The factory made its first skis in 1907—and has been an industry leader ever since. Now the future is murky. By Seth Masia Rossignol, the oldest surviving brand name in skiing, can also claim to be the oldest surviving factory in skiing—for now. Ski production began...
From pine pitch to perfluorocarbons, ski waxing has come a long way since the days of Scandinavian ski-sport and Sierra longboard racing. By Seth Masia During the Vancouver Olympics in February, skiers contended alternately with slush and bumpy ice—basically, refrozen...
By Seth Masia Skiers have been following rails into the snowy mountains for 140 years now. 1868 was the year the Mt. Washington cog railway first hauled passengers to the summit. The cog railway didn’t run during the snowy months, because New Hampshire’s vicious weather...
The first "safety" bindings, by Portland skier Hjalmar Hvam, weren't all that safe. But 50 years ago, Cubco, Miller, Look and Marker began to change skiing's broken leg image. By Seth Masia By the mid-Thirties, half of the great inventions of alpine skiing were already in...
By Seth Masia When the first “shaped” skis arrived at ski shops in 1993, they were a revelation. Deep sidecuts to help skis carve short, clean turns had been sneaking up on us for a century – so slowly that only a very few savvy ski designers, largely outside the...
Compiled by Morten Lund and Seth Masia Prehistory: Rock paintings and skis preserved in bogs show that hunters and trappers used skis at least 5000 years ago. [caption id="" align="alignleft" width="487" caption="Classic Norwegian painting of 2-year old prince Häkon...
Compiled by Morten Lund Updated by John Allen and Seth Masia Also see History of Skiing Timeline at the FIS website Also see A Short History of Alpine Skiing Also see A Short History of Skis Also see Lou Dawson's detailed Timeline of Ski Mountaineering 1850—Sondre...
Aspen arts and culture advocate One of the strongest links to the Paepcke era in Aspen ended this week with the death of Merrill Ford on October 24. A close friend of Elizabeth and Walter Paepcke, Merrill was involved in all of the institutions they started here. She...
Richard Spademan was a true believer, a man who found a better way and shared it with the world. Born in 1933 in Detroit, he skied as a teenager at Boyne and attended college and medical school at the University of Michigan. As an intern, he designed and patented a successful...
Pete Heuga, father of Jimmie Heuga and a fixture at Squaw Valley from its opening day until his retirement in 1985, died on April 17, 2011. He was 102. Pascal Heuga was born to an impoverished single mother on April 15, 1909, in St.-Jean-Pied-le-Port, on the French side of...
10th Mountain veteran, Aspen pioneer John Litchfield, a 10th Mountain Division veteran who helped build Aspen into a premier resort, died June 10 at age 93. [caption id="attachment_160" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="JOHN LITCHFIELD -- 10th Mountain Division....
Crans-Montana, Kitzbühel dispute first downhill race In early April 2011, a commemorative race was held on the ski slopes of Crans-Montana, Switzerland, to mark the 100th anniversary of the first Roberts of Kandahar downhill. Some 260 participants, organized into 60 teams,...
By John Fry The overall World Cup championship was to have been determined by a single giant slalom race, to be held on Saturday, March 19th in the 4,921-foot high Swiss ski resort of Lenzerheide. On the eve of the race, Germany’s Maria Riesch led America’s Lindsey Vonn by...
Carol Burney of Quincy, California, and Eric McGrath of Reno, Nevada are the new world champions of longboard racing, as the Plumas Ski Club celebrated the 150th anniversary of the first ski racing and ski club in America, March 19 and 20, 2011, in Johnsville, California. In...
Alissa Johnson, Willy Graves take first golds since 1980 Park City, Utah, March 5, 2011 -- Alissa Johnson and Willy Graves, both of Utah's Westminster College, won the first U.S. Collegiate Nordic Ski Jumping National Championships -- the first collegiate ski jumping...
