Dave McCoy's Exit

April 14, 2005

From the May/June Mammoth Monthly

    Mammothists are used to the ground moving under their feet, but usually the tectonic shifts are geologic and sudden.
    With Dave McCoy’s announcement that he is selling his interests in the ski area he founded, we’re looking for deeper and more long-range movements—shifts that affect most organizations when their charismatic leaders leave.
    Whoever buys Dave’s interests—whether it’s a group of investors led by CEO Rusty Gregory, Intrawest, Vail Resorts or whomever—the chances of Mammoth retaining its very particular “Dave-isms” are open to question.
    Last October, when the Sierra was blanketed with more than 80 inches of snow, only Mammoth opened early and for seven days a week. The ski area does that kind of thing because Dave’s a skier, first and foremost, even at 89 years old, and he wants it that way. The other resorts opened, but being more bottom-line conscious, most of them were running just on the weekends. Late in the spring, when all the other ski areas shut down, a hardy group of locals is still skiing here, even if it doesn’t reap a lot of profit for the hill, because that’s the way it’s always been.
    The ski area’s commitment to racing—the junior racing program for kids, the Village Championships, Masters races, and the Mammoth Mountain Ski Team—are all priorities of Dave’s. There also is an unspoken code of self-reliance among the employees that descends directly from Dave. No whining—just fix what’s broken and get the hill open for the day.
    Perhaps more far-reaching is what may change between Mammoth Mountain Ski Area and the town. Gregory said it is an “important and delicate” relationship characterized by “respectful independence”—a nice catchphrase for “testy.”
    Even though Gregory said this will be a “change of ownership, not of management,” he acknowledged that Dave is essentially irreplaceable.
    “Dave is the spiritual core of our business,” Gregory said.

Within two weeks of McCoy’s announcement, the Dempsey Construction Corp. announced that it had finally completed its land swap with the Forest Service and would proceed with the Snowcreek Resort development, which includes expanding its nine-hole golf course to 18 holes and building more housing and commercial space
    Tom Dempsey, who created the vision for Snowcreek and worked with many people in town to build such things as the high school and to create the Mammoth Lakes Foundation, died in 2001, leaving his wife, Linda, to carry on.
    For decades, it was Dempsey and his close friend, Dave McCoy, who led Mammoth to where it is today.
    With Tom Dempsey gone and with McCoy stepping aside, Mammoth is entering a new era.

—George Shirk