Pioneers: Bill Danner -- On the Right Trak

Bill Danner helped revolutionize cross-country skiing by making wax optional.

Prior to the early 1970s, hitting the trail on a pair of wooden cross-country skis required arduous base preparation bordering on alchemy.

Skinny skiers couldn’t just put on their skis and go—they were forced to master a grueling “black art.” Outings demanded analyzing snow texture, checking temperatures down to the degree, wire-brushing ski bases, torching and ironing volatile waxes and aggressively scraping away the excess. The process required knowledge, technical skill and endless patience.

Photo: Bill Danner today. Jeff Blumenfeld photo.

One wrong guess on wax meant slipping backward on each stride, having new snow cake on the base or dragging through slush. There was no magic formula and zero room for error. Waxing, in other words, was where cross-country fun went to die.

Then along came innovator William D. Danner, who revolutionized cross-country skiing with the mainstream introduction of a plastic base with a molded pattern (referred to as “fish scales”) that flipped the entire industry on its head. Prior to the launch of Trak skis, the waxless cross-country ski market didn’t exist—nor did a lot of recreational Nordic skiers.

Danner, now 86, would go on to expand Nordic skiing from a niche, expert-oriented technical sport to an easily accessible, family-friendly experience.

Lightbulb Moment

His lightbulb moment came during a casual conversation at Harvard Business School in 1969, when he learned about a textured-plastic Alpine ski base made in Europe.

Partnering with classmate Hans Woitschatzke, Danner tracked down the U.S. patent holder and secured a licensing agreement for a unique plastic base that incorporated a fish-scale pattern under foot. The pattern allowed a skier unimpeded forward glide while also providing sufficient grip for efficient propulsion.

Today, the global cross-country ski equipment market is projected to achieve consistent growth, starting at $7.77 billion in 2026 and climbing to $10.43 billion by 2035, according to a recent report by Business Research Insights. And waxless skis (including modern skin skis, which have a strip of synthetic or natural mohair set into the base) make up the vast majority—estimated at well over 80 percent—of recreational classic ski sales.

Sink or Swim

Born in Morris, Illinois, Danner went to public school in southwest Indiana and was an all-conference basketball player and the valedictorian of his high school class. He attended Harvard College, graduating in 1962 with a bachelor’s degree in physical sciences, an interdisciplinary blend of physics and chemistry.

He soon accepted a job with Procter and Gamble (P&G)in Cincinnati, a top training ground for marketing executives. Military service interrupted Danner’s time at P&G for several years while he served as a naval officer in the Pacific during the Vietnam conflict. After his service, he returned to P&G but soon became disillusioned. “I decided working for someone else was not for me,” Danner explains. “Sink or swim, I wanted to be in control of my own future.” To gain that control over his career, he returned to Harvard and earned an MBA in 1968.

Danner and his friend Woitschatzke, another P&G alumnus, were impressed by the growth of “fitness” sports and saw that cross-country skiing lagged behind. They recognized the entry barriers of complicated ski prep.“We realized success depended upon finding a way for outdoor enthusiasts to spend more time cross-country skiing than getting ready to ski,” says Danner. He reasoned that for growth among beginners,
cross-country skiing had to be easily accessible, akin to jogging, which only required putting on a pair of shoes and heading out the door

That’s where Bill Bennet comes in. He was an engineer at a western Massachusetts paper mill. During the manufacturing process, wet paper, pressed from pulp, glided across steel tabletops, embossed with a pattern to drain water and prevent snagging. As a skier, Bennet wondered whether the same fish-scale pattern, if made to protrude from the bottom of an Alpine ski, would make the ski easier to turn. The Swiss factory Attenhofer gave Bennet some test skis to emboss with his novel pattern. To administer his patent, in 1966 Bennet formed a Massachusetts corporation called Skisearch, Inc., in downtown Boston.

In spring 1970, a fellow MBA student at Harvard brought home a pair of Attenhofers after a Swiss ski trip and suggested that Danner and Woitschatzke try Bennet’s base invention. It seemed to make turning easier, but was slow in glide and, unfortunately, buzzed like a hornet (see Skiing History, September 2003). However, its use in Nordic skis seemed more promising.

By then, Skisearch had gone into receivership. Within days Danner and Woitschatzke negotiated a long-term worldwide license to use the new base technology in cross-country skis. Skisearch was saved from bankruptcy.

Trak is Born

Trak Ski Company was born in 1970, based in Danner’s restored early-1700s saltbox in Byfield, Massachusetts. The company later relocated to the fourth floor of a former shirt factory in nearby Newburyport and later expanded to facilities in Andover and Ward Hill.

Meanwhile, Woitschatzke, who is German, established Trak’s European operation, including a technical facility near Munich devoted to product development. Trak’s new rallying cry for retailers was simple, bold and transformative: “Sell fun, not technology.”

As for the name Trak, “we made lists of every term related to skiing and realized that the word ‘track,’ [which we] later shortened to ‘Trak,’ was synonymous with the sport,” says Danner. (A skier shouting “track!” means “I’m about to overtake you—please let me pass.”) The company soon overtook all its competitors.

At first, Trak’s Fishscale Nowax base covered the entire underside of the ski. User feedback, however, showed that less of the base could be covered for acceptable performance, so the fish-scale section was reduced to 80 and, later, 60 percent, forming a kicker in the center of the ski’s camber. More testing proved that scales of different depths could be used to enhance the ski’s glide.

Trak also subcontracted manufacturing to other ski companies that produced their products to exact specifications—with Trak the sole source of the patented fish-scale base.

Market research revealed that for cross-country to grow, its future depended upon attracting newcomers and casual cross-country skiers, not just mid-level or competitive enthusiasts.

During the early 1970s, which was the peak of the jogging craze in the U.S., the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports evaluated and ranked popular physical activities. Cross-country skiing consistently ranked at or near the top, alongside running/jogging and swimming, according to the Council’s Physical Fitness Research Digest (1974).

Thus, Trak also focused on crossover Alpine skiers attracted to Nordic because of its health benefits. A series of ensuing product innovations included a new click-in cross-country binding (1971); a reduced kick zone on the Fishscale Nowax base (1972); variable depth of the fish-scales (1974); and waxless racing skis in 1975, according to a Trak sales manual.

At the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, 20-year-old cross-country phenom Bill Koch modified a pair of fiberglass Fischer skis by inserting a 16-inch strip of mohair the full width of the ski into the kick zone. He then made history by scoring silver in the 30-kilometer race, becoming the first American to win an Olympic cross-country medal.

His mohair setup proved to the world that waxless technology could perform—and medal—at an elite level. That led to an explosion of interest in cross-country skiing in the U.S. Adding to the sport’s popularity was a continuous stream of Trak innovations, such as a quieter base, called Omnitrak, and a radical new boot, the Trakker, that combined nylon with Gore-Tex fabric, making it lighter and more waterproof than leather boots.

Paradigm Shift

By the early 1980s, Trak had become the sport’s dominant brand in North America and Europe, leading in unit sales and, most significantly, in profitability for dealers.

The brand developed a series of playful ads. One featured urban skiers commuting to work: “Trak is faster than a cab in traffic.” Another promised freedom from hot, messy waxing rooms: “Thanks to Trak, lots of people have come out of the closet.” The ads consistently touted the paradigm shift that the gear represented, including “You’ll get a kick out of this one” and “More than just another pretty base.”

In 1981, Trak bought Austrian ski company Kneissl out of bankruptcy, providing entry into Alpine, ski jumping and a valuable counter-seasonal product: tennis racquets.

Hoping to revolutionize the recreational Alpine ski market as the Nowax ski had done for the cross-country market, Trak secured patent rights to the market’s first reverse-camber Alpine ski, the Kneissl Blue Star OP. For a new skier, learning how to down-weight a conventionally cambered ski to carve turns is not easy. A reverse- or negative-camber ski already has the turning capability built in.

But the traditional Alpine ski world was not ready or willing to buck tradition. A ski instructor at a major New England resort sniffed that a student on Kneissl’s OP skis was not on a pair of real skis. It would be years before easy-to-carve skis were a success in the market.

Always innovating, in 1984 Trak created a new lighter and narrower cross-country boot/binding combination called the Norm 50. It was a revolutionary change from the industry standard 75-millimeter three-pin (a.k.a. “rat-trap”) binding, offering improved performance and ski maneuverability.

Trak had by now grown into a multinational wintersports powerhouse, an acquirer of both talent and companies. In 1986, Trak and Kneissl merged with America’s Olin ski company to create the short-lived Tri-Star Sports.

By 1989, the Olin ski business was sold to Anthony Industries (the parent company of K2 Sports at the time), and production moved to the K2 factory on Vashon Island, Washington.

Trak’s Legacy

“Technology developed by Trak remains a vital part of the ski industry’s efforts to convert new participants into Nordic skiing,” says Parker Riehle, former president of the Vermont Ski Areas Association and current president of First Tracks Strategies and Get on Snow.

These days, Danner is recovering from an amputation below his right knee but continues pursuing self-taught skills by restoring old homes, fly fishing and raising lilies at home with his wife, Gillian. And his impact remains huge. Woitschatzke is retired and resides in Barcelona.

Roger Lohr, founder and editor of XCSkiResorts and former staffer at Snowsports Industries America, says simply, “Bill Danner with his Trak brand is on Mount Rushmore when it comes to promoting the sport.”

Frequent contributor Jeff Blumenfeld is vice president of ISHA, immediate past president of the North American Snowsports Journalists Association and chair of the Rocky Mountain chapter of the Explorers Club. His most recent article, “Hail to the Piste: U.S. Presidents on Snow,” is in the May-June 2026 issue.