U.S. Presidents on snow
Some were legit athletes; others just enjoyed the occasional winter recess.
If President George Washington had spent the winter at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, learning to ski, he might have looked like Californian Darren Martin, 36, a social media influencer who calls himself George Washington Skis.
For the past three Presidents’ Days, Martin has donned Revolutionary War regalia, including a cutlass and bicorne hat, and appeared at U.S. ski resorts to the delight of his 98,000 followers. Silly clickbait perhaps, but there were at least nine—and arguably 10—U.S. presidents who could turn ’em.
From Teddy Roosevelt to Donald Trump, while in office or not, chief executives include some notable powder hounds. Their skiing was often impeded by Secret Service protection, not to mention time constraints. But it offered a chance to get all covered up and be virtually invisible—except for the Secret Service trailing behind. Skiing was also a healthy, mind-clearing distraction that may have even encouraged these leaders not to get too far out over their skis in running the nation.
Teddy Roosevelt: Speak Softly and Carry 270s
Roosevelt (1858–1919) was an accomplished outdoorsman, and, not surprisingly, he’s often cited as our first skiing president. In the era before ski lifts and heel bindings, he owned a pair of long Nordic boards, which he used for skiing cross-country, the occasional downhill schuss and even making a jump or two (see cartoon top of page).
His son, Gen. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., reported that his father not only skied, but also donated a pair of handmade 270-centimeter skis with leather toe straps to the Smithsonian Institution, then borrowed them back during the Great Blizzard of 1888 to ski the streets of Washington, according to a 1975 story in SKI by Jakob Vaage and Morten Lund. This tale may be apocryphal, since during that blizzard Roosevelt and his wife lived at Sagamore Hill, their home on Long Island. They wouldn’t arrive in Washington until a year later, when Roosevelt was named a commissioner of the U.S. Civil Service.
The biographer Hermann Hagedorn twice mentions Roosevelt’s skiing in his 1954 book, The Roosevelt Family of Sagamore Hill. Hagedorn writes that in 1898, when Roosevelt was elected governor of New York, “winter came early that year and the governor-elect got out his skis and skimmed the slopes around the house.”
While serving as 26th president (1901–09), Roosevelt visited Yellowstone National Park in 1903 with American naturalist John Burroughs. The 65-year-old writer was impressed by the competitive nature and infectious joy of the 44-year-old president. He writes in Camping with President Roosevelt: “At the President’s suggestion, he and I raced on our skis down those inclines. We had only to stand up straight and let gravity do the rest. As we were going swiftly down the side of one of the hills, I saw out of the corner of my eye the President taking a header into the snow.
“The snow had given way beneath him, and nothing could save him from taking the plunge. I don’t know whether I called out, or only thought, something about the downfall of the administration,” Burroughs continues. “At any rate, the administration was down, and pretty well buried, but it was quickly on its feet again, shaking off the snow with a boy’s laughter.”
According to SKI’s Vaage and Lund, in 1912 the Norwegian-language Minneapolis Tidende newspaper reported that Roosevelt, then 56, spent January 17 building and using a ski jump at Sagamore Hill. If true, this may have been the first jump on skis ever performed on Long Island.
Calvin Coolidge: POTUS Pitchman
While he grew up in hilly Plymouth Notch, Vermont (not far from modern-day Okemo Mountain Resort), “Silent Cal” Coolidge (1872–1933) was not known as a skier. But he did serve as a pitchman for the sport. When Coolidge served as the 30th president (1923–29), he and his wife, Grace, put on a pair of skis on December 18, 1924, during the National Outdoor Recreation Conference and shuffled a few steps across the snowless White House lawn.
Coolidge then remarked that in his Vermont boyhood, everyone skied. But not Coolidge himself, according to his son John. SKI’s Vaage and Lund report the younger Coolidge’s assertions that as far as he knew, no one in the family had ever skied.
John F. Kennedy: Profiles in Powder Kennedy (1917–1963) grew up skiing in Poland Spring, Maine, according to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. Photo archives maintain a half-dozen images of the 35th president on skis at age six in 1923, both alone and accompanied by his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr.
At around age 19, the future president vacationed at Turner Mill in Stowe, Vermont. Built in 1936, “this was lodging to the stars in the 1930s,” says real estate agent George Bambara, of Pall Spera Company.
Following his heroics after the sinking of PT-109 during World War II, Kennedy underwent the first of four back surgeries, which more or less ended his active skiing career. But Moira McCarthy, in a 2023 story for SKI, writes, “The Kennedy family sport prowess is legendary … [Kennedy] embraced the sport all of his life—as a skier himself until a back injury ended his time on skis, then as a ski parent until his death.”
Gerald R. Ford: A True Believer
The skiingest president was, hands down, Ford (1913–2006), number 38, who was in office from 1974 to 1977. He owned one of Beaver Creek’s first homes, which you can inspect (from above) while riding the Strawberry Park Express lift. A dozen local sites and events are named for him, including the post office, a stretch of Interstate 70, a performing-arts venue, an invitational golf tournament, a park and playground, an intermediate ski run and a run at neighboring Vail called 38.
Ford learned to ski in New England in his 20s, then perfected his turns as a regular at Boyne Mountain, Michigan, where he skied often enough for locals to consider him the nation’s only ski-bum future president.
In Vail, when he finished a run, Ford would chat with reporters and skiers while Secret Service agents stood by. Daughter Susan Ford Bales tells Vail Beaver Creek magazine that his protection team was picked based on skiing ability.
When an onlooker once told Ford that everyone was proud to have him in Vail, the president responded, “‘You make me justice of the peace and I’ll quit’—and he meant the presidency!” according to WhiteHouseHistory.org.
Ford was instrumental in bringing the World Alpine Ski Championships to Vail in 1989 and 1999, and helped develop
the Vail Valley Foundation, a nonprofit that supports the arts and athletics in the region, and for which he served on the board. “I credit him with the growth of ski racing in the Vail Valley,” says John Horan-Kates, Vail’s vice president of marketing at the time.
The press often portrayed Ford as an uncoordinated bumbler, which angered him greatly. In fact, Ford’s athletic accomplishments were elite: In the early 1930s he was a star two-way player on the University of Michigan’s powerhouse football team, which went undefeated on the way to winning national championships in 1932 and 1933.
After graduation, he turned down offers from the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers to pursue a law degree. In his memoirs, Ford simply states, “There was no doubt in my mind that I was the most athletic president to occupy the White House in years.”
In a later interview, he remarks that as he skied hard on Vail, “most of ’em [the press] would sit in the bar all day long, and when you would come in from three or four hours of skiing, they’d be sitting there or standing there trying to get a picture of you falling down.”
Ford appeared in Willy Bogner, Jr.’s film Skivision 75, explaining that he enjoys skiing because “you get your mind totally off other problems. The way I ski, I have to concentrate on skiing, not something else.”
Jimmy Carter: Late Bloomer
There’s not much skiing in Plains, Georgia, home of 39th president Carter (1924–2024). The adventurous peanut farmer didn’t start Alpine skiing until age 62, well after his 1977 to 1981 presidential term.
During his presidency, Carter was attracted to Nordic skiing. In a February 11, 1979, diary entry, according to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta, Carter describes a day of cross-country skiing around Catoctin Mountain Park in Maryland, having lunch at Camp Misty Mount, then skiing to the park visitors’ center.
At Camp David, Carter sometimes skied along the perimeter fence for 2.5 miles. As he writes in his 2005 book, Sharing Good Times, “We enjoyed our first experience with cross-country skiing within the presidential retreat and along the hiking and equestrian trails in nearby state parks. We also had sleds and snowmobiles that we used on the steep slopes within the camp.”
Carter was a tough outdoorsman. As he describes one mishap: “I was skiing down a steep slope near our cottage on very thin snow, hit an exposed rock and broke my left clavicle just two weeks before my term as president expired.”
Ronald Reagan: From Gipper to Ripper
Reagan’s (1911–2004) love of skiing began in his adult years. When he was California governor from 1967 to 1975, his interest in skiing led to what would become landmark environmental policy to protect Lake Tahoe’s famed clarity.
Reagan, who served as president from 1981 to 1989, was a former college athlete and lifeguard, and liked to ski at what was then called Heavenly Valley (now Heavenly Mountain Resort). According to a 2024 story in the Tahoe Daily Tribune, “he skied very well. He was a good, all-round athlete,” said Fred Corfee, the general partner for Heavenly Valley when Reagan and Nevada governor Paul Laxalt visited the slopes in February 1968. Reagan also helped create the Governor’s Cup, a ski race between the leaders of California and Nevada, to help promote the fledgling mountain owned by Corfee and Hugh Killebrew.
With his son, the late Michael
Reagan, in tow, Reagan took a single lesson from Corfee, who saw the future president go from snowplowing to grabbing air off a mogul. “He was extremely well-coordinated. I don’t think he fell once,” Corfee told the Tahoe Daily Tribune. “Looking back now I remember how he was really having a good time. I mean, he would laugh and throw snowballs at people and then he’d stop and talk to people, wave for pictures and crack jokes.”
The Gipper would later sign proclamations designating National Skiing Day in both 1988 and 1989, highlighting the athletic and therapeutic benefits of the sport.
Bill Clinton: Dabbler
Clinton, the 42nd president (1993–2001) gets a shout-out for having tried downhill skiing until being sidelined by injury during an outing as governor of Arkansas in 1984, according to CNN.
Nonetheless, in January 1994, he was game to try cross-country skiing with First Lady Hillary Clinton, daughter Chelsea and a friend at Camp David. But when Clinton’s wife and daughter skied Park City in 1998, he stayed inside and read. He recalled that trip a year later during remarks at the 150th anniversary of the Department of the Interior. “I just returned from Utah, where the rest of my family went skiing, and I thought about it,” Clinton said to laughter.
Barack Obama: Stay-at-Home Ski Dad
While the 44th president (2009-2017)didn’t ski, First Lady Michelle Obama and their two daughters were avid skiers. Typically, the president would remain in D.C. or head to the golf course while the family took a weekend ski trip, often in Aspen or Vail. The first lady enjoyed the inherent anonymity that winter gear provided.
“When I’m skiing, that’s, like, one of the few places in the winter where I feel free. Because nobody can take a selfie with you when you’re skiing down a mountain,” she said at a holiday event at a D.C. children’s hospital in 2016.
Joe Biden: Brown Bagger
The 46th president (2021-2025) began skiing as a law student at Syracuse University in the 1960s, often traveling to Sugarbush, Vermont, for lessons. Moira McCarthy reports for SKI that he took to the sport quickly and is comfortable with his ability. “I’m not a bad skier,” he told a group in Snowmass in 2011, where the Bidens had rented a home. McCarthy continues, “When skiing at Snowmass, Biden chose to brown-bag it rather than sit down for a leisurely lunch. He told the media he didn’t want to slow things down for other skiers and riders by taking up space and time in food lines.”
While serving as vice-president, Biden led the U.S. delegation to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. In 2022, he further cemented his connection to the sport by designating Camp Hale in Colorado—the former training ground for the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division—as a national monument (see Skiing History, November-December 2022).
Donald Trump: Art of the Downhill
Trump, the 45th (2017-2021) and the current president, is known as an overly confident skier who frequently visited Aspen in the 1980s and 1990s. During a Christmas vacation in 1989, Trump’s first wife, Ivana, famously encountered his mistress, Marla Maples, at Bonnie’s restaurant on Aspen Mountain, fueling tabloid headlines and leading to divorce papers being filed a few months later.
While Ivana was an expert skier and junior racer in her native Czechoslovakia, accounts of her ex-husband’s skiing are less than flattering. Michael D’Antonio, author of The Truth About Trump, recounts the time early in Trump’s relationship with Ivana when she skied on past, leaving him far behind. Long after the incident, D’Antonio writes, Ivana could recall every aspect of his reaction: “I disappeared. Donald was so angry, he took off his skis and walked up to the restaurant. So we find his skis down the mountain with the instructor.”
Two of Trump’s children, Ivanka and Eric, have also shared stories of their father’s intense competitiveness on the slopes. According to a 2024 New York magazine story, Eric recalls that his dad “would try to push me over, just so he could beat his 10-year-old son down the mountain.” In later years, golf has become Trump’s passion, far from Aspen’s celebrity spotlight. 
Jeff Blumenfeld is a vice president of ISHA and past president of the North American Snowsports Journalists Association. A fellow of the Explorers Club, he’s covered the adventure field in ExpeditionNews.com for 32 years.