1930s

Photo: Alf Engen rides Sun Valley's Ruud Mountain chairlift, location of the jumping hill he designed with Sigmund Ruud, circa 1938. Photo by Charles Wanless, courtesy Alan Engen.

Alf Engen in Sun Valley (the saga continues...)

In a recent letter in Skiing History (May-June 2020), my colleague Kirby Gilbert raised several questions about Alf Engen’s role in Sun Valley’s early days. Kirby wonders whether Alf was in Sun Valley in 1936, since his presence was not mentioned in other accounts at the time.

In his 1985 oral history, Alf said he met Count Felix Schaffgotsch in Utah in early 1936, when the Count was searching for a place for Averell Harriman to build a destination ski resort. Alf showed the Count both Alta and Brighton, before the Count visited Ketchum in February 1936, and found the area that would become Sun Valley. According to Alf, “When I found out that he had picked this place [Ketchum], the Forest Service sent me up here just to see what he had actually picked out…There was lots of snow that year, and it was beautiful. And at the end of the road...of the railroad...there was only one building, there was Pete Lane’s store…I just came to see what he had picked out.”

From 1935 to 1942, Alf worked for the Forest Service as a technical advisor, assisting with planning and developing winter sports areas in four western states. Alf’s son Alan provided me with a list of 31 ski areas in which Alf played a role in planning or developing, which included Sun Valley’s Bald Mountain.

In January 1939, Sun Valley general manager Pat Rogers told Harriman that the Forest Service released Engen to work at Sun Valley. Count Schaffgotsch, Alf Engen, Dick Durrance and Friedl Pfeifer were on Baldy marking trees to be removed for a new downhill course designed by Durrance, the work would be rushed through, and the course would be ready for the 1939 Harriman Cup. Engen also supervised Civilian Conservation Corps workers stationed at a camp in the Warm Springs area, to clear new runs on Baldy to open the mountain for general skiing in winter 1940, after chairlifts were installed. In his oral history, CCC worker Fred Joswig described working with Alf on Baldy. Joswig said Pfeifer, who had a “good eye for a downhill course,” marked trees for removal, and Engen contributed “more than any one person to Bald Mountain’s development than anyone I know.”

As a part-time resident of Sun Valley, I appreciate interest in the history of our country’s first destination ski resort that Durrance said was “the most important influence in the development of American skiing ... Its concentrated and highly successful glamorization of the sport got people to want to ski in the first place.”

John W. Lundin
Seattle, Washington

John Lundin is the author of Early Skiing on Snoqualmie Pass (2018 ISHA Skade Award winner); Sun Valley, Ketchum and the Wood River Valley (Arcadia Press, June 2020); Skiing Sun Valley, a History from Union Pacific to the Holdings (History Press, publication date November 9, 2020); and Ski Jumping in Washington —A Nordic Tradition (History Press, publication date January 2021). John and Kirby Gilbert are both founding members of the Washington State Ski and Snowboard Museum (www.wsssm.org).

Engen’s Son Remembers

I received the latest Skiing History and was interested in the short piece by Kirby Gilbert that talked about my father in Sun Valley during the mid 1930s. I can’t comment much about my father’s early years at Sun Valley working for the Forest Service during summer months. I know he did some early trail cutting. He told me about encountering a wolverine face to face while cutting trails on Warm Springs. Dad backed away without incident, but it was a lasting memory.

I know my father played an important role in the design and construction of the Ruud Mountain ski-jumping hill near the old Proctor Lift. That would have been in 1936–1937 and he did have a good association with Averell Harriman during those years. I used my father’s blueprint design of the Ruud Mountain ski jump as a guide for the one I designed on a hill for Bob Barrett, original owner of the Solitude ski area, in the late 1950s. It was used for intercollegiate competitions for several years in the early 1960s, but was torn down and replaced with a regular run in later years.

Alan K. Engen
Salt Lake City, Utah

Where Grooming and Geometry Intersect

In his “Paradise Lost” article (Skiing History, May-June 2020), Jackson Hogen eloquently explained how carving represents the Nirvana of alpine skiing. I would add that carving stands at the confluence of two evolutions: ski geometry and slope grooming. 

Ski designers began experimenting with new sidecuts back in the 1960s. For instance, Dynamic designers moved the waist back about 18cm to take advantage of new racing techniques. Two decades later, alpine races were still taking place on decently prepared but significantly wavy and irregular terrain, making carving choppy and imperfect. As trail grading and grooming improved, resorts created flawless and wide snow ribbons. When shaped skis came of age, they showed their magic power on these smooth new ski runs. 

Do all skiers need to carve? I’m not convinced. Many are content with letting their boards skid into each turn. In fact, accomplished carvers account for a small portion of the skiing public. Besides, significant momentum is required to trigger carving. Its maximum efficiency promotes higher speed, but doesn’t allow for slow motion. And it often creates stress on the joints that can prove tiring after a full day on the snow. 

If carving is one useful skiing skill, skidded turns are essential in countless circumstances like moguls, crud, steep spots, blue ice, deep snow, trees and out-of-bounds skiing. A skier who doesn’t master skidding will be ill at ease on surfaces that aren’t perfectly groomed. Skidding is in fact a progressive form of edge control while carving is binary; you either carve or you don’t. As a result, I use a variety of skills when I ski, depending on the terrain, the snow and the day: carving, skidding and stem-christies (yes, these too!).

Finally, about the danger of rocker and fat skis: Those are part of the ebb and flow of “cool trends” that we’ve seen come and go in skiing. As the industry pushes them, they grow, stay for a while and falter. Rocker skis are made for the elusive deep snow while fat skis are sluggish and heavy to carry, so when their heydays are gone, they might return to niche status.

J.F. Lanvers
Park City, Utah

Jean-Francois Lanvers, who capped his ski-teaching career with a stint on the French Demo Team, came to North America as a marketing executive, first with Look and then with Lange.

Notes on the New Northlands

I want to thank Jackson Hogen for his article in the May-June issue, which brings to light the concept that we built Northland Skis around. Wider rockered skis degrade the true ski turn.

We pride ourselves in making one of the finest all-mountain carving skis on the market. We went against the trend to go wider and rockered by creating dimensions and ski construction not seen in other skis in the industry. To do this, we went back to the original Northland design. The vintage skis were made from hickory that provided strength, snap and durability. With the new Northlands, we make the core from hickory and white ash, strong hardwoods with excellent performance characteristics. To that we add a full-length layer of Kevlar to quiet and dampen the ski bottom and add strength.    
I applaud Hogen for stepping out and speaking his mind about products that the industry has dropped on the skiing public that diminish the ski experience. 

Peter Daley
Steamboat Springs, Colorado

"If not for the mountains my religion would be much too arid," confessed the celebrated convert, apologist and controversialist.

(Photo above: Lunn in May 1925, when with Walter Amstutz he made the first successful ski ascent of the Eiger. Photo courtesy New England Ski Museum)

The paths to faith are many, and they can be eccentric. Such was the conversion of Arnold Lunn in 1933. A British mountaineer and ski pioneer, Lunn was already famous then for his invention of the slalom race.

Mountaineers from time to time experience a spiritual, even profound religious feeling when they gaze upon the beauty of snow-capped peaks and the shadowed valleys below. Lunn profoundly shared that poignant experience. “The mountains were my door to the supernatural,” he wrote. “Their visible beauty was the initial impulse which led me to devote so much time in the years which followed to the most important of all problems, the real nature of man.”

Arnold was the eldest son of Sir Henry Lunn, Methodist lay preacher and author as well as visionary entrepreneur. In 1892, Henry organized a conference of ecclesiastics at Grindelwald, focused on re-uniting the splintered Protestant churches. It was an effort with little chance of success, but it led him to become a premier travel agent.

“The result of the Grindelwald Conference,” recalled Arnold, “was not—alas—the reunion of Christendom, but the foundation of a travel agency, later known as Sir Henry Lunn Ltd.” Lunn Travel ran tours to such Swiss resorts as Adelboden, Klosters and Grindelwald’s neighbors, Mürren and Wengen. Ten-year-old Arnold donned his first pair of skis when he accompanied his father’s earliest organized sports party to Chamonix in 1898.

The young man’s initial step toward supernatural awareness occurred in Switzerland when he was 19 years old, and a student at Oxford. During the previous year, by his own description, he had become “an agnostic, if not an atheist by belief.” Then it struck him. “I was resting on an Alpine pass after a climb (and) a sunset of supreme beauty,” he recalled. “Suddenly I knew beyond immediate need of proof that a beauty which was not of this world was revealed in the visible loveliness of the mountains. From that moment I discarded materialism for ever.”

Energetic Iconoclast

Following his Oxford studies, Arnold Lunn took up a writing career, and between 1907 and 1968 produced more than 50 books—nearly a title annually. In addition to 15 books on skiing and mountaineering and six travel guides, he wrote 30 serious books ranging across religion, philosophy, politics and autobiography. The alpine wonderment that propelled him from skeptical agnostic to fervent believer is scattered through his work.

Lunn’s enthusiasm for skiing was boundless. He originated the timed slalom race in 1922 at Mürren, Switzerland. In 1927, he and Austria’s most famous skier, Hannes Schneider, invented the Arlberg-Kandahar competition, having a combined result in downhill and slalom that exists to this day. For years, he edited the British Ski Year Book, one of the more literate sports periodicals ever published. So encompassing and detailed was Lunn’s writing and organizational work in skiing that it’s difficult to imagine he had time for anything else.

Lunn was influenced by the 19th century writers, poets and artists who articulated the beauty of the high mountains. In 1816, the young Byron, high on the Kleine Scheidegg in Switzerland’s Bernese Oberland, positively swooned at what he beheld: “Clouds rose from the opposite valley, curling up perpendicular precipices like the foam of the ocean of hell during a spring tide…the
glaciers like a frozen hurricane.”

The august Victorian author, critic and artist John Ruskin had “a genius for expressing his passionate love of mountain scenery,” wrote Lunn. It found expression not only in Ruskin’s prose but also in his painting. And Lunn was not alone in observing how the revival of Gothic architecture aroused Victorian England’s appreciation of the Gothic landscape of soaring Alpine peaks.

Lunn once described his experience on a ledge high above Zermatt, as he watched “the first wayward hints of colour creeping back into the rich gloom of the valley. And then, just as the sun leapt above the distant bar of the Oberland, a Church peeled out … a joyous carillon … re-echoed until the whole long valley … overflowed with spontaneous melody.”

Leap of Logic

Despite his spiritual arousal in 1907 at the age of 19, Lunn for the next 26 years was consistently disappointed by Protestantism, and decidedly unsympathetic to the arguments for conversion to the Roman Church. England was witnessing an extraordinary number of conversions—as late as the 1930s, some 12,000 a year. The Church welcomed literary celebrities, who came to include Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and Malcolm Muggeridge. The Anglican Church was in decline. Should not one become a Catholic?

It was a popular discussion topic, and furnished a ready market for book publishers, and an opportunity for a professional writer like Lunn. His Roman Converts openly criticized Cardinal John Henry Newman, G.K. Chesterton, and leaders of the Oxford Movement who had become converts. Lunn was daunted neither by Newman’s fame nor by the illustrious Cardinal’s arguments, which he compared to misguided mountaineering. “For all their brilliance, (they) are too often like the tracks of an Alpine party wandering around a mist-covered glacier. Perhaps this does not matter,” remarked Lunn acerbically, “for all roads lead to Rome, even those which go around in a circle.”

So persuasive was his writing that in 1932 his London publisher commissioned a book, Difficulties, co-authored by Lunn and Monsignor Ronald Knox, himself a convert. In each chapter, Lunn furnished examples—such as the Inquisition and the treatment of Galileo—for why people should not join the Roman Church, while Knox sought to destroy Lunn’s line of reasoning.

Yet less than a year after the publication of Difficulties, a remarkable thing happened: Lunn himself became a convert. He was received into the Roman Catholic faith in July 1933 by none other than Knox, and recounted the story of his conversion in a new book, Now I See, published in November of the same year.

His conversion, Lunn confessed, was not a leap of faith. Rather, it was a decision founded on research and reason. He likened the scientific logic that he employed in studying snow surfaces and avalanche conditions to the historical analysis he used in proving Christ’s resurrection: “The mental process in both cases seemed much the same.”

It may have seemed the same to him, but not to critics, as witnessed by this letter from a friend: “My Dear Lunn: It was very kind of you to send me your book. I have often observed (that) when a writer goes over to Rome his work falls to pieces…I would have given all your pages on the infallibility of the Pope…for one paragraph on the argument which induced you to believe that bread and wine can be turned into the actual flesh and blood of a man who died nineteen hundred years ago.”

None of this deterred Lunn. He was a brilliant debater, controversialist, and a tack-sharp logician. His style of arguing was the same—whether exposing the underlying illogic of the fatuous Norwegian opposition to downhill and slalom, or of the claims to benignity by a Church that had tortured people in Inquisition. Lunn often fueled his arguments from his experiences in skiing. Two weeks before his death in 1974, at the age of 86, he wrote:

“A country ceases to belong to Christendom when the architects of public opinion begin to preach what they practise…I have seen the process at work in my own sport, ski-ing…Olympic shamateurism began with the highly paid Nazi ‘amateurs’ at the 1936 Olympics…What was of ultimate significance about Hitler and Stalin was not that they were anti-democratic but that they were anti-God and, therefore, anti-truth.”

Lunn was ahead of his time in attacking the failure of intellectuals to identify Stalinist communism as a form of totalitarianism. His mistrust of the Soviets later came into play when he fought the International Olympic Committee over the amateur status of athletes. IOC President Avery Brundage wanted to bar alpine ski racers from the Olympics for their acceptance of money from sponsors. Lunn argued that state-employed Eastern bloc athletes competing in the Olympics were just as professional as the western “shamateurs” taking payments under the table from businesses. In Lunn’s mind, the Soviets were as ruthless in the telling of lies to defend their version of ski competition as they were in their closing of Christian churches.
Inspirited by the Mountains

Lunn’s Christian faith—erected as it was on an infrastructure of syllogistic reasoning—left him feeling deprived. He envied the mystic or the simple peasant who had a direct phone line to God. “I envy the mystical just as the tone-deaf envy the musical,” he remarked.

“It has always been a distress to me that I have so few religious feelings. I have far too little feeling of being in contact with God when I say my prayers or even when I receive communion.”

But a commitment to religion as firm as Lunn’s is not brought about without an emotional component. “I should probably still be an agnostic,” he wrote to a priest friend in 1969, “if I had not felt an urgent need to explain the sense of worship which mountains arouse in me, and if it were not for the mountains, my religion would be much too arid, a synthesis of intellectual conclusions rather than a personal relationship with my creator … There are moments in the mountains when the words of the Sanctus rise unbidden to my lips.”

Lunn believed that writing about the mountains surpassed the literature of any other sport. It is impossible to describe snow and peaks “without unconsciously betraying your attitude to the invisible and mystical … Mountain literature is unique in sport, unique for its immense range of interests, physical and metaphysical.”

Lunn, who died in 1974, was knighted by the Queen in 1952 for his contributions to skiing and Anglo-Swiss relations. The honor should have cited his contributions to the literature of religion as well.

Lunn’s voluminous correspondence can be found today in the Special Collections of the Georgetown University Library in Washington, D.C. This article is based on a paper presented by the late John Fry at the 2009 International Ski History Congress at Mammoth Lakes, California and excerpted in Commonweal (June 1, 2009). To read John’s obituary, see the March-April 2020 issue or skiinghistory.org/lives.

Sun Valley Skier Shares Rare Find

By David Butterfield

In 1979, 18-year-old, Marc Corney, did his best to become a Sun Valley ski bum. He left his So Cal home of Glendora with high hopes of joblessness, raucous nightlife, and endless days of skiing Baldy. He had some early success but eventually succumbed to responsibility and regular employment. He even went back to school, became an architect, and now has a family. Though a failed ski bum, Marc still skis over 60 days a year and contributes as a Guest Services supervisor. Over the years he has developed an appreciation for Sun Valley history and traditions of mountain camaraderie.

It was a special night of on-line ski history study when he came across a bookseller in Vermont with something rare and unique to offer. The Sun Valley Ski Book is a 1939 pictorial ski instruction tome by Friedl Pfeifer that is not uncommon among collectors and aficionados, but this copy had buried treasure. Along with ski school director Pfeifer’s step by step instruction and mountain lifestyle photos, there are hand-written captions from photo subjects and a four-page signature spread. Also tucked in are a few vintage newspaper clippings and a song lyric by poet, Christopher La Farge, a friend of Ernest Hemingway.

Marc snapped up the souvenir and with his wife, Jill, put the probable story together. The book most likely belonged to Pfeifer and his wife and must have been passed around at parties or on their coffee table around the time of their wedding in the spring of 1940. The captions are directed to the Pfeifers and the signatures are those of the inner circle of accomplished skiers in Sun Valley’s magical formative years. Every time Marc and Jill open the book, they know they are holding traces of Sun Valley ski heroes in their hands and are pleased to share a look with Skiing History readers. 

In this historic Swiss resort town, visitors are immersed in the wellspring of winter sports. By Everett Potter

A case can be made that the origins of modern winter sports lie in the Swiss resort and spa town of St. Moritz. In the late 1850s, Johannes Badrutt welcomed a steady stream of well-heeled British guests to his Kulm Hotel. They came in summer to hike and take the waters. But in winter he shut down for lack of visitors.

As the oft-told story goes, he wagered four of his best guests that they would love the winter in a town that claims 300 days of sunshine a year. He asked them to return with their families. If they didn’t have fun, he would pick up the tab. The Brits accepted the bet and ended up staying—and paying—until spring. They spread the word back home, at a time when first ascents of Alpine peaks were making headlines in London, and soon other sports-minded English families followed. Over time, more hotels opened and a host of activities were formalized, from skiing and ice skating to curling and taking death-defying descents on the Cresta run, the first skeleton course in the world. A winter sports capital was born...

The cover of New Love Magazine (February 1948) celebrated the intimacy of riding uphill on the relatively new T-bar, famously known as a He-and-She Stick Artist: Gloria Stoll Karn.

By John Fry

Skiing was a perfect milieu for boy-meets-girl 60 years ago. Four out of seven men and three out of four women were single. Apres-ski they united in in bars redolent with beer and cigarette smoke, or in farmhouse sitting rooms. But during day the prime socializing took place in the lift line. Here skiers routinely waited for 30 minutes and as long as an hour on a holiday weekend -- plenty of time to talk, observed ski writer Morten Lund, “to meet a member of the opposite sex, get infatuated, engaged and plan the wedding.”

The chances of agreeable encounters vastly amplified when ski areas replaced rope tows and J-bars with T-bars, known as “he and she sticks.” Especially desirable was a wobbly track, or one that slanted across the fall line, since it brought the riders into greater physical intimacy.

Even one the T-bar’s drawbacks could be turned to social advantage. If a tall and a short person were paired, their unequal heights would cause one or the other to fall off. Consequently, the lift attendant sought to pair people of equal height, a dimension that also happens to work well in long-term relationships. The notoriously short Dr. Ruth Westheimer, who skied at Belleayre in New York’s Catskill Mountains, was in the liftline one day awaiting a suitable rider to go with. Eventually, a shortish man showed up, and they rode up together. He later became Dr. Ruth’s husband.

The boy-meets-girl opportunities absolutely shot ahead in the 1950s with the switch from single to double-seater chairlifts. Instead of sitting silently alone wondering how to meet the gorgeous gal he’d seen in the liftline, a fellow could now actually sit next to one on the chair. For the skilful Romeo, a 10-minute ride  was more than enough time to inveigle a gal into joining a beer and ski songfest at the end of the day.

Alas, the opportunities for intimate conversation have lessened as lift riding time has shortened, and the number of chair occupants has grown from three to four, to six and even to eight skiers and snowboarders. Not a few of them may have pulled their dating-app equipped IPhones out of their parka pocket, seeking a date.

The sleek modern skiwear look, it’s typically thought, originated suddenly in 1952 with the Bavarian designer Maria Bogner’s use of Helanca-modified nylon and wool blend to create the first durable stretch pant. (See “50th Anniversary of Stretch Pants,” September 2002, Skiing Heritage.) But the body-hugging ski look was arguably more of an evolution than a revolution, as the pictures accompanying this article show. Bogner’s revolution had as much to do with wildly varied colors replacing blacks and greys. 

Even before World War II—a period associated in North American minds with skiers wearing wool sweaters and cloth jackets, and baggy trousers with socks pulled over the bottoms—a slim aerodynamic look was underway... 

Tomm Murstad (1915–2001) was an outstanding multi-discipline skier, but is principally remembered in his native Norway as the founder of the first ski school for kids—possibly the first such program in the world. 

Murstad grew up in Vindern and won his first ski jump contest at age six. At 17, in 1932, he was invited to teach skiing in Grenoble, where he met Hannes Schneider...

Read full article, page 12.

Penguin Power!

One of North America’s first and most successful ski clubs was created in Quebec entirely by, and for, women.

By Cara Armstrong and Lori Knowles

Ski clubs have played an important role in the growth of Quebec’s Laurentians as a major North American ski hub, as well as in the development of world-class Canadian racers. And few clubs have been as successful as the Penguin Ski Club, founded in 1932 by a group of young Montrealers—a group consisting entirely of women. In the decades since then, Penguins have won alpine and nordic medals at the Olympic, World Cup, Master’s and national level; been inducted into national and regional halls of fame; and have been awarded some of Canada’s highest honors.

In the 1933 edition of the Canadian Ski Club Annual, the Penguin’s founder and first president, Betty Sherrard—born in Mexico City, raised in Montreal and educated in England—said the club’s mission was: “to help its members enjoy skiing to the fullest, and to advance the standard of ski proficiency amongst women.” To begin, she recruited fellow female skiers from the Junior League of Montreal and the Canadian Amateur Ski Association. She also worked closely with the all-male Red Birds Ski Club of McGill University, founded in 1928. 

While inspired by the Red Birds, the Penguins opted for broader membership criteria. As noted in the club’s official history, The Penguin Ski Club: 1932–1992, the women elected to found their group outside the university as an “important opportunity for young Montreal women to travel, socialize, and stay together [as well as] offer the first ski instruction and competition specifically for women.” Membership was by invitation, and the first recorded meeting was held on March 29, 1934. Members could make nominations and the executive committee would discuss each one.  One “blackball” meant the nomination was referred to the committee, and two meant the nominee was out. 

Making Headlines

The Penguins began making headlines almost immediately after being formed. Olympic track-and-field gold medalist-turned-journalist, Myrtle Cook, began featuring the club in her sports column, “Women in the Sportlight,” on a regular basis for the Montreal Star. In 1933, the Boston Herald featured a story on this unique all-female group. Both newspapers were fascinated by Duke Dimitri von Leuchtenberg’s work with the club. As a graduate of Hannes Schneider’s Arlberg Ski School and former director of the ski school at Peckett’s-on-Sugar Hill in New Hampshire, von Leuchtenberg had taken on the task of improving the Penguin’s skiing skills and honing their racing technique. 

They practiced at Mont Saint-Sauveur, and held their first meet during the winter of 1934. The early competitions included downhill, cross country, jumping, slalom and a bushwhack race. Laurentian ski pioneer Herman “Jackrabbit” Johannsen organized the festivities and set up the bushwhack course down an unmarked slope. From the club history: “‘I remember the bushwhack races,” said Penguin member Percival Ritchie. “They were soon outlawed,” she said. “We would start from the top of a steep, uncleared hill and race straight to the bottom. I ended up in a barbed wire fence, tore my pants and cut my knee. This made me very proud. I still have the scar.’” 

In 1935, the Penguins joined the Canadian Amateur Ski Association and began competing in women’s races. In that first year, they participated in eight ski races and won every single one of them. Members of the group continued to either win or place in the top five of the Canadian Championships from 1936 to 1939.

Penguin House: A Home is Built by the Molsons

During their early years, the Penguins led a peripatetic existence. In 1933, club members used two rooms above the Banque National in Saint Sauveur as their base. In 1934, they moved to a house on the “station road” that had three small bedrooms, four cots per room and one bathroom. Members claimed they could “lean out one side of a cot to brush their teeth and out the other side to cook bacon for breakfast!” 

Desperate for more space, the club moved the following year to a house in Piedmont, Quebec, but soon determined it was too far away from the ski action. A permanent home was needed. According to the official history, John and Herbert Molson of beer fame stepped in as Penguin patrons in late 1938. The Molsons donated land three-quarters of a mile from Saint Sauveur, as well as the funds for construction of a building for “the fine women who were doing a lot for the Canadian sport (of skiing) and for the enjoyment of the outdoors.” The Penguin Ski House opened officially on January 1, 1939.

Designed by Alexander Tilloch Galt Durnford of the Montreal architecture firm Fetherstonhaugh and Durnford, the house had a stone foundation, square log construction that weathered to a silvery gray, pink gables, and a black Mansard roof. The front door opened onto a ski room that sported racks for 24 sets of skis, a workbench, and a small stove for waxing. Seven bunkrooms housed 24 built-in bunks. 

Additional items provided by the Molsons, including mattresses, pillows, blankets, furniture, and coal for three years—even 24 toothbrushes in their holders in the bathroom—kitted out the house.  Founding member Betty Kemp Maxwell, who was studying at the École des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, had created a Penguin logo, and it was inscribed over the fireplace. A unique chandelier with ski tips projecting from a pewter center made the Penguin House extraordinary.

Nine years later, in 1948, the Red Birds built a clubhouse just a few hundred yards away, on land also donated by the Molsons. Penguins attended many weekend Red Birds parties, leading to several marriages over the years.

The Penguins’ War Effort

Despite the planning that went into its design, Penguin House did not get the start its members hoped for. Within its first year, Canada declared war on Germany and entered World War II. The club joined in the war effort as part of Operation Pied Piper, a mass evacuation plan born out of British fear of air attack from German bombers. More than 20 British refugee children aged five to 14, plus two English nannies, spent the summer of 1940 at Penguin House. 

Many Penguins also joined the war effort. Seven became members of the Canadian Women’s Transport services. Others took over the jobs local men vacated to serve overseas. Penguin Patricia Paré, for example, became the first female professional ski instructor at Quebec’s Mont Tremblant.

New Directions:
The Winning Wurtele Twins

With many of its original members occupied with the war effort, the club set out to attract new interest by hosting novice races and recruiting.  Among the new members were Westmount-raised identical twins Rhona and Rhoda Wurtele, who, fresh out of high school, became Penguins in 1942. 

It wasn’t long before the Wurteles were winning nearly every race they entered, from Quebec to California. Rhoda won Tremblant’s Taschereau downhill by a convincing 24 seconds, beating both the women and the men. Rhona placed second among the women and ninth overall. The twins’ skiing (and swimming) talents received a lot of attention in the Canadian press. In 1947, Rhona and Rhoda were joint runners-up for the Lou Marsh Trophy, given by the Canadian Press to Canada’s Most Outstanding Athlete. All of it lent to Penguin prestige.

The Penguins and The
Winter Olympics

World War II caused the cancellation of two Olympics, but the Penguins were finally able to compete on the world stage at the 1948 Olympic Winter Games in St. Moritz, Switzerland. It didn’t go so well. The Wurtele twins were the only two members of the Canadian Women’s Alpine Team. Rhoda cracked her anklebone six days before the Games, and Rhona had an accident during her run…leaving Canada without medals.

The Penguins returned to the international arena in 1952 for the Winter Games in Oslo, Norway. Rhona was pregnant and unable to compete, but Rhoda was joined in Oslo by fellow Penguins Rosemary Schutz and Joanne Hewson, as well as Penguin Lucile Wheeler. The four competed as the first complete, four-woman alpine ski team Canada had ever sent to the Olympics. 

In 1956, Wheeler was joined by Penguin Anne Heggtveit on Canada’s Olympic Alpine Ski Team at Cortina d’Ampezzo. Wheeler won a bronze in downhill, becoming both the first Penguin and the first North American to medal in the downhill. She followed this with a spectacular performance at the 1958 World Championships in Bad Gastein, Austria, where she won both the downhill and the giant slalom and came very close to winning the combined…ultimately taking the silver. She was the first North American to win a World Championship downhill. Wheeler won the Lou Marsh Trophy as Canada’s most outstanding athlete of 1958, and was later inducted into the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame and the Canadian Ski Hall of Fame, and made a member of the Order of Canada, among other honors.

Formation of the Ski Jays

Despite the Penguins’ success, the 1950s were a time when resources for Canadian skiers were extremely limited. Even while winning races and medals, the members remained true to part of the Penguin Club founding mission: “To advance the standard of ski proficiency amongst women.” Penguins Bliss Matthews and Ann Bushell hatched the idea for the Ski Jay Club in 1957 for Montreal teenage girls, envisioning the Jays as a “nonprofit organization, founded, sponsored, and at all times backed by the Penguin Ski Club.” Rhoda Wurtele was head instructor at the ski school for 21 years.

Ski Jay Nancy Holland was the first to make the Canadian ski team in 1960. Holland was joined by Penguin Anne Heggtveit. That same year, Heggtveit won Canada’s first-ever Olympic skiing gold medal in Squaw Valley, California. Her victory in the Olympic slalom event also made her the first non-European to win the FIS world championship in slalom and combined. In Canada, Heggtveit’s performance was recognized by Canada’s highest civilian honor when she was made a member of the Order of Canada. She was awarded the Lou Marsh Trophy as Canada’s outstanding athlete of 1960. These achievements were instrumental in increasing the popularity of skiing in Canada, and particularly in Quebec.

the Penguins Develop Grassroots

As the Laurentians began to thrive as a major ski destination, Penguin alumnae began spending more time recruiting and coaching new talent. Penguins Sue Boxer and Liz Dench started the Polar Bear Club in 1961 and taught four- to eight-year-olds to ski for the next 20 years. Rhona Wurtele founded the Ski Chicks in 1961 for nine- to 11-year-olds, and the Ski Jay program continued throughout these years for teens. All of these clubs groomed young girls to become Penguin members as they reached adulthood.  

At least seven Ski Jays were named to the Canadian national ski team in the 1960s, including Nancy Holland, Janet Holland, Faye Pitt, Barbie Walker, Garrie Matheson, Jill Fisk and Diane Culver. With the Wurteles at the helm of the club throughout the 1970s, membership peaked at more than 1,000.

The End of an Era

In 1972, increasing costs contributed to the need to sell Penguin House. It was later destroyed by fire. Founding member Betty Kemp sang its praises:  “Without the house, we wouldn’t have become and remained friends,” she said. “Without the house, we wouldn’t have had any responsibility to each other or the sport. Bonding. From the house, we learnt the responsibility of maintaining it and the club. From the club, we learnt to work together, to organize races, and to give school girls and others, the opportunity for the young to learn to ski.”

The loss of Penguin House marked the end of an era. By the early 1980s, the Penguin Ski Club had cancelled its formal incorporation. “This definitely had an impact, but we stayed positive,” says Bev Waldorf, a Penguin since 1953. Bev has remained active in the Penguins since the house closed, working with her friend Margie Knight to plan reunions, organize an annual fall luncheon and publish an occasional newsletter. 

While the official club no longer exists, the spirit of the original Penguins continues. Forty-five members of the club celebrated the Penguins’ 75th anniversary in 2007, and 19 members—including five Olympians—gathered to celebrate its 85th anniversary in 2017.  

This article was originally prepared for the Canadian Ski Museum and Hall of Fame by Cara Armstrong, with subsequent research and updates by Lori Knowles and Nancy Robinson. Knowles is a Canadian writer and editor whose work appears in SNOW Magazine and the travel sections of The Toronto Sun and The Globe and Mail. Robinson served as researcher and developer for Byron Rempel’s biography of the Wurtele twins, No Limits. Special thanks to Penguin member Bev Waldorf, who vetted this article for accuracy.

Skiing at Gore Mountain dates back to 1934. Located 235 miles north of New York City in the Adirondacks, it’s one of three ski areas operated by the State of New York. 

But why is it called Gore? After the American Revolution, mapping of the lands that made up the new United States began in earnest. States were divided into counties, and counties into towns. But what worked out on a surveyor’s drafting board didn’t always work out in the field. Sometimes the shape of a particular piece of land didn’t fit into a neat layout of square and rectangular towns. Or sometimes the land was too rugged to survey.

Under these circumstances, a surveyor would designate this odd-shaped piece of land between towns a “gore.” Similarly, in tailoring, a triangular or trapezoidal piece of cloth, used to make a pattern conform to a curved shape, is also called a “gore.” 

Back in the early years of the 19th century, the land to the west of North Creek, in Warren County, New York, was determined to be made up of a large number of steep mountains. Putting off closer inspection to a later date, the area was labeled the “Gore,” and the mountains found there were called the “Gore Range [of] Mountains.” 

—Bob Soden

Special report: A six-year effort, led by FIS Alpine Rules chief Michael Huber, has yielded the first comprehensive digital collection of the changing rules that have governed ski racing over 80 years.

Alpine ski racing has a precise birth date. On February 26, 1930, in Oslo, Norway, the Congress of the International Ski Federation (FIS) officially accepted alpine ski racing—downhill and slalom—as a separate discipline. The FIS had previously recognized only the disciplines of competitive nordic skiing—cross-country and jumping. 

Delegates to the 1930 Congress also adopted the first official rules for alpine racing. But what precisely were they? And where could they be found? Had no one kept a copy? 

For Michael Huber of Kitzbühel, Austria, chairman of the FIS Subcommittee on Alpine Rules and president of the famous Kitzbühel Ski Club (K.S.C.), the challenge was irresistible: to find the book. Huber would spend six years searching for it. And not only seeking the alpine competitions rules book of 1930, but also all official published FIS alpine rules of the past. Huber’s goals were:

• To make the alpine racing rules as they existed over an 85-year span available digitally for people around the world. 
• To gain insight into the very early history of competitive alpine skiing. 
• To understand why specific rules were written as they were, when and how they were changed, and to better identify what was the core of the sport that remained unchanged. 

Huber asked officials, experts, organizations and museums for help. First, the International Skiing History Association (ISHA), through its magazine Skiing History and its Website skiinghistory.org, under the lead of John Fry, sent out an international call, asking people to submit copies of old Alpine Rules books. Well-known ski historian E. John B. Allen of New Hampshire soon reported that the New England Ski Museum in Franconia had a number of books from the 1930s into the 1980s, most in English, some in German. The New England Museum’s staff copied countless pages and sent them to Europe for processing. 

“The Book is Found!”
Still, the most sought-after book, the original rules book of 1930, was missing. 

Then it happened: Last year, Ivan Wagner, the editor of the Schneehase, the official publication of the Swiss Academic Ski Club (SAS), sent a note to Huber. “I think we’ve got it. It’s found!” After much searching, Schneehase’s former editor, Raoul Imseng, had discovered, in Issue No. 4 printed in 1931, the full and official German wording of the International Competition Rules for Slalom and Downhill Races, established at the XI International Ski Congress in Oslo and Finse (Norway), 1930. 

Next step was to translate the German version into English. The long-serving member of the Subcommittee on Alpine Rules, the British native Martin John Leach, who has lived for many years in Switzerland, was ready to do the job. 

Flag Colors, Team Races

What is the content of the Alpine Rules of 1930? The 14 pages are divided into ten chapters. The first chapter deals with the organization and officials needed to run an alpine competition, like “the Setter” and the “Flag-keepers.” The second chapter deals with “Flags” for Downhill—originally red, blue and yellow. 

Another section deals with the different types of start, like simultaneous start, individual start, team and slalom start. Surprisingly, the alpine combined is not of primary interest. (Surprising because the combined was the primary focus of the pre-existing famous Arlberg Kandahar of Hannes Schneider and Arnold Lunn.) Rather the rules focus on “Team Races in Downhill and Slalom.”

It didn’t take long for the original rules to undergo change. Only two years later, the alpine FIS Rules of 1932 defined the flag colors for slalom as two; penalized a competitor five seconds for making a false start; required racers to be more than 18 years of age; and prohibited a competitor from making more than one start unless handicapped by the presence on the course of a spectator or a dog.

The results go live online

The former chairman of the Subcommittee on Alpine Rules and predecessor president of the K.S.C., Christian Poley, added missing books of past years. So the digital archive now includes about 60 different Alpine Rules books from 1930–2016 in English, German and French. 

To create digital access to all of the rules, the copied material had to be scanned and laid out—work done by the staff of the Kitzbühel Ski Club under Barbara Thaler. In a final step, Sarah Lewis, FIS Secretary General, provided a special place on the FIS website for digital storage, so the public worldwide can access more than eight decades of alpine ski racing rules. “Thanks to all who made this project a success,” says Huber.

To access the FIS Alpine Rules book digital archive, go to: http://www.fis-ski.com/inside-fis/document-library/alpine-skiing/#deepli....