Morning glory

Adventures of a legendary ski family – from L.A. to Mammoth.

This time of year, there is no doubt that Mammoth is a ski town, created out of snow and passion by Dave McCoy more than half a century ago. Not long after, Southern California families discovered the seductiveness of skiing Mammoth, and none are more legendary than the Mornings.

There were the Colorado-born parents, Sylvester and Betty Jane, who moved to Santa Monica after WWII, and four kids: Jimmy, Robin, Jody and Katie. And there was a station wagon, outfitted for transporting bunches of ski-crazed kids.

“My father thought skiing would be a great family sport, and it was,” said Robin Morning. They skied first in Southern California, mainly at Snow Summit (now owned by Mammoth Mountain), Snow Valley and Mount Baldy.

One thing all the Mornings shared, from Sylvester and Betty Jane and down through their kids, was a love for skiing. “We spent our entire childhood going out to have fun and in the winter that meant ski trips,” said Katie Morning.

Jimmy Morning’s first ski memory couldn’t exactly be called fun. It was an early 1950s Thanksgiving ski trip to Dave McCoy’s McGee Mountain Rope Tows, when Jimmy was a tyke. The family stayed at what he remembers as a deluxe trailer at Tom’s Place for the week.

“We rented our gear at Dave’s warming hut at McGee, and I was fitted first,” Jimmy said. “The lifts were just getting open so I grabbed the rope tow and somehow held on, watching everyone whiz down as I made it to the top. It looked easy so I took off, not thinking I didn’t know how to turn. I went straight down the hill about 100 yards, crashed into the lift line and sprained my ankle.”

Sylvester Morning had first learned to ski in Colorado. In California he discovered the Sporthaus in Westwood, a place that was as much a social mecca for skiers as it was a ski shop. There, the Morning family met French Canadian ski racers Yves Latreille, Yvan Tache and Pierre Jalbert, who were instrumental in the ski racing future of the Morning kids.

The ski-racing hook was set when someone suggested that Sylvester and Betty Jane put their kids in a race at Snow Valley. “We started going to races all over SoCal and eventually the point races in Northern California and Nevada,” Robin said.

Betty Jane Morning was a dynamo, recognized as well for her chic ski clothing. She could see that ski racers from the L.A. region needed support, so she organized the Junior Skiers of Southern California (JSSC).

“My mother would pack the car with kids, lining us up in the back of the station wagon like sardines. We had double ski racks on top that held about 12 pairs of skis and sandwiched a waterproof canvas luggage carrier. She made songbooks and had us all singing to keep us quiet. During this time we first saw the Mammoth racers, so happy and talented and good looking in their yellow and black outfits.”

In December of 1959, Betty Jane held a weeklong training camp in Mammoth, where everyone stayed at McGee Creek Lodge. Later on she organized several L.A.-based gala events to raise funds for the U.S. Ski Team.

In 1961 both Jimmy and Robin made the U.S. Junior National Ski Team that was headed to Sugarloaf, Maine for the junior national races. Dave McCoy, who was the national team coach, invited the entire junior national team to train at Mammoth in preparation for the nationals, and from that time on, the Mornings trained with the Mammoth team.

“Being on the Mammoth team was like being part of a really cool, really fun extended family,” Robin said. “It was a great flock of kids. We all wanted to please Dave. He just had a magic about him, always coaching with a positive suggestion rather than a negative criticism. He was kind, supportive and fun, and he believed in people. He loved to ski and he loved to coach, and we followed him. He created an environment where we wanted to be, where we became close supportive friends with the same people we were competing against.”

While Robin and Katie both loved being in a tight line of skiers following Dave, each skier wanting to be the one directly behind Dave, Jimmy had his own way of doing things. “Not me,” he said. “I looked for my own line.”

The Morning family drove up to Mammoth almost every weekend throughout the 1960s. At first it was Betty Jane doing the driving and then Jimmy got a VW bus that he put a Porsche engine in so it would move faster.

“We scrambled for places to stay, sometimes sleeping in the VW in Bishop on Friday night, or we stayed at our friends the Allens’ trailer, in Quonset huts at Whitmore, or at Carol Eller’s parents house; her dad, Don Redmon, was GM of MMSA at the time,” Jimmy said. “No matter how late we got to Mammoth, it was early to the mountain on Saturday morning to get a good parking place and meet the team,” Jimmy said. “It meant the world to us to be part of the team.”

Jimmy and Robin advanced from Junior National to U.S. Ski Team: Robin from 1965 until 1968 when she broke her leg at the Grenoble Olympics; Jimmy, who got a scholarship to University of Colorado (not usual for a Californian), raced for CU and the U.S. simultaneously.

Jody Morning was as beautiful a skier and as strong a racer as her siblings, but by high school, she decided to devote her efforts to the art world.

Katie Morning-Hylén is the youngest of the Morning skiers. Her earliest ski memory is of one morning at Snow Summit, while the rest of the Mornings were skiing. Katie stayed inside the lodge, befriended by a huge St. Bernard that essentially babysat her all day.

Once she started skiing and racing, Katie joined the station wagon and bus rides up to Mammoth, where Roma McCoy, Betty Jane Morning and Lunelle Thompson looked after bunches of kids.

“These were the golden years (mid-to-late Sixties) of Mammoth, with Dave coaching,” Katie said. “We were a tight-knit team, together all winter and summer. In the summer we skied in the early morning wherever the snow was, and in the afternoons picked up trash, planted grass, had food fights. On weekends we waterskied at Walker Lake. And Dave was part of everything. We would ski till there was no snow … late into July some years. So much camaraderie and such a wonderful time.”

“All this during a time when the U.S. Ski Team didn’t believe in summer training,” added Robin.

When Jimmy went off to college, Betty Jane couldn’t drive up every weekend, so she and Sylvester bought a cabin on Evergreen Street. Katie and Jody lived there and went to Mammoth Academy, which was started by ski parents Lunelle and Ray Thompson. Katie was one of 25 kids who attended school in the mornings and skied every afternoon.

Katie made the U.S. Ski Team in 1970, but by 1973 decided to take a break and traveled around Europe. But a year later she was skiing again, coaching, skiing in films for Warren Miller and Willy Bogner, doubling for Jill Kinmont in the filming of “The Other Side of the Mountain,” competing on the Rossignol Pro Team, and eventually competing in the World Freestyle Tour as well as the nationally televised Challenge of the Sexes, where she outskied world-class freestyler John Eaves in moguls.

Injuries plagued all the Morning racers, but daunted them not at all. After moving around, settling down and having kids, all three of the ski racers are back in Mammoth. Robin is a happy cross-country skier; Katie is going Nordic, as well; Jody, whose art career developed from San Francisco to Paris, now lives in Tunisia, and is actively involved in the European art world; and Jimmy has coached legions of skiers on Mammoth Mountain.

In his day, Jimmy said, there were a few families from SoCal, like the Mornings and the Allens. “We were forerunners of the kids who do that now. There are something like 65 kids under 10 years who ski here and whose families have places here,” he said. It is clear ski fever hasn’t waned and families still consider Mammoth a special place.