Intrawest Corp

Commercial flights from Chicago and Dallas disgorging tens of thousands of vacationers a year at an expanded airport. Baby boomers dropping $900,000 for fancy duplexes on the golf course. Skiers sauntering through a crowded pedestrian village of boutiques and cafes after a day on the slopes. It's not the Mammoth familiar to Southern Californians, who have for decades made the 300-mile drive north to this unassuming eastern Sierra ski town.

Standing at the window of his fifth-floor office in Irvine's University Town Center, architect David Baab gestures at the panorama of clustered high-rise towers that form a knobby six-mile-long spine across the flat horizon. Everything that's good and bad about the architectural and urban development of central Orange County over the past 10 to 15 years can be plainly seen from his office window, Baab said.

Here's one way to start a ski season on a merry note. On the same early November weekend that Mammoth Mountain resort opened its doors for winter, a sudden storm dumped about 18 inches of new snow. And so, while workers raced to complete $25 million in resort renovations and additions, three lifts lurched into service and a few hundred skiers and boarders, myself included, got to play in a little powder.