Mountain man: Mammoth Mountain inspired Davey McCoy's monumental outdoor life. Now Davey inspires you

Men's Fitness, Sept, 2005 by Tyler Gray

MANINE-YEAR-OLD DAVEY McCOY IS STANDING ON A corner in Bishop, Calif.--one of the rare times he is still. He's waiting for legendary outdoors man Dave McCoy--Grandpa, to Davey--to scoop him up in his blue Dodge Challenger with the white interior and take him away to the mountain for the weekend. He may be just a boy, but already he gets that his grandfather built Mammoth Mountain ski resort with his bare hands. On weekends the young Davey helps dig holes and bury support beams for ski lifts. He rakes the trails that will become Mammoth's biking, paths. He helps his grandpa fix machinery. It for fun for him, not a chore, and it him outdoors. So when sees the bronze monument to his grandpa go up in the center of the mountain village, and he hears the people who make a living on Mammoth call it "Dave's Mountain," it makes him feel kind of like he owns it too.

Maybe that's why he never wants to leave, begging to stay longer weekend after weekend in year after year--until until finally, nearly a decade later, he gets his wish and moves into mountain lodge. But nothing comes for free in the McCoy household. To earn his keep--and to keep up with his grandpa--Davey masters dozens of trades. He becomes an avid skier, motocross rider, cyclist, runner, climber, hiker ... the list goes on and on. "If there's an outdoor sport. I'll do it" Davey says now. We recently asked him to share with MF a few typical days in the outdoor life he learned from his grandpa. He answered with a challenge: Strap on skis, a motorcross helmet trail-running shoes, and biking gear and try to keep up. Of course, we did, flirting with the edges of red-rock cliffs on motorcycles, racing tumbleweeds on foot and bike, and slicing on skis into an endless base of constantly falling Mammoth snow. We spent every waking moment in the shadow of the mountain. And as we captured manage of McCoy in his element, we started to see what it means to inherit the fire for adventure and the legacy of the outdoors.

Biking

On the open roads of California's High Sierra, there's often nothing for miles but dusty desert, blacktop, and the hiss of wind. "Getting on the bike gives me time to do nothing but think," Davey says. "When I'm out there, I learn a lot about who I am. I guess you'd call it my church." But it wasn't churchlike behavior that spurred Davey to start building Mammoths labyrinth of biking trails--which now stretches 85 miles and draws thousands of visitors. "I'd swiped one of my grandpa's vans to go mountain biking," McCoy remembers. "When I got back, I knew he'd be waiting for me, so I told him I wanted to build a course. He wasn't angry. He didn't yell. He just handed me a rake and shovel and told me to get to work. And anytime that summer the grade of the trail came out too high, he made me redo it," McCoy laughs. "It wasn't punishment. He wanted my grandma to be able to ride, too."

Of all the sports he's had a chance to try, skiing is McCoy's first love. He never competed, though his grandpa coached many Olympians. Yet the quest for the gold is in his blood--his aunt Penny won a bronze medal for the U.S. Olympic Ski Team. Competitive skiing, he says, never held the same appeal for him, however. "I never liked chasing sticks or being told where to turn," Davey says. He was more into hiking and skiing the backcountry--untamed peaks and unexplored faces--for no other reason than to push his own limits. "I hike to the top of something that might go 14,000 feet up. It's an amazing feeling. It's a sense of challenging yourself with nature," he says. "I hear people talk about going out to 'conquer the mountain." Conquering is not real. The mountain is more powerful than we could ever be. I have a great deal of respect for its power. If you spend time outdoors, if you hike or climb or ski, you've got to respect the power of nature."

A Running

Davey's interest in trail running started, simply enough, with running up and down Mammoth Mountain helping his grandpa. Now Davey runs in the summer to explore routes for winter backcountry skiing. Over Bishop Creek. Past the Twin Lakes in Mammoth. Out through Duck Pass. "By now, the running trails are pretty familiar to me," Davey says, "but I'm always finding something new--a new place to explore, a path I want to ski in the winter." Constant outdoor activity (and maybe genetics) has helped McCoy, now 42, preserve his boyish looks and incredible physique. But when it comes to the outdoors, nothing he does, he says, is for vanity. "Some people go to the gym so they can look a certain way, and that's fine. But for me, biking, skiing, climbing, and living outdoors in general are about the freedom. I just love doing it. I love it now, and still want to be able to do it when I'm my grandfather's age."

Dave McCoy is waiting on his grandson. He's in dirty pads, bright motorcycle pants, and a helmet that hides his face. He's revving his Honda 250, anxious to hit the reddish-brown, dusty course in the front yard of the McCoy ranch house. The plastic plate on the side of Dave's bike bears the number 89--his age. (He's since turned 90.)