TIOGA GREEN X SF GATE NEWSPAPER: How a cannabis shop won over a skeptical California mountain town

Yosemite National Park plans to open Tioga Pass on Monday, giving drivers access to the park’s highest elevations and connecting Eastern Sierra mountain towns to the rest of California. For the park, the annual event welcomes hikers and sightseers into the windswept granite peaks and valleys that John Muir once compared to going to church.

At Tioga Green, a cannabis store in the town of Lee Vining, the pass’s annual reopening means business is back in full swing.

“It’s crazy as soon as that pass opens,” said Cory Zila, the former professional skier who owns the store, with sales going to “Jesus Christ insane numbers” and lines forming some mornings as park visitors wait for the store to open at 9 a.m.

Tioga Green is located in Lee Vining, a small mountain town in the Eastern Sierra that’s about 8 miles away from Yosemite’s entrance, making it the closest cannabis store to the park. When Tioga Pass closes for the winter, Yosemite may as well be in a different state, with a six-hour drive around the mountains separating the pot shop and the park. Business slows to a trickle, with customers mainly being locals, skiers driving to Mammoth Mountain and Nevada residents crossing state lines for some of California’s award-winning cannabis.

The shop is located in a log cabin-style building on Highway 395 with bright green trim that makes it pop from the Eastern Sierra sagebrush that surrounds it. Zila opened the store in the vacant building in October 2019. He never intentionally planned on opening a store next door to Yosemite, but when the permit opportunity presented itself, he went for it. Now, the summer rush from park visitors and tourists visiting to recreate across the Eastern Sierra has kept his cannabis store afloat, keeping him out of debt in a market that has seen thousands of businesses close and retailers struggle to pay their taxes and bills.

“It just cruises along,” Zila said, referring to the business. “We’re not getting rich, but we’re completely clear. We are in good standing [with our vendors].”

There’s some irony to Yosemite delivering so many customers to Tioga Green. Because of federal prohibition, it is illegal to bring cannabis into Yosemite National Park. Smoking a joint as you gaze at Half Dome is strictly prohibited, and Yosemite’s website still instructs visitors to “contact a park official” if you see anyone “possessing or using marijuana.” Tioga Green even includes a warning on its receipts that cannabis is illegal inside the park.

Zila is now one of the rare California cannabis entrepreneurs who is running an expanding business. He opened his second store, Mammoth Roots, this year in Mammoth Lakes. Zila has his own deep roots in the ski resort town. His grandfather helped build the very first rope tow with Mammoth Mountain founder Dave McCoy. Zila himself was a pro skier for over a decade in the early 2000s, skiing around the world for brands that included Icelantic, Oakley, Dynastar and Dakine.

Zila has been a pioneer in the medical marijuana movement since he was a teenager, and his early cannabis work nearly derailed his skiing career. In 2006, he was arrested while selling medical marijuana to a dispensary in Torrance and faced charges of possession and transportation of a controlled substance, according to a news story from the time. Zila said he was eventually able to avoid any jail time by agreeing to do community service, but he immediately lost some of his sponsors after the arrest was publicized.

Zila’s deep knowledge of California cannabis is evident at his dispensaries. He has both top-tier indoor farms like Sense and Fig Farms, but also some of the best outdoor cannabis in the state from Redwood Roots, Ridgeline and even a jar of Whitethorne Rose, one of the most sought-after strains in the state.

Despite its current success, Tioga Green almost didn’t become a reality. Lee Vining’s locals initially tried to block Zila from getting his permit, submitting a petition to block the store to the Mono County Board of Supervisors with 75 local signatures from a town of 222 people, according to the Sheet in Mammoth Lakes. Zila eventually got his license after meeting with the opposition and convincing them to give the shop a chance.

Then something funny happened — locals in this conservative rural town started to like the local pot shop.

“I just played the game and did a lot of community outreach, and then three years into being open, they invited me to the Chamber of Commerce, and now I’m the president,” Zila said.

Tioga Green has become such a fixture of the small Eastern Sierra town that there’s now a marijuana leaf proudly hanging on the town’s welcome sign, letting travelers know that even though they’re hundreds of miles from a big city and standing at the feet of Yosemite National Park, they aren’t too far out to buy some good California cannabis.

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