Mammoth has characters

(Editor's Note: This story first appeared in the February 2007 issue of Mammoth Monthly magazine.

On one of the biggest party nights of the holiday season, Mammothists wearing Hawaiian clothing jammed into Eagle Lodge, where Kathy Copeland and her volunteers were throwing their annual "Island Extravaganza" bash on behalf of disabled athletes. This season, the party is on the night of Dec. 9.

It promises to be, as usual, the best party of the season. Maybe the whole year.

On stage, the band Soul Reason jammed away, while people of all ages crowded onto the dance floor. Dozens of people fought their way to the bar and through the food line, while a silent auction and a raffle drawing were happening in synchronized time. Big dogs dressed in bamboo outfits wandered about. It was loud. It was fun. It bordered on mayhem.

In the middle of the din was a bare-shouldered Copeland, the iconoclastic, fifty-six-year-old founder of Disabled Sports Eastern Sierra whose audacity and personal magnetism created the usual vortex of dynamism around her.

"You know," sighed her husband, Jack, who once again witnessed the phenomenon, "there was a time that I used to be kind of afraid of her." He grinned and said, "Everybody's got a story about Kathy."

Outside, the last of a winter storm blew snow across the icy streets and parking lots, while on the ski hill itself, snow guns added to the tumult.

Suddenly, a happy, throaty "Yahhhwwaa!" pierced the air, and everybody knew that Kathy Copeland, her voice rising above the fray, had just made another greeting.

Copeland's journey to Mammoth began in Vermont in 1955, where as a five-year-old she entered and won a no-holds-barred sledding race on a frigid Shelburne golf course.

Her father, Jack, had a plan.

"We went and picked up one of those flying saucers and he covered the base of it in candle wax," said Copeland's mother, Marie Harding.

Brandishing her slick new sled, Harding said, Copeland showed up only to find bigger, older kids from all over western Vermont's Chittenden County, ready to wing themselves down the icy, bulletproof pitch.
It was such a big event that even TV cameras showed up -- a rare thing in those days.

Even so, Copeland the kindergartner grabbed her souped-up saucer and trudged to the top.

"She came sailing down and won the whole thing," Harding said.

The family came home that night and flipped on the television and saw Kathy's run broadcast to the entire region. But the instant gratification of television heroism wasn't the real prize for Copeland. Her descent earned her a pair of bamboo ski poles.

"That was the beginning of our whole family taking up skiing," Kathy said, "but I also think it was one of those times where I just didn't want to be a loser. Ever. There's a streak in me that's so stubborn. I'm not going to quit and be a loser."

That determination, along with many life lessons along the way, led her eventually to create Disabled Sports Eastern Sierra. It's been a little bit like that sledding victory all those years ago, she said.

"Honestly, I had no idea that it was ever going to go as far as this, and that it would come this far, this fast."

To trace Copeland's labyrinthine route to Mammoth would require more squiggles than anyone could follow. The final squiggle, however, had her hitchhiking from Westlake Village to Malibu in 1971. A man named Marvin, driving a Volkswagen bus and accompanied by a dog named Barney, picked her up. He said he wasn't going to the beach. He said he was going to Mammoth.

Why not?

When they arrived, the bus needed drastic attention, so they took it over to the old Cesar's Texaco gas station, which had a hydraulic lift outside. The bus went on the lift and a ladder went up to the bus.

That was Copeland's first home here -- a bus on a lift at a gas station. Having tasted thin air, so to speak, she eventually moved onto an unheated, unelectrified tree house platform among four trees off Lupin Street in the Ghetto. She lived there four years, summer and winter.

"Probably somebody said I couldn't do it," she reasoned, all these years later. "My parents learned early on that you shouldn't say 'no' to me, because I'd just go do whatever it was I wasn't supposed to be doing."

It is a testament to her will and personality that Kathy Copeland and "The Tree House" is the stuff of local legend.

Actually, there's a lot of legend that hangs off of Kathy Copeland, and some of the more preposterous tales are almost always true. Her life seems to have been a Kerouac-ian crawl, from her formidable youth in Vermont, to her post-high school solo journey to South Africa, and her numerous coast-to-coast hitchhikes.

Once here, she had a long, often tumultuous drift through a career at the ski resort before finally settling down a little bit.

"I am so stoked and so surprised, really, that I'm still living," she said. "I am so grateful for the life I've led. And I'd have to say that sobriety has contributed to who I am right now. I certainly don't regret those days.

"I also think that there's a coming-into-your-own strength that happens to a lot of women in their fifties. There comes a time when you just decide to follow the other path."

In late 1998, on a self-evaluative hiatus from the Mammoth Mountain Ski School, Copeland devised an idea that would make this region of the Eastern Sierra accessible to disabled athletes. Shortly thereafter, armed with a business plan and the energy to start the next phase of her life, Copeland took the idea to Mammoth Mountain.

Unfortunately, the ski area was in a financial valley at the time and didn't have the resources to fund her project. .

"I walked into a board meeting thinking, of course they're just going to hand me the money I need," Copeland recalled. "Not the case."

Copeland decided she would take on the colossal fundraising project on her own.

That year, she began soliciting donations from local businesses and well-to-do clients she had met ski instructing and running a part-time landscaping venture. But, as she learned dealing with Mammoth Mountain, the money would not come easily.

"The largest check anyone was willing to write was a hundred dollars," Copeland said. "People believed that there was promise, but let's face it, it was still a long shot."

Even so, Copeland raised the money, and the program took off. Now, almost seven years later, Disabled Sports Eastern Sierra (DSES) has its own floor in the new Gondola Building, and each year hundreds of faithful clients return. This past summer, in fact, the introductory season of the summer program enabled adaptive athletes to hike, bike and fish their way through the region.

One of Copeland's athletes, Spencer Caserio, is as good proof as any that DSES has tangible impacts on families across the country. The five-year-old from Cambria contracted leukemia more than three years ago. His family, avid skiers, wasn't about to let the chemo-induced deterioration of his nerves, joints and muscles keep him from joining them on frequent ski trips to Mammoth. That's where, according to Spencer's father Brian, Copeland stepped in to incorporate Spencer into the family's skiing passion.

"Kathy has done absolutely amazing things for Spencer," Caserio said. "She's made skiing fun for him, which is so much better than any physical therapy program he would be involved in. He will ski for the rest of his life, in no small part thanks to her."

But Copeland's intrepid ability to mobilize volunteers is the real key to her success. Appropriately, Copeland doesn't hesitate to ask for volunteer help. And when asked herself, she gives her all, according to her friend Emily Graham. Graham is Mammoth Hospital's volunteer coordinator, and Copeland volunteers there at the hospice. "She brings positive energy to very heavy content," said Graham. "She goes the extra mile and does things a lot of volunteers wouldn't feel comfortable doing. In turn, the hospice patients are very comfortable with her."

Whenever in need of volunteers, Graham said Copeland is a logical person to turn to, because she never says no. In addition to the hospice work, Copeland brings her two dogs, Rags and Auggy, to the hospital for animal-assisted therapy.

"The work she does with the dogs is great, but I know it's a lot for her," Graham said. "Each time they come, she has to bathe them, and there are a number of certifications the dogs have to meet. Like I said, she goes the extra mile."

Copeland's parents, living in Westlake Village, are paying close attention.

"We're so proud of what she's doing right now, but we've always been so proud of her," her mom said.

"A few weeks ago she told us, 'You know, I've been training my entire life for this.'"

(Editor's Note: Additional reporting for this article was by George Shirk, editor in chief of Mammoth Monthly.)

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