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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...
The Legacy of Spider Sabich
Belatedly elected to the Hall of Fame, the charismatic skier drove the professionalization of Alpine ski racing. From the moment he entered the world on January 10, 1945, a ball of energy and gangly...
Skiers in Revolt
Can Vail Resorts improve employee and customer relations? By Seth Masia From the January-February 2022 issue (Posted February 12, 2022) Overcrowding and staff shortages at ski resorts first...
Beijing Olympic Courses Still a Mystery
What to Expect When You're Inspecting By Edith Thys Morgan When Alpine skiing athletes head to the Beijing Olympics, they will do so with an unprecedented lack of knowledge about the venue. While...
Dynamic Reinvents the Slalom Ski
By Seth Masia The VR17, engineered for French ski racers, was imitated by ski factories around the world. From the January-February 2022 issue The Dynamic VR17 remains legendary, and for good reason...
The Nelson Camps: Birth of the Canadian Ski Team
In 1964, the Kokanee Glacier gave birth to Canada’s national ski team. Canadians fared poorly at the 1964 Olympics in Innsbruck. Only Nancy Greene had a top-10 finish (seventh in downhill). In May...
Resorts: Baroness Mimi and Mont d'Arbois
Megève celebrates 100 years as the first purpose-built ski resort in France. Megève, the posh ski resort just off the main road between Geneva and Chamonix, has been managed by the Rothschild banking...
Walter Kofler Invents the Polyethylene Ski Base
Before P-tex, there was Kofix. It drove a revolution in ski racing. When Alpine skis had wooden bases, it was common to waterproof them with celluloid lacquer, made by dissolving celluloid in ether,...