For many years Los Angeles doctors Diana Yao and her husband Glenn Izmirian, along with their two children, shared a house with two friends near Mammoth Mountain, California, a ski resort east of Yosemite in the Eastern Sierra range. Then Izmirian saw a small plot of land, only 8,000 square feet, in a residential neighborhood closer to downtown Mammoth. His wife, a gastroenterologist who was on call in L.A., agreed they should buy it. The family is superathletic, the kids were nearing adulthood, and they all liked going there year-round to ski, fish, hike, bike, and scull.