#185: More Vintage Mammoth Mountain from TJ

Here is the next group of vintage photos we chose from from TJ’s archive.

If you don’t know, TJ was our photographer at Mammoth for many, many years, and his black and white photos, such as this iconic shot of Chair 1 in the wind, define Mammoth’s past for many long-time West Coast skiers.

There’s a huge range of history covered in these photos, probably about 40 years. If you like these from TJ, check out this post of his old upper gondola pictures.

We had more god-darned fun than we knew what to do with!

-Dave

On the left is a unique aerial shot that captures the community and 395 headed south. It gives a perspective on how the town and mountain lay out geographically. That’s not always easy to understand when you are on the ground.

The photo on the right shows the type of tracks we used to make! That was before the Top was accessed by gondolas or lifts, so everybody traversed over from Chair 3 like they do now before the top opens on a storm day (when patrol clears everything out).

Here is some serious wind coming in over Scotty’s, Paranoids, Kiwi Flat and Star Chute.  On the left is Main Lodge and Rope Tow 1 from sometime in the early 1950s. On the right is another windy day up on top.

We’ll have some new photos from around here coming up, as well as more from Bob Symons’s images from Death Valley. We’ll get some history from his daughter again, and the post those.

We also have several boxes of slides from Bob Schotz of the 1940s and 1950s around Mammoth and Lake George.Bob was one of my early employees at the mountain and he bought the Woods Lodge at Lake George in 1940. Many of his old photos show life and summer recreation in the Lakes Basin in the 40s’ and 50s’. The people have changed, the construction has changed, and the cars have changed, but those mountains and lakes sure haven’t. There’s some great history there. We’ll do some research and post  it all here. Bob has more stories than anybody, and his memory of the past is incredible. He remembers details about 1940 that most people don’t remember about last week. That should be entertaining so be sure to watch for it.