Explore: Articles
Joe Jones, Founder of Seattle's Four Seasons Ski club
By Kirby Gilbert Football star and broadcaster turned ski-school director and promoter. Joe C. Jones grew up in Vallejo, California, participating in school sports in his youth. After two successful...
The Age of Locke
By Lori Knowles Charlie Locke's wild ride as one of Canada's few remaining independent ski area owners We give names to eras: Elizabethan. Georgian. Victorian. Edwardian. One wonders if the final...
Jeff Blumenfeld
Jeff Blumenfeld, a regular contributor to this magazine and since 2017 our vice-president for communication, needs a kidney from a healthy live donor. Jeff has worked in the ski business since 1972,...
Klaus Obermeyer
Member Profile: Klaus Obermeyer, who celebrated his 100th birthday on December 2, 2019, embodies skiing’s history in the 20th century. Klaus was raised in Oberstaufen, Bavaria, hard up against the...
A Dusty Passion: Collecting Books
By Seth Masia There's a thin line between avid reader and dedicated bibliophile. The oldest known informed account of skiing for European readers was written by Olof Månsson, a Catholic prelate...
Hermann Maier: The Herminator at 50--Happily Ever After
A force of nature on the racecourse, Hermann Maier now enjoys a slower way of life. By Patrick Lang Austrian Hermann Maier is such an outsize presence in our memory that it’s hard to wrap one’s...
Grouse Mountain, British Columbia
By Steve Threndyle After a century, it's still the peak of Vancouver. Settlers to the young city of Vancouver at the end of the 19th century became enthralled by the beauty and challenge of an...
Collectibles: Identifying and Dating Antique Skis
By Seth Masia How old are these skis? Who made them, and where? "How old are these skis?” We get this question via email several times a year, often from a non-skier who found a dusty pair of fossil...
Commentary: Gunstock on Borrowed Time?
Historical gem still a political football. Gunstock, one of the nation’s oldest ski resorts, suffered a near-death experience over the summer. Management pulled off a heroic last-minute save, but...
Pioneers of Southland Skiing
How Vermonters, Austrians and Swiss launched skiing below the Mason-Dixon Line. Yankee skiers often assume that Mount Washington is the highest peak in the eastern United States, but it ain’t. More...
SKI goes annual, Ashcroft preserved, Snapshots in Time
After 86 years, the magazine slashes its print run and hopes to persevere online. After more than a decade of battling losses in subscribers and newsstand sales, SKI recently announced it will...
Pioneers: Sun Valley's Ed King
How a Seattle kid persevered and lived his dream. Ed King is well known among Sun Valley locals as the only African-American ski instructor in the history of the resort. Considered by most ski...
ISHA Awards 2022: Video clips from the awards banquet
Lifetime Achievement Award to Jeff Leich Ullr Awards Skiing in the Eye of the Artist, by E. John B. Allen Celebrate Winter: An Olympican's Stories of a Life in Nordic Skiing, by John Morton Thirty...
Classics: 1975 -- The Long Hello
They spent almost an hour in line, yet more and more skiers came, bonding as they waited ... and waited. Lift lines have been part of the ski experience as long as there have been lifts. Is there...
Lifts That Went Nowhere
Ski lift evolution is dotted with failed experiments. (Photo above: The Mount Hood Skiway launched in 1951. The enormous weight of the buses meant the lift hauled 72 skiers per hour—when a chairlift...
Willy Schaeffler: The Original Rebel
There was more to Willy Schaeffler than stern disciplinarian. By PETER MILLER During the 1970-71 World Cup season, the men of the U.S. Alpine squad clashed with their coach, Willy Schaeffler. After...
Perfecting the Plastic Ski Boot
Sven Coomer recalls the design process leading to Nordica’s groundbreaking boots. As told to Seth Masia In 1962, I went to Chamonix to watch the FIS World Championships and got to train with the...
Sun Valley's Ruud Mountain
The Forgotten Era of Ski Jumping Sun Valley opened in December 1936, and the next spring it hosted America’s first international Alpine competition, the combined event that became known as the...