Tunnel under ski run collapses in Mammoth Lakes
Some bizarre and overlooked news out of Mammoth Lakes last week: A 200-foot-long tunnel that takes Lake Mary Road underneath a Mammoth Mountain ski run collapsed on Friday afternoon. Here's a link to the town's press release on the collapse.
No one was injured. The road is also the primary connection to several high country lakes, campgrounds, trailheads and the Tamarack Lodge resort. A detour to the lakes basin is available using the narrower and steeper Old Mammoth Road that is extremely difficult for large RVs to navigate. A few, according to town officials, are still stuck up at the lakes, waiting for the road to be cleared enough to get back to town.
Mammoth Lakes officials are say the cause of the collapse has not been determined, but the incident doesn't appear to be a random event. A bike path has been under construction along Lake Mary Road and a second tunnel was being dug about 20 feet on the downhill side of the original tunnel at the time of the collapse.
Mammoth Lakes spokesman Stuart Brown told me today that as part of that project, the contractor had stripped the dirt away from the original tunnel to check on its integrity -- it was built in 1974. Most of the dirt had been packed back onto the tunnel when it gave way -- with a small bulldozer on top. The driver was unharmed.
"There were no signs that we saw from stripping the dirt and putting it back on that this would happen," Brown said. "I think the outcome is obviously ideal -- we'll get a new span and new bridge" over Lake Mary Road.
It just so happens that the Lupin ski trail sits on top of the tunnel (here's a link to a ski trail map -- the area impacted is on the lower left). Ski season isn't scheduled to open at Mammoth until early next month, so no one was skiing at the time of the collapse, although it was snowing. The Lupine run descends to the Eagle Lodge, one of Mammoth Mountain's base areas. A chairlift, the Eagle Express, also runs up the middle of the trail (shown at right).
The town says that it's trying to fix the tunnel before Nov. 26, when that part of the mountain is scheduled to open for the Thanksgiving weekend -- usually a busy time for the ski resort. If the tunnel is not rebuilt by then, skiers won't be able to access the rest of the mountain from the base area and the pricey condos that have been built around the bottom of the chairlift in recent years. With lift tickets now $83 a day, that presumably would not be something that skiers in that area are happy about.
I've posted a few more pics after the jump.
Top photo: Town of Mammoth Lakes
Bottom photo: Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times
