Mike Brunetto - Ski design engineer

(photo by CJ Hancock/Idaho Express)

Mike Brunetto, ski design engineer, had an outsize influence in the Sun Valley community and in the wider world of skiing. Warren Miller once remarked that Mike was among the most humble and kind people he ever knew. Mike was also a genius, with innate gifts of intelligence, curiosity, skills and integrity. He was expert in such disparate realms as physics, engineering, chemistry, athletics, business, teaching school in several subjects, designing and manufacturing skis, ranching, mining, flying airplanes and telling stories. He was a talented musician, able to improvise on piano and guitar. He had a sense of humor, a big smile, and devoted his life to have a good time.

            Born and raised in Southern California, he ski raced as a boy, and became a member of the University of Nevada Reno Ski Team. After college he settled in Sun Valley, Idaho, where he fell madly in love with Jo Ann Algiers, who became his first wife. Mike had complicated relationships with many of the opposite sex. Sooner or later they all came unraveled. He told one close friend that when he looked back on his love life all he saw was “A Trail of Strewn Wreckage.”

            Mike was one-quarter Cherokee Native American and had an abiding interest in Native American peoples, culture and history. He told a close friend that one of his most fulfilling moments as a math teacher was when he was able to teach a young Native American boy how to make sure he received correct change when making a purchase.

In the early 1970’s he was introduced to the craft of making skis when he went to work for Dura-Fiber in Carson City, Nevada, which at that time made the world’s best fiberglass vaulting pole. He also helped Bobby Burns develop and sell “The Ski” in Ogden, Utah, but their partnership turned bitter and they never spoke again. He also worked on the Lynx and K2 skis. He returned to Ketchum and founded his own ski company, Research Dynamics, initially building skis in his own garage, with equipment he created. His first ski he called Makwai, the Blackfoot word for wolf. A later ski was named the Cold Smoke, a translation of the Blackfoot term for powder snow. It was a logical step for the next black-colored ski to be called the Black Smoke. By 1982 RD had outgrown Brunetto’s garage. He needed help."I had never run my own company," he said. "I think I got cold feet about the business stuff, and I needed more money." He went to Chuck Ferries and Tim Kohl, partners in the already established PRE and Scott companies. While it lasted, it was a successful alliance. Brunetto knew how to make skis; Ferries and Kohl knew how to market them. Within a few years RD was selling 25,000 pairs of skis a year. In 1988 Brunetto and Kohl wound up with all of RD. After a few years, Brunetto explained, "…the company got bigger, and I made less money, and eventually lost money. It ended up not being the company I started out with." The company was no longer "small, personal and individualized." He sold his interest in RD to Kohl for one dollar and moved on.

Mike became a rancher and miner in Montana and Nevada, and often vacationed by heliskiing in Canada. In 1990 tragedy struck: while flying his Piper Super Cub, with his best friend Lane Parrish in the passenger seat over the Salmon Falls Creek Dam waters near Jackpot, Nevada, he made a low pass wiggle wing run over the beach where Lane’s parents were camping.  Mike lost control of the plane and it crashed into the waters. Lane drowned, and Mike suffered severe physical and emotional damage from which he never recovered. Mike always blamed himself for Lane’s death, exacerbated by the reality of Lane’s parents watching the crash. It was later determined that the crash occurred because Lane got a foot jammed in the rudder pedal while turning in his seat to take a photo.

Mike’s physical damage from the plane wreck eventually produced chronic pain, which increased over the years. In early February Mike told a friend that if the pain didn’t diminish soon he was going to shoot himself in the head.

On February 25, 2026 he did just that. –Dick Dorworth