to perform their flipping, twisting and somersaulting trickery.
White, 31, trained on a privately built pipe deep in the Colorado Rockies before the 2010 and ‘14 Olympics. He has returned to Mammoth after finishing fourth four years ago at the Sochi Games.
One of the original terrain parks is run by folks willing to push it as much as the athletes.
“There is the California lifestyle that is very different than the rest of the country,” said Unbound director TJ Dawoud, who grew up in Connecticut. “California is full of openminded
people who are willing to give it a shot and try different things.”
Is Mammoth the Silicon Valley of snowboarding?
“It’s not the only place that has influence but the influence is deep-rooted in the history,” Dawoud said.
Early reluctance
That wasn’t always the case.
Diehard Mammoth skiers looked down on snowboarders just like almost everywhere else the sport’s new generation tried to
make inroads, recalled Peter del Giudice.
The one-time Huntington Beach surfer accidentally became a snowboarding pioneer when, in 1969, he took a plywood creation off a June Mountain ski shop wall, tightened the firehose straps around his Sorel snow boots and zoomed down a run.
All on a dare.
“It was surfers,” del Giudice said of those who helped the sport grow. “The moment that anything would pop up like skating
or snowboarding we were on it.”
The resort 16 miles north of Mammoth Lakes became California’s early snowboarding center because it was more welcoming to non-conforming ideas of how to play in the snow. It took the established resort a long time to embrace snowboarders even after Mammoth founder Dave McCoy bought the June Mountain resort in the mid-1980s.
The tipping point came 20 years ago when Mammoth played host to the first snowboard Olympic trials as the sport made its debut at the Nagano Games.
McCoy recruited del Giudice to his mountain where the surfer-turned-coach developed into the Chairman of the Boarders. Del Giudice brought Clark to Mammoth in 2001 as well as Ross Powers. Both won Olympic titles the next year as Americans swept the halfpipe medals in Salt Lake City.
Despite Mammoth’s early reluctance, many credit McCoy with laying the groundwork for what has transpired. McCoy, who is
102, built the Mammoth ski area with his hands starting in 1937.
“Dave’s deal was pushing people to be their best,” said
Peter Korfiatis, Mammoth’s director of athletics. “That’s our core value. Provide the en- vironment to push people to be the best version of themselves.”
From the beginning, McCoy saw the Mammoth Lakes community as an extension of the resort. Czeschin, a Mammoth native, recalled getting lift tickets for $1 as a local schoolkid.
“It gave us access to go ride,” said Czeschin, who finished sixth in the halfpipe at the 2002 Olympics. “The schools would go up once a week.”
Korfiatis said Mammoth and Squaw Valley are the only resorts offering affordable top-level programs.
“The others are big-time, East Coast academies that cost tens of thousands of dollars,” he said. “We’re a little club for under five grand where you can get 52 weeks of training at a world-class level.”
Community support
The tight relationship with the community has allowed the local school district to create an independent online study program to support the wintersports athletes who aspire to compete in the Olympics and X Games.
Mammoth Snowboard and Freeski team’s top teen competitors train five hours in the mornings Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and weekends. They need to be on campus only on Tuesdays, but also have access to teachers and counselors when they want help.
Elementary and middle school students also train two days a week for physical education credit.
“We want all the kids on the snow,” said Benjamin Wisner, Mammoth snowboard and freeski team director. “You don’t live in Mammoth to not go skiing and snowboarding.”
But team officials also encourage their athletes to participate in school rituals such as dances, sports teams and regular interaction with peers.
Wisner, a member of Australia’s 2018 Olympic coaching staff, has about 70 kids, from age 6 to the world’s elite.
He has seven prospects already targeted as serious candidates for the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing.
“I’ve never been to a mountain that supports snowboarding and freeskiing like this in my 20 years,” Wisner said.
An entrepreneurial vitality pulsates through the resort where they have changed the definition of what it means to have a Pipe Dream.
“The only thing that holds us back is our imagination,” said Dawoud, the Unbound director. “If we can dream it, we can build it.”
Seven years ago, budding slopestyle snowboarder Sage Kotsenburg asked Dawoud to build him a radical jump line to master triple flips. Dawoud said the 2014 gold medalist met resistance from his home mountain in Utah.
“We’re like, yeah, let’s do it,” Dawoud said. “Just like that.”
The Mammoth resort prides itself on staying ahead of other all-terrain parks.
Last year, the resort spent $120,000 to add a billowy, sloping airbag about the length of ramps leading to freeway overpasses. It’s the first one laid on snow instead of an artificial runway.
In June, reigning Olympic slopestyle gold medalist Jamie Anderson of South Lake Tahoe landed her first double-cork 900 with the safety net of the airbag.
“It has changed the game, especially in women’s snowboarding,” Wisner said. “It has given them the confidence to try the bigger tricks, the triples and doubles.”
But even without such amenities, Mammoth had become a springtime stomping ground for the who’s who of boarders and freeskiers. While most resorts close in mid-April, Mammoth’s season usually extends to the July 4 weekend.
“It’s just what you do,” Dawoud said of the spring fling. “You just show up and ride.”
Just another Day of the Shred.