Dave McCoy Photography

Here’s the next installment from our Mammoth archive project. This week we’ve got the ski school.

John and Lynette Armstrong came by last night and they were able to help identify several of these old friends and employees. The idea is to tag as many of the people we can recognize in the photos so any help with identification would be great. Enjoy this one and look for another theme soon.

Mammoth Mountain’s race team helped put us on the map, but all those racers had to start somewhere.

That start, for many, was in the Mammoth Mountain Ski School.

Corty Hill really started the ski instruction program in the Eastern Sierra. He brought European instructors over to McGee Mountain sometime around 1939.

We kept the program going at McGee through the 1940s, and carried it on over to Mammoth when everything moved there.

Toni Milici ran ski school at both McGee and Mammoth, and saw it through the early stages. It started as a small operation and just like everything else, it grew and grew to what it is now.

Below are some photos from a few different eras of the Mammoth ski school. We’ve even got some shots of what must have been one of the country’s first snowboard instruction programs. There’s also a shot of the ski school kids playing with a kangaroo. Anybody remember the story behind that?

Most of these were done by Brad Peatross and our photo/video department.

For the last 30-40 years, the uniforms have changed but longtime locals will recognize a lot of the same faces. Some we recognized are Jack and Kathy Copeland, Max and Linda Good, Gary Berger, Gary Taylor, Jim Northrup, Bob Schwartzkopf, Mary Mead, Sarah Lokan, Seth Murphy and Warren Miller.

Who can be more enthused about skiing than a ski instructor? They’re there to help you have fun beyond your expectations.

-Dave