KT22 and the Dream Olympics

By John Fry

The first televised Winter Games in the U.S., the 1960 Squaw Valley Olympics, have never been equaled in their staging, the superb weather, and the intimacy enjoyed by athletes from dozens of countries mingling in the small virtually unknown California resort.

The opening fireworks, orchestrated by Walt Disney, illuminated the Squaw peak known as KT22. Today, from its summit, you can still ski terrain remarkably unchanged from what the athletes experienced 50 winters ago. The women’s downhill is still called that by the Ski Patrol. Take off to the right and with Olympic Lady lift on your right, drop into the steep terrain where America’s blond Penny Pitou won the first of her two silver medals at the Games. Not far above the finish line, 14 racers crashed at “airplane corner” where the snow had iced up overnight. If you steer left onto the moguled face of KT 22, you can experience the steepness that daunted the men’s giant slalom racers in the 1960 Olympics. Here Roger Staub won a gold medal, and U.S. racer Tom Corcoran posted a fourth place that remained for the next 42 years as the best result by an American man in Olympic giant slalom.

Count the number of turns you make on the moguled steep face. On this face in the 1940s, before there were any lifts or trails, a cautious Sandy Poulsen used a series of kick turns to make it safely to the bottom. Her husband, Wayne Poulsen, Squaw Valley’s original discoverer, counted them, 22, and promptly named the peak KT22.

Do you have recollections of the 1960 Olympics? Of skiing KT22? Enter them at the Ski History Forum.

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