Feature article

Ester Ledecka broke a training barrier and crossed a cultural divide.

By Seth Masia

When Ester Ledecka astonished the world, and herself, by winning Olympic gold in both Super G and parallel snowboard GS, she became the first woman to win in two different sports at one Olympics. It was not only an historic event. Ledecka also fused two frequently combative cultures, skiing and snowboarding, once at war with one another.

The Czech's history-making feat recalls the most impressive Olympic ski crossover of all time -- Norwegian Birger Ruud's performance at the Garmisch-Partenkirchen Winter Games in 1936. Ruund won both the jump (gold medal) and the downhill (no gold medal, because in alpine only medals for slalom and downhill combined were awarded that year -- gold medalist was Germany's Franz Pfnur). Like all Olympic alpine racers that year, Ruud was required to use the same skis for the slalom and downhill. His feat surprised few: He was already regarded as the strongest skier in the world. 

David Sedlecký photo

To read the rest of this story, see the March-April 2018 edition of Skiing History magazine. To read the digital edition, you must be a member of ISHA. Not a member? Join ISHA now, for $29 (digital edition) or $49 (print edition), published six times each year.

NASTAR, the world’s largest recreational racing program, began 50 years ago when this editor wanted to introduce the equivalent of golf’s par to the sport of skiing.

By John Fry

The environment for people learning to ski has varied little over the years. Ungainly tip-crossing neophytes are herded into classes of eight to a dozen students. After a day, or perhaps five days, they emerge skilled enough to achieve what they want: to descend the mountain on pleasant trails, while enjoying the scenery and the company of friends. 

Most recreational skiers are like golfers who play a round without keeping score, or tennis players happily lobbing the ball back and forth across the net. 

Beginning as editor-in-chief of SKI Magazine in the spring of 1964, I worked across the hall from the editorial office of GOLF Magazine, whose editorial director I would become five years later. GOLF’s editors relied heavily on supplying readers with tips to lower their handicaps. Golfers could relate their scores to a PGA player’s sub-par round, or their own putting to Arnold Palmer’s challenge of sinking a 10-footer. How great it would be, I thought, if I could ratchet up SKI’s newsstand sales using the same appeal! How great it would be if it were to become a goal of ski instruction!

At the time, however, it wasn’t an idea especially appealing to the Professional Ski Instructors of America. PSIA’s Official American Ski Technique (later renamed American Teaching Method or ATM) didn’t much resemble what good skiers were doing. They were making stepped turns, using split rotation, and carving on fiberglass skis. Many beginners were learning on short skis with the new Graduated Length Method (GLM). Progressive instructors were looking ahead, but the American Ski Technique was still living in its Austrian past.

Even the name “American” looked outdated. Nationalistic differences in technique were rapidly dying. I set up a cover photo, in which three skiers—Austrian gold medalist Pepi Stiegler, French pro champion Adrien Duvillard, and Canada’s Ernie McCulloch—were seen together in a slalom flush. All three made roughly the same turn. It didn’t look much like the final form of PSIA’s American Ski Technique. 

My thinking was heavily influenced too when in 1967 I arranged for Georges Joubert’s and Jean Vuarnet’s bestselling Comment Se Perfectionner à Ski to be published in English as How to Ski the New French Way. The principal way for skiers to advance their technique, the authors believed, was to mimic the actions of champion racers.

SKI’s racing editor Tom Corcoran wrote a column condemning the gulf between racing and what recreational skiers were being taught. He lauded an innovation at Sun Valley. The resort had cordoned off a special slope, not too steep, dedicated to timing recreational skiers as they made runs through easy open gates. It was the equivalent in golf of a Par-3 course. Mont Tremblant Ski School director Ernie McCulloch also made pupils learn how to turn through gates. 

Resorts like Sun Valley and Tremblant staged standard races for guests. Entrants who ran the course within a set time limit received a shoulder patch, and possibly a gold, silver or a bronze pin. The prestigious standard races were not necessarily easy—they could be long and challenging. You could compare yourself to others who’d been in the race, but not directly to someone who wasn’t in it. Your rating was only good for the day of the competition. By contrast, a consistent 10-handicap golfer knows that on any day, on any course, he’s likely to play 10 strokes better than a 20-handicapper.  

THE SCORELESS SPORT

In October of 1967 I wrote to complain that skiing was virtually a Scoreless Sport, the title I used for my editor’s column in SKI Magazine. I spent much of the subsequent winter asking race officials and instructors how the equivalent of golf’s handicap could be created for skiers. 

One weekend at Mt. Snow in Vermont the ski school director, a French Canadian, told me about France’s Ecole de Ski Nationale Chamois program. For certification, an instructor had to perform well enough in the Ecole’s annual Challenge, a classic slalom course with hairpins and flushes, to earn a silver medal—that is, be less than 25 percent behind the time recorded by the fastest instructor. Back at his home area, the certified instructor could set the pace for local participants in a Chamois race—a single run slalom. Gold, silver and bronze were awarded according to the percentage the skier’s time lagged behind the pacesetter’s.

It didn’t take long for the dim bulb in my cerebrum to light up: Use time percentages, not raw times, to rate skier performance. And do it, not with a difficult slalom, but rather by offering a simple open-gate setting on intermediate terrain, anticipated by Corcoran. (In 1972, France’s National Ski School—after three or four years of experimentation—introduced the Flèche, a separate, easier test than Chamois—an open-gated giant slalom similar to a NASTAR course.) 

Here was an unwitting, unconscious, unintended collaboration between a French program, little known in North America, and an American program that would blossom into something much bigger, imitated in other countries, enabling tens of thousands of recreational skiers to measure their ability, and glimpse into what it might feel like to be racing in the Olympics. 

RACE RATINGS VALID ANYWHERE, ANY TIME

In France a skier participating in Chamois was rated against the local pacesetter’s time, which was not corrected to account for the percentage by which the instructor had lagged behind the fastest time when he’d competed against other instructors. Adjusting the local pacesetter’s time so there’d be a national standard was a vision I had for NASTAR.  (Twenty years later, in 1987–88, France adopted the NASTAR principle of speeding up the local pacesetter’s time to create a single standard for a Chamois rating.)   

In my mind, the fastest time should be that of a top racer on the U.S. Ski Team. It would work as follows, I imagined. If pacesetter Klaus at Mount Snow was originally three percent slower than the nation’s fastest racer, and a Mount Snow guest was 20 percent slower than Klaus, then he or she would be about 23 percent slower than America’s fastest skier would have been if he’d skied the Mt. Snow course that day. Presto! The skier would have a 23 handicap. The sport of skiing could enjoy the equivalent of golf’s par! A skier would know that on any slope anywhere, through a couple of dozen gates, on a surface that could be sticky or icy, it didn’t matter, the rating would be valid. If he or she had a 23 NASTAR handicap, he was seven percentage points better than someone with a 30 rating.

The possibilities seemed limitless. You could make the results of races around the country equivalent to one another. You could take two equally rated skiers and put them in an exciting head-to-head race. Or you could handicap two unequal racers, delay the start of the better skier, and maximize their chances of reaching the finish line at the same time, making it appear to be an exciting race. On a 300-foot-vertical Michigan hill, you could have a competitive experience equivalent to one at a Rocky Mountain resort. 

What I had in mind was a national standard race. I gave it the acronym NASTAR.

The NASTAR idea needed an infusion of money to become a reality, and so SKI Magazine flew me to Chicago to meet with a potential sponsor, the now-defunct Schlitz brewery. I explained the concept to them. The Schlitz guys liked it. 

“The program’s called NASTAR,” I explained. 

“No, no. It’s got to be the Schlitz Open,” the ad agency guy shot back. 

Returning home, I told my wife, who is German, that the meeting had gone well, but that we were stuck on the name. 

“What is it?” she asked. 

“The Schlitz Open,” I replied. She shrieked with laughter.

“What are you laughing about?”

“Schlitz is our word for the fly on a man’s pants!” 

The next day, I phoned the advertising agency in Chicago and told them the news. Within hours, I received a return call informing me that Schlitz had agreed to the name NASTAR. 

JIMMIE HEUGA

In December 1968, with Tom Corcoran’s indispensable help, the pacesetting trials took place at his new Waterville Valley resort in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. For the first time, an idea that had existed only on paper became a physical reality. 

Jimmie Heuga clocked the fastest times, earning the title of national pacesetter. Charlie Gibson, a tall, spare, laconic mathematics whiz from IBM, who would later become president of the U.S. Ski Association, developed statistical tables, by which local ski areas could compute the handicap ratings of recreational skiers. Gloria Chadwick, a perpetually cheerful, obsessively organized New Englander, quit her job running the U.S. Ski Association in order to manage NASTAR.

In the winter months of 1969, NASTAR’s first season, 2,500 recreational skiers competed at eight areas across the country—from Mt. Snow in Vermont to Alpental in Washington, and at Vail, where the charismatic Swiss champion Roger Staub had become ski school director. 

The standard for winning gold, silver and bronze pins was different for men and women. Two winters later, the standards for medal winning began to take age into account as well. Response was upbeat. The well-known New York Times ski columnist Mike Strauss said that “NASTAR is the best thing to happen to skiing since the introduction of the rope tow.” 

SANDBAGGING ON SKIS?

At the end of the first season, Schlitz flew 39 successful NASTAR medalists to a final race at Heavenly Valley, California. They raced head-to-head, starting with times adjusted by their handicaps. It didn’t occur to me that competitors might contrive to inflate their handicaps—the practice known as sandbagging in golf. The Minneapolis Star’s ski columnist Ralph Thornton wrote a column suggesting the possibility that some racers had sandbagged, cheating Midwest skiers of victory. 

Well, I thought, if the race was worth cheating at, NASTAR is clearly a success. 

How to enhance NASTAR’s popularity? One possibility was to incorporate the program into ski schools, as an objective way for instructors to measure the progress of students. I proposed the idea to the Professional Ski Instructors of America. 

Many people, I argued, are able to ski proficiently, even elegantly, when they’re able to choose anywhere to make a turn. The instructor observes, applauds the student’s form, and advances him to a higher class. But what about making a must-do turn, at high speed, to avoid a tree? What about being forced to enter a gate at the right point in a race? It’s far more difficult to turn at a given spot. The skier must master skills like gliding, skidding, drifting, pivoting, rebounding, absorption and stepping, as well as carving, in order to get specifically from Point A to Point B. Instructors could use NASTAR to monitor people’s advancing skill. The skier’s handicap would become the measure of his progress in taking lessons. 

Deficient in powers of persuasion and lacking in political skill, I failed to convince anyone at PSIA, except notably Willy Schaeffler, that the organization, already famously resistant to innovation, should get behind NASTAR. 

My other hope was to interest the U.S. Ski Team. By linking the national handicap to the speed of the country’s fastest skiers, NASTAR could serve as a grassroots system to identify young talent for future national teams.

MEETING IN A MANHATTAN STEAM ROOM

How to persuade the U.S. Ski Team to supply pacesetters? It wouldn’t be easy. Alpine director Bob Beattie preferred to exert control over programs involving the Team. I thought I might have a better chance of gaining Beattie’s support if I could enlist the persuasive Corcoran to talk to him. 

One day, when I determined that both Corcoran and the itinerant Beattie would be in New York City, I arranged for us to meet at the New York Athletic Club on Central Park South. When Corcoran and I arrived in the club’s lobby, we learned that Beattie was in the steam room. We were told to meet him there. 

Upstairs in the locker room, we stripped. Groping our way into the hot mist of the steam room, we found the perspiring coach. Inside the foggy chamber, Corcoran attempted to convince Beattie of the benefits of a union with NASTAR. It would make the Ski Team visible on the slopes and in the magazine. By tying the times of the best U.S. racers to NASTAR ratings, the Ski Team would enter into the daily awareness of recreational skiers. And a fraction of the recreational skier’s entry fee would be donated to the always sagging Ski Team treasury.

Emerging from the heat of the steam room, his face reddened to the color of a scalded beet’s interior, Beattie appeared to me to be unconvinced. What I didn’t know was that the coach himself was concocting in his mind his own five-year, multi-million-dollar plan. Called the Buddy Werner League, it aimed—like Little League baseball—at tapping into 250,000 young athletes, through a program named after the late U.S. racing star. 

BEATTIE REIGNS FOR 30 YEARS 

Although the trip to the steam room had been a failure, Beattie’s view of NASTAR changed a year later. Retired from the Ski Team, the former coach was seeking entrepreneurial opportunities. His search coincided with SKI’s search for a way to keep track of thousands of entries at a rapidly rising number of ski areas wanting to join in hosting the popular new races. 

Off-site computers and software didn’t exist at the time. To pay for the labor-intensive organization, a way had to be found, not only to make ski areas pay, but to extract money from sponsors like Pepsi and Bonne Belle as well as Schlitz. 

Under license from SKI, Beattie took over the operation of the program that he had once spurned. He was the ideal guy to run it. In NASTAR’s second season, the number of participating ski areas grew to thirty-nine. Sponsorships proliferated. Resorts took in money from guests willing to pay to race. Offshoot programs were created—like Pepsi Junior NASTAR and Hi-Star for interscholastic competition.

Fifteen winters later, prodded and promoted by the former Ski Team coach, who was now also pro racing impresario and TV commentator, NASTAR grew to 135 areas, attracting a quarter of a million recreational racers each winter. In Canada Molson’s Beer launched a copycat Molstar program. NASTAR clones sprouted in Scandinavia, Switzerland and Australia.

In conversations in lift lines and in base lodges, I heard the thrilled voices of intermediate skiers who’d raced for the first time in their lives. Excitedly they compared their handicap ratings. Friends, who’d never before skied competitively, told me of butterflies in their stomach as they stood in the NASTAR starting gate. Children boasted about winning a bronze pin. At a NASTAR finals, where recreational racers from 5 to 85 years of age competed, I saw a helmeted 10-year-old boy and his grandfather hugging one another as they rejoiced over their results. 

NASTAR was conceived in the 1960s—the age of Killy, Kidd, Greene and other alpine racing stars. Putting their faces on SKI Magazine’s covers added tens of thousands to newsstand sales. For me, here was material proof of where the interest of readers belonged.  In their desire to learn from racing I was a believer. 

John Fry is the author of The Story of Modern Skiing, a history of the revolution in technique, teaching, competition, equipment and resorts that took place after World War II. In 1969 through most of the 1970s, he was editorial director of GOLF Magazine, as well as of SKI. He is indebted to veteran ski moniteurs Gerard Bouvier and J-F Lanvers for obtaining fresh historical information about France’s Chamois and Flèche programs.

At a recent conference in China, historians explored the ancient birth of skiing and how it spread across the continents. By SETH MASIA

As host of the 2022 Olympic Winter Games, China seeks a major presence in skiing. President Xi Jinping has proposed to invest $400 billion in new ski resorts, and to recruit 340 million winter sports enthusiasts before the 2022 Games begin in Beijing. If successful, that would be 25 percent of China’s population, generating about $100 billion in annual revenue. China would have the world’s largest ski industry.

China may be the future of the sport. The Chinese government also promotes the concept that its Altai Mountains are the origin point of skiing, some 8,000 to 12,000 years ago.

Regular readers of Skiing History are familiar with Nils Larsen’s film, Skiing in the Shadow of Genghis Khan, which received a 2009 ISHA Film Award, and his article “Origin Story” in the May-June 2017 issue. Larsen was among the first to introduce to the West the work of Shan Zhaojian, Wang Bo, Ayiken Jiashan and others, who have been tracing the history of today’s traditional Tuvan skiing culture back to prehistoric origins in the forested mountains of Central Asia. 

In January, I attended the 2018 Ancient Skiing Academic Conference in Altay City, China. The conference focus was twofold: outlining recent research on the origins of skiing in Central Asia, and establishing cultural exchanges between the Tuvan hunting-ski culture and the Telemark tradition of skiing.

Recent work by archaeologists and anthropologists shows that rock art across the region, including much of southern Siberia, depicts hunters on snowshoes and skis, dating back as far as 7,000 years. Indirect evidence suggests hunters may have begun to use snowshoes and skis at the end of the last Ice Age, about 12,000 years ago. Knut Helskog of the University of Tromsø in Norway noted that human habitation goes back 40,000 years in northern Russia and 9,500 years in Scandinavia, with more than 300 petroglyph sites across the vast region—including at least 100 dating from the Stone Age. Helskog posits a natural progression from short wooden snowshoes to longer implements suitable for floating on deep snow. At some point the bearing surface grows big enough to allow gliding. Climbing skins are the next development. Meanwhile, the spear and bow serve as ski poles. 

At Zalavruga in Russian Karelia, near the shore of the Arctic bay called the White Sea, a dramatic petroglyph shows skiers killing a moose or elk. We know the hunters are on skis, not snowshoes, because the artist(s) depict the tracks in the snow: tromping uphill with pole-marks alternating on both side of the track, and gliding downhill with pole plants widely spaced. The tactic depicted was to climb above the herd, then ski downhill at high speed to overtake the prey, half-buried in deep snow. In the Altay region, elk hunters on fur skis use the same technique today. According to Siberian rock-art specialist Elena Miklashevich of Kemerovo State University, the Zalavruga petroglyphs may be as old as 7,000 years (other experts suggest 5,500). In Southwest Siberia, along the Tom River, one petroglyph skier is depicted carrying what may be a lasso.

None of this should be surprising. As early as 1890, Fridtjof Nansen, in his book On Skis Across Greenland, cited linguistic evidence that skiing originated in Central Asia, along an arc between what is now Kazakhstan and Lake Baikal. This region includes the north slope of the Altai range. Nansen suggested that as skiing hunters followed herds of elk and reindeer, they spread northward and then east toward the Bering Strait and west along the coast of the Arctic Ocean, where ancestors of the Saami (Laplanders) brought skiing to Scandinavia around 5,000 years ago. 

Since around 2005, this view of skiing’s origin has come to prevail among anthropologists, especially in view of the survival of a Stone Age skiing culture among the Mongol Tuvan tribe of the Altai mountains. The very existence of Tuvan skiing was broadcast to Western audiences by Nils Larsen’s 2008 film and Mark Jenkins’ National Geographic article in 2012. But Shan Zhaojian first posited the Altai as the birthplace of skiing back in 1993.

Modern Tuvans make their skis with hand tools, notably the adze. Today, of course, they use steel tools, but metal tools have been available since the Bronze Age, which began in this region about 5,000 years ago. Before that, the stone adze was an efficient tool for turning logs into smooth planks, and so we can easily visualize smooth-surfaced skis going back 10,000 or 12,000 years. Remember that the word “ski” originally meant a split of wood—a plank or board. When skiing is prime, we still reach for our powder boards.

China’s skiing Tuvans are careful to point out that they no longer kill elk—the entire mountain region is a designated conservation area. They will admit to catch-and-release hunting, dropping a lasso over the prey’s antlers, though that practice isn’t kosher either. 

This skiing culture is said to have migrated into Xinjiang province about 400 years ago, from Tuva in southern Siberia. Since 2006 a ski race, first organized by Shan, has been one of many activities preserving the old culture. This year, more than 100 young men turned out for the race, run in two laps at the General’s Mountain ski resort outside Altay City. Each lap is about a mile: uphill, downhill, uphill and downhill again, with a total vertical of about 1,000 feet. The racers make their own skis—race skis are built for running, shorter and lighter than skis made for hunting. They’re covered with horsehide only on the bottoms, to save weight. The soft hair of cold-weather Altai horses glides much faster than Western-style climbing skins. 

Also in attendance at the Altay conference was a delegation of about 20 Norwegians, comprising a telemark racing team led by Lars Ove Wangenstein Berge. With the collaboration of Andrew Clarke, chair of the FIS Telemark committee, and Shan’s group, the team is trying to get telemark racing included as a demonstration sport for the 2022 Beijing Olympics. Berge organized a parallel-GS telemark race at General’s Mountain, won by a couple of his teenage protégés. Berge and Shan would like to establish a torch relay from Morgedal, Norway—birthplace of modern skiing during the 19^th century—to Altay City and on to Beijing for the 2022 opening ceremony.

The Chinese government fully supports the rapid development of alpine skiing as a healthy family sport. The country already boasts more than 100 small and medium-size lift-served ski areas. Altay’s Mayor Yu told me that local kids get free ski lessons and rental gear at General’s Mountain during school holidays, and estimates that 60 to 70 percent of the town’s population has tried skiing. The mountain has replaced its painfully slow old fixed-grip lifts with two new high-speed hybrid “chondolas,” one of which extends across the valley into new terrain to expand the resort by about 50 percent.

All of this skiing development is on government-owned land, with little or no delay for permitting or environmental studies. The central government does what it plans to do, without much feedback from local populations. Xinjiang province is home to half a dozen ethnic groups. The two largest—Turkic-speaking Muslim Uighurs, who consider themselves the original inhabitants, and Chinese-speaking Han Chinese, who dominate the government—have clashed in bloody riots as recently as 2014. To forestall ethnic conflict, all public gatherings are attended by riot police; government buildings, banks and hotels have barricades and tight security against real or imagined terrorists. It’s an odd cultural environment: a diverse population, free to travel around China and abroad, with a polyglot educated class well aware of news from around the world—all under an authoritarian regime led largely by engineers. Welcome to the Chinese century.   

Seth Masia is president of the International Skiing History Association, and represented ISHA at the 2018 Ancient Skiing Academic Conference in China.

Record prices and active bidding at annual Swann auction

By Everett Potter

There were rarities, blue-chip images and even a few outliers at the annual Vintage Posters auction at Swann Galleries in Manhattan on March 1, where several dozen original ski posters claimed the attention of serious bidders from around the world. Foremost among the rarer images was an early poster from Davos from 1901, depicting both winter and summer pursuits in the fledgling Swiss mountain resort.

"This is a wonderful blend of photomontage and graphics," said Nicholas Lowry, auctioneer and president of Swann Galleries. "And while most early ski posters show women, this is one of the earliest poster depictions of a male skier that I've ever seen." It sold at its top estimate of $4,250 (final prices include a 25% buyer's premium).

To read the rest of this story, see the March-April 2018 issue of Skiing History magazine. To read the digital edition online, you must be a member of ISHA. Not a member? Join today!

The critical role of skis in 130 years of Arctic exploration and adventure.

By Jeff Blumenfeld

In Part I of this two-part article, author Jeff Blumenfeld explains how skis played a critical role in the early Arctic and polar expeditions of Fridtjof Nansen (Greenland, 1888), Robert E. Peary and Frederick Cook (North Pole, 1909), Roald Amundsen and Robert F. Scott (South Pole, 1911 and 1912). In Part II, to be published in the January-February 2018 issue of Skiing History, Blumenfeld will examine the use of skis in modern-day polar expeditions by Paul Schurke, Will Steger and Richard Weber.

Blumenfeld, an ISHA director, runs Blumenfeld and Associates PR and ExpeditionNews.com in Boulder, Colorado. He is the recipient of the 2017 Bob Gillen Memorial Award from the North American Snowsports Journalists Association, was nominated a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society, and is chair of the Rocky Mountain chapter of The Explorers Club. No stranger to the polar regions, he’s been to Iceland more than 15 times, traveled on business 184 miles north of the Arctic Circle in Greenland, and chaperoned a high-school student trip to the Antarctic Peninsula. 

Throughout the modern era of polar exploration, skis have played an invaluable role in propelling explorers forward—sometimes with dogsled teams, sometimes without, and more recently, with kites to glide across the polar regions at speeds averaging 7 mph. Modern-day polar explorers including Eric Larsen, Paul Schurke, Will Steger and Richard Weber all continue to use skis today, taking a page right out of history. Were it not for skis, reaching the North and South poles in the early 1900s might have been delayed until years later.

“Stars and Stripes Nailed to the North Pole”

This long-awaited message from American explorer Robert E. Peary (1856–1920) flashed around the globe by cable and telegraph on the afternoon of September 6, 1909. Reaching the North Pole, nicknamed the “Big Nail” in those days, was a three-
century struggle that had taken many lives, and was the Edwardian era’s equivalent of the first manned landing on the moon.

But was Peary first to achieve this expeditionary Holy Grail? To this day, historians aren’t absolutely sure whether Peary was first to the North Pole in 1909, although they are convinced both he and Frederick Cook (1865–1940) came close. Of course, Cook’s credibility wasn’t enhanced by his 1923 conviction for mail fraud, followed by seven years in the U.S. federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t until 1986 that the possibility of reaching the pole without mechanical assistance or resupply was finally confirmed, thanks in part to the use of specially designed skis. That was the year a wiry Minnesotan named Will Steger, a former science teacher then aged 41, launched his 56-day Steger North Pole Expedition, financed by cash and gear from more than 60 companies. The expedition would become the first confirmed, non-mechanized and unsupported dogsled and ski journey to the North Pole, proving it was indeed possible back in the early 1900s to have reached the pole in this manner, regardless of whether Peary or Cook arrived first. 

Dogs are the long-haul truckers of polar exploration. For Steger’s 1986 journey, he relied upon three self-sufficient teams of 12 dogs each—specially bred polar huskies weighing about 90 pounds per dog. The teams faced temperatures as low as minus 68 degrees F, raging storms and surging 60-to-100-feet pressure ridges of ice. 

To keep up with dogs pulling 1,100-pound supply sleds traveling at speeds of up to four miles per hour, team members used Epoke 900 skis, Berwin Bindings, Swix Alulight ski poles and Swix ski wax, according to North to the Pole by Will Steger with Paul Schurke (Times Books/Random House, 1987). In its basic equipment, this mode of travel was not far removed from the early days of polar exploration. 

Norway’s Best Skier Crosses Greenland

Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen (1861–1930), an accomplished skier, skater and ski jumper, carved his name in polar exploration by achieving the first crossing of the Greenland ice cap in 1888, traversing the island on skis. Nansen was something of a Norwegian George Washington, revered as a statesman and humanitarian as well as an explorer. He rejected the complex organization and heavy manpower of other Arctic ventures, and instead planned his expedition for a small party of six on skis, with supplies man-hauled on lightweight sledges. His team included two Sami people, who were known to be expert snow travelers. All of the men had experience living outdoors and were experienced skiers.  

Despite challenges such as treacherous surfaces with many hidden crevasses, violent storms and rain, ascents to 8,900 feet and temperatures dropping to minus 49 degrees F, the 78-day expedition succeeded thanks to the team’s sheer determination and their use of skis. In spring 1889, they returned to a hero’s welcome in Christiania (now Oslo), attracting crowds of between 30,000 to 40,000—one-third of the city’s population. 

Nansen later won international fame after reaching a record “farthest north” latitude of 86°14’ during his North Pole expedition in 1895, sadly falling short of the Big Nail by a mere 200 miles.

Nansen’s Greenland expedition would be repeated and completed, again on skis, 67 years later by the 27-year-old Norwegian Bjorn Staib in 1962. It took Staib and his teammate 31 days to cross the almost 500-mile-wide ice cap. “The skis served them well,” according to a story by John Henry Auran in the November 1965 issue of SKI Magazine. He quotes Staib, “There were steep slopes in the west, but we never knew where the crevasses would be. So we zipped across as fast as possible—sometimes I wished we had slalom skis—and hoped that we were safe and wouldn’t break through.”

Writes Auran, “Skis, always essential for Arctic travel, now became indispensable. Crossing ice that sometimes was only the thickness of plate glass, the skis provided the essential distribution of weight which kept the men from breaking through. And they made speed, the other margin of safety, possible.”

In 1964, Staib would attempt to ski to the North Pole but was turned back 14 days from his goal by poor ice and extreme cold. Nonetheless, he had nothing but praise for the use of skis on the expedition. Their simple Norwegian touring skis with hardwood edges performed without difficulty. 

Says Staib, “Skiing in the Arctic is not like skiing at home. There’s no real variety, there isn’t even any waxing. There is no wax for snow so cold and, anyway, there is no need for it. There are no hills to climb or descend.”

Scott of the Antarctic

Nansen’s techniques of polar travel and his innovations in equipment and clothing influenced a future generation of Arctic and Antarctic explorers, including one whose failure in January 1912 was considered a blow to British national pride on par with the wreck of the Titanic three months later.

British Capt. Robert F. Scott (1868–1912) became a national hero when he set the new “farthest south” record with his expedition to Antarctica aboard the 172-foot RRS Discovery in 1901–1904. Nansen introduced Scott to Norwegian Tryggve Gran, a wealthy expert skier who had been trying to mount his own Antarctic expedition. Scott asked Gran to train his men for a new expedition, an attempt to be first to reach the geographic South Pole, while conducting scientific experiments and collecting data along the way. After all, who better to teach his men? Most Norwegians learned to ski as soon as they could walk. Arriving in Antarctica in early January 1911, Gran was one of the 13 expedition members involved in positioning supply depots needed for the attempt to reach the South Pole later that year. 

Scott found skiing “a most pleasurable and delightful exercise” but was not convinced at first that it would be useful when dragging sledges. He would later find that however inexpert their use of skis was, they greatly increased safety over crevassed areas. 

“With today’s hindsight, when thousands of far better-equipped amateurs know how difficult it is to master skiing as an adult, Scott’s belief that his novices could do so as part of an expedition in which their lives might depend on it seems bizarre,” according to South—The Race to the Pole, published by the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (2000). Scott was bitterly disappointed when he arrived at the bottom of the world on January 17, 1912, only to find a tent, a Norwegian flag, and a letter to the King of Norway left more than a month earlier by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen (1872–1928), on December 14, 1911. 

Amundsen had kicked off his successful journey to the South Pole by traveling to the continent in the 128-foot Fram, a polar vessel built by Nansen. He averaged about 16 miles a day using a combination of dogs, sledges and skis, on a polar journey of 1,600 miles roundtrip. With Amundsen skiing in the lead, his dogsled drivers cried “halt” and told him that the sledgemeters said they were at the Pole. “God be thanked” was his simple reaction.  

Over a month later, the deity was again invoked, but under less favorable conditions. After Scott reached the South Pole, man-hauling without the benefit of dogs, he famously wrote in his diary, “Great God! This is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority.”

On their way back from the South Pole, Scott’s expedition perished in a blizzard just 11 miles short of their food and fuel cache. A geologist to the very end, Scott and his men were found with a sledge packed with 35 pounds of rock samples and very few supplies.

In November 1912, Gran was part of the 11-man search party that found the tent containing the dead bodies of the Scott party. After collecting the party’s personal belongings, the tent was lowered over the bodies of Scott and his two companions and a 12-foot snow cairn was built over it, topped by a cross made from a pair of skis. The bodies remain entombed in the Antarctic to this day. 

Gran traveled back to the base at Cape Evans wearing Scott’s skis, reasoning that at least Scott’s skis would complete the journey. Today those skis can be seen in an exhibit at The Ski Museum in Holmenkollen, on the outskirts of Oslo, honoring Amundsen’s historic discovery of the South Pole. Scott would most certainly roll over in his grave at the thought of his skis displayed near those of his polar rival. 

Later polar expeditions would go on to combine skis with kites, with snowshoes, and floating sledges. Sometimes they even attracted the attention of world leaders. 

Volunteers are restoring the childhood house of Norwegian ski legend Thorleif Haug. By Einar Sunde

On August 1 of this year, I stepped off the train at the Lier station, 27 miles west of Oslo, and was greeted warmly by Knut Olaf Kals. Knut is the moving force behind the restoration of the childhood home of Norwegian ski legend Thorleif Haug, who won triple gold at the first Winter Olympics in 1924 in Chamonix.

We drove to a small place called Årkvisla in the hilly northwestern end of the Lier Valley, where scattered farmhouses lie close to the forest. The 18th century house (Haugstua) is now quite charming, but a quick glance around the area was all it took to realize that life here must have been very hard in the early 1900s. Waiting for us was Knut’s friend and fellow volunteer Bent Lønrusten. I was promptly invited inside for coffee, homemade waffles and jam, and a lot of history.

Haug was born in 1896 and the family moved here soon after he started his schooling. In the winter, he skied to and from school. By the time he was a young teenager he was doing physically demanding forestry work, requiring extensive use of skis in the winter. In the process, Haug became a skilled skier and superbly fit. He began competing in local races and by 1919 he had become the most dominant Norwegian skier of that generation (see sidebar). But Knut stressed what Haug’s teammates and competitors said: What really set him apart was the combination of supreme talent with personal modesty and selflessness. In addition, he was a working-class hero at a time of intense class conflicts in Norway, when the skiing “establishment” and a high percentage of the capital’s competitive skiers were from the upper class. Haug touched people in a unique way. Journalists referred to him as Skikongen (the King of Skiing), but to ordinary people he was simply Hauer’n. After his triple gold at the 1924 Winter Games, Haug entered another realm altogether: Norway had been independent from Sweden for only 19 years and, through his skiing exploits and his character, he became the embodiment of Norwegian identity and its skiing culture.

After the 1924 season, Haug married and retired from competition to earn a living as a plumber in nearby Drammen (surfacing briefly in 1926 to compete in the nordic combined at the World Championships in Finland). His sudden death from pneumonia in December of 1934 shocked the country and an estimated 20,000 people lined the streets of Drammen to view the funeral procession and pay their respects. Posthumous honors followed, including the first statue ever of a Norwegian athlete (with Crown Prince Olav speaking at the dedication in 1946) and a memorial race in his honor that continues to this day. But as time passed Haugstua, vacant for years, fell into disrepair.

Knut grew up in the area and was quite familiar with the story of Haug. In 2014 he read an article in a local newspaper that mentioned how many locals were ashamed by the neglect of the old house. With a background in business and marketing, he decided he could make a real difference. By the end of the year he had contacted and convinced Bent and other locals to form Skikongen Thorleif Haugs Venner as an association dedicated to restoring Haugstua and promoting Haug’s legacy. Knut and Bent showed me the impressive array of projects completed to date: replacement of the roof and some structural beams, repair of the chimney, repair and replacement of windows (with period sash and glass), replacement of siding, new insulation and flooring in the attic, and painting and treating the exterior. They’ve also created a cozy interior with period furnishings and a wealth of photos, articles and books about Haug, and related skis and other artifacts. All work to date has been a labor of love by the association’s members and supporters.

Knut emphasized that while the repair and restoration work is almost finished, there is much more to do. They will soon change the legal structure from a simple association to a stiftelse, much like a nonprofit corporation in the USA. Specific projects are in the works on several fronts that connect at various levels to Haug, including a ski-making exhibit in the attic (Haug’s father made skis for the family and others), a ski waxing exhibit (reflecting Haug’s extensive experiments in creating better ski waxes), the establishment of an arboretum on the property (in honor of Haug’s interest in gardening and nature), and programs for children (Haug gave many hundreds of pairs of skis to children). The association is also campaigning to have the statue of Haug

, now in Drammen, relocated to the Årkvisla property, as well as reaching out to local, national and international private and public entities to forge relationships, collaborate on projects and seek support for future activities.

Having witnessed Knut and Bent’s passion for this mission in person, I have no doubt they will succeed. I also know they would welcome visitors by a

ppointment as they welcomed me, though I can’t guarantee you’ll be offered homemade waffles and cloudberry jam. But waffles or not, you will leave Haugstua imbued with the infectious spirit of Thorleif Haug.

To learn more or to visit Haugstua, contact Knut Olaf Kals by email: Knut.Olaf.Haveraen.Kals@polier.no or kals@skikongen.com. The association has a Facebook page at “La oss bevare Thorleif Haugs barndomshjem for ettertiden.”

Einar Sunde is an attorney in Palo Alto, California. Raised in Norway, he is an amateur ski historian, ISHA director and jury member for the ISHA Awards.

From Jet Stix to Tinkle Tabs, these crazy ski products faded, fizzled or failed to stand the test of time. By Jeff Blumenfeld

As empty-nesting downsizers moving from Connecticut to Boulder, my wife and I had to contend with the accumulated flotsam of 30-plus years of marriage. It was especially hard to part with ski equipment, apparel and accessories. Each imparted great memories of days spent on the slopes.

I gave away my Graves skis. I unceremoniously pitched the Kneissl Blue Star OPs from the early 1980s, along with my Cevas and Club A one-piece suits.

But I couldn’t say goodbye to my Ski Wings. Yes, Ski Wings—butterfly-shaped air scoops that attach to ski poles. Four aerodynamically balanced nylon pockets form a cushion of air in front of you. Head straight down a steep bump run and you feel like you’re flying as you literally skim across the tops of moguls.

Originally known as ski sails, this odd product dates back at least as far as Leo Gasperl (1932) and Stein Eriksen, who used them in 1968–69 at Snowmass in Colorado (Skiing History, July-August 2011). They have since been reinvented in Europe as Wingjumps, “the first skiing equipment to offer the feeling of being lifted while skiing, in complete safety!” (That claim, of course, remains to be seen.)

What is it about skiing and snowboarding that inspires budding inventors?

“Scores of ingenious Rube Goldberg ideas have invaded the sport throughout its history,” writes ISHA chairman John Fry, author of The Story of Modern Skiing  (UPNE, 2006). “There was a ski whose performance could be altered by pumping air into it. Another ski contained rods that you could tighten and loosen to adjust flex and camber.
“Still another contained oil that allegedly caused the ski’s performance to alter in relation to snow surface and temperature. There were bizarre little devices to prevent skis from crossing, and a pair of swiveling rods to keep the skis parallel at all times, so that the skier would never suffer the embarrassment of being seen vee-ing them in a stem.”

Exploring Vintage Ski World

A leading connoisseur of crazy ski products is ISHA board member Richard Allen, 65, owner of Vintage Ski World, one of the largest private collections of ski memorabilia. Visiting his warehouse is a trip in itself: You drive uphill miles from Colorado State Highway 82 to reach a rustic five-acre hillside home and warehouse overlooking Mount Sopris and the Elk Range in Carbondale.

Allen, a former Aspen carpet cleaner, began collecting skis and other gear in the late 1980s, including a pair of handmade Norwegian wooden skis that his grandfather used in the early 1900s. Today his inventory includes 800 pairs of skis, including many in mint unmounted condition, plus hundreds of boots, poles and goggles, and thousands of pins, patches and posters.

When two episodes of Mad Men and the 2010 cult classic Hot Tub Time Machine came looking for vintage ski gear, Allen provided the necessary props, still regretting to this day that he sold movie producers his best neon outfits.

His home is packed with snowshoe lamps, sled coffee tables, a wall of vintage ski boots, toboggan bookshelves, ski mirrors that he makes himself, and even toilet plungers made from ski poles. Enter his warehouse and you’ve stepped back into skiing history.

There’s the very analog Skidometer, “the Simple Practical Ski Speedometer.” You wear it on the left sleeve, move the needle to the forward position, then read your highest downhill speed in miles per hour. It was invented in 1972 by New York neurologist Dr. Asa P. Ruskin and sold for $5.95. In a precursor to today’s warnings about texting and driving, it sagely cautions, “Do not attempt to read speed while skiing.”

Allen’s collection also includes heavy 1970s-era magnesium ski boots from DaleBoot—a hinged magnesium shell with a rubber closure over the instep. If Herman Munster skied, you’d see him in these. Mel Dalebout’s magnesium shell was produced from 1969 to 1971 and was paired with his patented silicon-injection custom fit inner boot, precursor of all injected foam boots (the magnesium may also have been the world’s first three-piece or cabriolet shell).

And there on a shelf was the Nava boot, part of a boot-binding system the likes of which were never seen before, according to Seth Masia writing in Skiing History (March 2005). Nava, an Italian manufacturer of motorcycle helmets and accessories, decided in the mid-1980s it needed a counter-seasonal winter product and designed this boot/binding system, introduced in Europe around 1986. It reached North America in 1988.

It consisted of a soft, warm, waterproof knee-high mukluk with an aggressive snow-walking tread. Hidden in the sole was a stainless steel lug that mated to a release binding on the ski; to provide edging power a spring-loaded lever arm was hinged to the back of the binding, Masia reports.

Ski journalist Steve Cohen writes in Ski Magazine (January 1990), “They tried to build the better mousetrap and succeeded. Unfortunately, they tried to sell them as ski bindings.”

My tour continues with the Bousquet Ski Tow Rope Gripper, patented in 1941 (Skiing History, March-April 2017) and the Digi 180 Sportlens System that had a brief run as a combined visor and ski goggle in 1993. Selling for $49.95 ($85 in 2017 dollars), its brochure touts total vision protection by completely “sealing eyes” and “combatting” the sun with full UV protection” (assuming you didn’t mind looking like a robot).

Surrounded by all this skiing history, I ask the soft-spoken Allen why skiing attracts such product innovation. “The joy of being outside and skiing opens the mind and spirit to ideas, including dreaming up new inventions,” he says. “Budding inventors who ski have a lot of chair time to dream up products and ideas.”

A Flash in the Pan

Following my exploration of Vintage Ski World, I surveyed a number of ski industry journalists, retailers and manufacturers to compile a strange collection of ski products—the sport’s equivalent of the Mos Eisley Cantina, the famed bar scene in Star Wars.

When this unique gear first came out, inventors had high hopes of generating untold riches as skiers and riders flocked to retailers to be the first on their block to own one. Consider how many of these unusual ski products were a flash in the pan, but evoke plenty of smiles today.

Skis are Overrated: Why endure the hassles of lugging skis around when all you need are slippery boots? That was the theory behind Dalbello SnowRunners, which were introduced in 1992 and covered that December in SKI Magazine. The plastic boots had metal edges on a slick, flat base and came in men’s, women’s and children’s sizes. They were later renamed Sled Dogs.
“Retailers acted like it was untreated radioactive waste as they saw people coming in and spending a thousand dollars less per person to get outfitted for a ski holiday,” says David Peri, a wintersports marketing consultant who was involved at the time.

To the bemusement of millions of viewers, Sled Dogs received their 15 minutes of fame during the opening ceremonies of the 1994 Winter Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway. You can still buy a pair online at sleddogs.com. (To see a video of a skier on Snow Runners, go to: https://youtu.be/_xYZmDwcWF8)

Snots Landing: Vail-based Snot Spot felt that your $160 gloves were missing a washable, slip-on bib to catch snotsicles. Launched in 2006, it didn’t have a good “run”—they’re now off the market.  

We’ll Drink to That: Taos is famous for its martini trees—hidden bottles of martinis hanging from trees. But why hunt around for a tipple when you can carry one in your poles? That’s where the 2004 Coldpole comes in, the “Liquid Reservoir Ski Pole.” The grip unscrews to provide access to the natural storage capability of the pole—about eight ounces. And the opening is durable plastic so your lips never touch cold metal. A cleaning brush is provided with every pair, which oddly makes us feel a whole lot better about this crazy ski product.

Hot Dogging: Here’s a clever concept that dates to the early 1960s: to keep skiers warm, we’re going to light a campfire in their pocket. Jon-E Hand Warmers, carried in a flannel bag, ran on lighter fluid and sometimes caused rashes where it met the skin. They were made by Aladdin Manufacturing Co. in Minneapolis, a place that presumably knows a thing or two about cold. These days, you can find a used model—if for some reason you want one—on eBay or Etsy.

Sit Back and Enjoy the Ride: Jet Stix first appeared during the 1970–71 winter season. Invented by former U.S. Olympian Jack Nagel, who ran the ski school and shop at Washington’s Crystal Mountain, these were fiberglass braces that fit the lower calf above the boot and secured in place using the top boot buckle. Before these came along, kids were fashioning them out of Popsicle sticks and duct tape, according to Gregg Morrill of Vermont’s Stowe Reporter (February 9, 2012).

Jet Stix were designed to be high-backs for low-back boots like the Lange Comp, a year before Lange introduced its own high-back boot in response to Nordica’s high-back race boots. They were helped along by universal adoption of avalement (allowing the knees to flex and absorb bumps) in racing, and general toilet turns by recreational mogul skiers.
The product was a temporary fix until skiers could buy new boots and had a very short life cycle. Morrill believes Jet Stix were pre-empted by the next fad, which was short skis. (Not the short skis we have today which were engineered for their shorter lengths, but just shorter lengths of the popular skis of the day.)

Tinkle, Tinkle Little Star: Men might find it hard to relate, but Roffe “Tinkle Tabs” were quite a hit through the 1970s when one-piece suits were popular. When the snap on the sleeves of a women’s jumpsuit was undone, and the tab was fed under the belt and snapped back into place, the sleeves of that $500 outfit couldn’t fall on the wet floor of the ladies room—and we can imagine how disgusting that can be.

Alas, when one-piece suits went the way of neon colors, it was buh-bye, Tinkle Tabs. Maybe they should have focused on a product to prevent ski gloves from falling into the toilet; it took years before resorts starting installing gear baskets in their stalls.

Two Hands Are Better Than One: Skiers aren’t the only ones t

o benefit from, er, innovation. With two handles and a set of bindings, the Two-Handed Snow Scooter was a snowboard designed in 2005 for control-freak master puppeteers—a very niche market, writes Illicitsnowboarding.com. It joins other crazy snowboard products including Lift Tethers and Legsavers for riding lifts. 

Somehow skiing and snowboarding survived these get-rich-slow schemes. But driving north up Route 100 in Vermont, I sure wish someone would invent a better-tasting gas station hot dog. That would be a product that’s not too crazy at all.

If you have a favorite odd or crazy product you remember using, or still use, tell us about it. Post it on our Facebook page (facebook.com/skiinghistory) or email kathleen@skiinghistory.org. 

Jeff Blumenfeld, an ISHA board member, runs Blumenfeld and Associates PR and ExpeditionNews.com in Boulder, Colorado. He is the recipient of the 2017 Bob Gillen Memorial Award from the North American Snowsports Journalists Association. For more information on Vintage Ski World, go to VintageSkiWorld.com.

How a young Killington employee in 1963 found a new and better way to attach lift tickets to people. By Karen D. Lorentz

Jennifer Hanley was shocked when she went skiing in Tignes, France in 1987 and was handed a lift ticket and a wicket. “She had no idea the wicket had spread to Europe,” recalls her father Charlie Hanley, who invented the now-ubiquitous wire device in 1963.

“For 40 years, the wicket was useful,” he adds. He’s being modest. More than 50 years later—despite the development of new technologies and methods, like RFID cards and plastic zip-ties—wickets are still in use at ski resorts around the world.

In the summer of 1960, Hanley was running Golf-land, his miniature golf course and snack bar in Bomoseen, Vermont. “They could use you up at Killington,” said his Pepsi Cola rep. In need of winter work, Hanley scheduled an interview with Killington founder Preston Leete Smith.

“I was intrigued by the ski-area venture, so I agreed to design and build a kitchen system for the new base lodge,” says Hanley. “Killington couldn’t afford to hire me until after Christmas, so I said I could start in October and be paid retroactively. They jumped at the deal! I got $1.50 an hour.” That winter, he and his wife Jane also ran the resort’s food-service operation.

Recognizing Charlie’s expertise in writing detailed reports, Smith promoted him to “systems analyst,” a position that entailed “trying to solve any problem” that Hanley spotted. To address the theft of rental skis, he installed a Regiscope, “a machine I’d seen in a local supermarket. It took simultaneous pictures of the skier and rental slip and solved the theft problem because a picture is intimidating to a thief. It worked so well that we never had to develop the film.”

A bigger problem: transfer of lift tickets
Having started Killington on a shoestring in 1958, Smith faced a more serious problem with his stapled-on lift tickets. Not only did they leave holes in skiers’ clothing, they were often transferred from one skier to another, denying the area much-needed revenue.

“We noticed that some people were trying to attach tickets using pipe cleaners,” recalls Smith. “I wanted something with more strength yet less bendable, so it wouldn’t break or come off easily.”

Hanley remembers seeing a presentation in Smith’s office by a man wanting to sell “a complicated device. It was a regular keychain with a tiny ring attached at one end and a large coil at the other end.

“When he saw me studying it, the salesman said, ‘Oh, I see you, young fellow. You think you can find a way to make it simpler. Well, it can’t be done.’ I’ll never forget that. He was just arrogant enough to get me thinking. We sent him on his way and in five minutes I had the concept in mind. I took an eight-inch piece of wire and bent it in such a way as to allow the wire to be slipped through a zipper talon, belt loop or buttonhole, or around a strap. The heavy-duty paper lift ticket could be folded and stapled over the gizmo’s legs. We called it the gizmo until Jane came up with the name.”

“The U-shape reminded me of the wickets in croquet, so I suggested ticket wicket,” says Jane.

From design to patent
Offered a free trip around the country if he could prove that the wicket would sell, Hanley took his tall blond wife to a national ski operators’ convention, where she demonstrated how the wicket could be attached to clothing without damaging the fabric. As Jane shed various layers, she showed that the wicket would work with parkas, sweaters, stretch pants and, finally, a swimsuit.

Sales were so good that the Hanleys enjoyed the promised trip across ski country in the fall of 1963. “We visited most of the major areas in the United States—there weren’t that many then,” Charlie recalls. “Vail had just opened and I came away with a sense of awe.” Stops in Denver, Seattle, Snoqualmie and Sun Valley are standout memories, as was one visit to an Ohio gravel pit: “Someone had dug out dirt and piled it into a hill and put a lift on it.” Their late-1950s Citroën had a passenger seat that reclined, so one could sleep while the other drove during the three-week journey. 

For the 1963–1964 season, Killington sold 750,000 stainless-steel wickets to 62 U.S. ski areas. The next season, they switched to galvanized wire, which cost 40 percent less, and sold to 100 areas.  In the third season, they hired a Connecticut firm to handle the growing sales. A fall 1965 ad in Ski Area Management magazine read: “Stopping just one cheater in 1,000 skiers will pay for the cost of Ticket Wickets.” (A lift ticket cost $5-$7 then.)

The Sherburne Corporation was issued U.S. patent 3,241,255 on March 22, 1966 and Canadian patent 742,863 on September 20, 1966. Hanley had assigned the rights to Killington’s parent company because he had developed the wicket while on the area’s payroll. Interestingly, the patent applications anticipated sticky-backed tickets by noting that tickets could be secured to the wicket “with either an adhesive or staples.”

Wickets: Still Hanging around
Sherburne Corporation sued an Ohio firm for patent infringement in 1969 but eventually dropped the suit and sold the patent. “Others were infringing the patent [with different wicket shapes] but bringing lawsuits was costly. Since the patent only lasted for 17 years, it didn’t make sense to pursue the cases,” Smith says.

“The wickets sold for pennies, so it wasn’t worth the time or expense to sue. Ticket wicket wasn’t a money-making business, it was a way to solve problems,” Hanley adds.

Sometime in the 1970s, Killington shifted to using pressure-sensitive adhesive on the back of computer-generated tickets. In 2004–2005, the resort switched to the plastic tie that’s threaded through a coated “tag” ticket and looped to a closure. Although many areas have changed to tie-tag ticketing and others have adopted RFID cards, reports of the wicket’s demise are exaggerated: U.S. companies from coast to coast still manufacture and distribute ticket wickets, including Standard Portable (New York), Southington Tool & Manufacturing (Connecticut), and Amlon Industries and Gold Coast (California).

“Half the lift tickets sold today are secured to a guest via a wire wicket and half with ties,” says Jason Shoats, vice president of sales for Worldwide Ticketcraft. “Smaller areas can’t afford the new methods, and RFID [cards] are more expensive.”

A half-century later, Charlie Hanley’s ticket wicket is still hanging around.  

Vermont ski writer Karen Lorentz is author of Okemo: All Come Home, Killington: A Story of Mountains and Men, and The Great Vermont Ski Chase.

In the article, Kade gives well-deserved acknowledgement to Shan Zhaojian, the father of modern skiing in China, as well as its chief ski historian. Shan is also the leader of the movement declaring that skiing originated here, thousands of years ago—a viewpoint that has sparked debate among historians. To read the article, go to: www.nytimes.com/2017/04/19/sports/skiing/skiing-china-cave-paintings.html?_r=0

I first met Shan in Beijing in 2006, and again in 2007 at the traditional ski race in Altay City, an annual event that celebrates the declaration. We shared a strong interest in preserving the traditional skiing still found in the Altai Mountains, and with the help of Ayiken (my translator of both language and culture), we became friends, exchanging information and ideas on the Altai skiers and ways to support their ski culture. Though we were in agreement on the uniqueness and importance of the region’s ski traditions, we differed on the Altay Declaration. The main piece of physical evidence supporting the declaration are some cave paintings found near Altay City that appear to depict skiers in motion over a collection of wild animals. The paintings are wonderful, both in their location deep in the hills and in their execution. The dating, however, seemed problematic, and in talking to experts in the U.S. the difficulty in dating rock art was universally emphasized. 

In May 2017, Ayiken gave me an excellent paper written specifically on the rock pictographs that support the Altay Declaration. The paper (Naturalistic Animals and Hand Stencils in the Rock Art of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Northwest China) was published in 2016 and is written by Paul Taçon (Australia), Tang Huisheng (China) and Maxime Aubert (Australia), all experts in the study and dating of rock art. They suggest that the paintings are probably 4,000 to 5,250 BP. Ancient indeed, but likely not as old as the 10,000+ BP used by the 2006 declaration. This analysis is also not definitive, but it is the most detailed examination of the paintings to date.

By Yves Perret

Lire cet article en français

It was greater than his famous Olympic gold-medal hat trick. In an exclusive interview, Jean-Claude Killy recalls the first season of the World Cup, 50 years ago, when he won 12 of the 17 races, including all of the downhills, and finished on the podium in 86% of the races he entered, a record that’s never been surpassed.

Fifty years after the fact, 1967 remains one of the most memorable seasons in alpine ski competition history. Not only did it introduce the new World Cup—skiing’s first use of a season-long series of competitions to determine the world’s best—but it also resulted in an astonishing, never-to-be-repeated record. 

Jean-Claude Killy of France won 12 out of the 17 slalom, giant slalom and downhill races on the calendar. He was the victor in all the classic downhills, and the Hahnenkamm and Wengen combineds, something no man has since done. 

Jean-Claude Killy of France won 12 out of the 17 slalom, giant slalom and downhill races that made up the 1967 World Cup season. He was the victor in all the classic downhills, and the Hahnenkamm and Wengen combineds, something no man has since done. For the whole season, he participated in 29 races, and won an amazing 19 (66 percent) of them. He finished on the podium in 86 percent of the competitions he entered. He also won six of the season’s downhill-slalom "paper" combineds.

Killy won the first World Cup crystal trophy with a perfect 225 points, the maximum possible in a system in which a racer, who’d won three races in a discipline, could not earn more points in it. First-place was worth 25 points, compared to 100 points today. His one-man World Cup point total topped that of a whole nation—Italy, West Germany or the United States. 

In 1965 in SKI Magazine, Serge Lang had crowned him with the nickname “King Killy,” a title repeated by newspapers and magazines around the world. Last summer, the “King,” 73, invited me to his home near Geneva. On the table in front of us Killy spread open neatly organized, thick albums of press clippings displaying the highlights of his exceptional career. Written in upright handwriting in the notebook containing his race results, is the sentence “La victoire aime l’effort” (Victory loves effort). Over several hours of conversation, he was once again the best skier on the planet.

INTERVIEW: Part 1

Jean-Claude, how do you look back at your 1967 season, and how did it come together after what had occurred in the previous seasons?

If the World Cup hadn’t been invented, my 1967 season might not have been what it was. It was a greater achievement than my 1968 gold-medal hat trick at the Grenoble Winter Olympics, for which most people remember me.  

I got there by a slow process of building. My constant obsession was winning. I managed to pull off a couple of wins, like the Critérium de la Première Neige in 1961 when I was 18 years old. In 1963, I finished in second place 11 times. And the 1964 Winter Olympic Games in Innsbruck were a technical disaster. I lost the toe piece of my binding in the slalom. In the downhill, my edges weren’t correctly sharpened, and I fell on the first fall-away turn. I finished fifth in the GS. In short, I wasn’t ready. 

The week after the Olympics I won the giant slalom of the Arlberg-Kandahar in Garmisch, Germany, ahead of my American friend Jimmie Heuga. It proved that I’d brought my skiing to a decent base, but there were still kinks to be worked out. 

I hadn’t yet resolved health issues that had affected me since I suffered jaundice when I served as a 2^nd class soldier in the French Army during the Algerian war. I was skinny. I lacked endurance. In Paris, journalist Michel Clare introduced me to Doctor Creff, a specialist in exotic diseases. He found out that I also suffered from
amebiasis, and helped me to recover. But I had to work a lot harder than my teammates to be in top physical shape. 

I also needed a system that would allow me to be successful and consistent in not just one, but all three alpine disciplines—slalom, giant slalom and downhill. Specialization limits the opportunities to win. I wanted to develop a system that would address all of the variables that make alpine ski racing such a complex sport—equipment, start number, ski preparation, snow type, weather conditions and more.  

What made a difference?

A key challenge was equipment. It’s crucial to have the best. You can’t allow yourself to lose because of your skis. I skied on two different brands, Rossignol and Dynamic, without having an exclusive contract with either company. It allowed me to choose the pair of skis that would be best for each race. 

At the 1966 World Championships in Portillo, Chile, I used Rossignols in the GS, and Dynamics for the other events. In 1963, in the Kandahar, I even finished second on a pair of Austrian downhill skis.  I was prepared to make financial sacrifices so that I’d be free to use the equipment I wanted.

Above all, I was helped when the Dynamic ski company hired Michel Arpin to take care of my skis. He was from the town of Saint-Foy-Tarentaise, right near my hometown of Val d’Isère. We spoke the same local dialect. Michel had an amazing practical intelligence. Like me, he’d dropped out of high school at 15. When we started our collaboration, I told him: we will make fewer mistakes because we are going to know more than the others. I trusted Michel completely, and I knew that my skis were in the best possible hands.

Describe the process that took you to the top.

As members of the French national team, we spent the whole winter together. But before the first fall training camp we each pursued our own way of doing things. I was on a personal, obsessive quest to figure out what would help me improve, fueled by an overwhelming passion for skiing focused on racing. I opted not to continue my studies. I dropped out of high school. For many young racers, it’s a questionable decision. It limits your options, and can complicate finding a career after ski racing. For me, though, racing was a healthy obsession. It didn’t lessen my ability to think on my own. My aim was to be a free man. Skiing became my profession. 

Winning was all that mattered. I didn’t have a choice. It was simply my only form of expression. France’s head coach Honoré Bonnet understood that. The goal was to win races. 

What were the keys to your success?

Beginning in 1965, several factors came together, fueling the French national team’s growing momentum. The organizational talent and coaching of our leader Honoré Bonnet was one factor that helped us. Another was support from French ski industry—manufacturers like Rossignol and Dynamic skis, Trappeur boots, Salomon and Look bindings. French ski resorts and hotel owners also welcomed us with open arms, charging us next to nothing for lodging and meals. The atmosphere in France at the time was incredibly supportive of ski racing. 

“Our athletes are our best ambassadors,” declared France’s President General Charles de Gaulle. All of a sudden we went from the dormitories of a simple UCPA outdoor center to four-star hotels.

It was the beginning of a golden age for the sport. . . a convergence of increased financial resources, the right people, and experienced professionals. Plus, television broadcasting had gone international, transforming athletes into stars.

In 1965, after nine wins and seven second-place finishes, I was voted the Martini Skieur d’Or, and Champion of Champions by the newspaper L’Equipe. One by one, I’d assembled the pieces of the puzzle.

What was the impact of the World Cup’s creation on the outcome of your incredible 1967 season?

The specific formula and name for the World Cup didn’t come from the racers, but the idea—the force for change—did. Racers were exasperated that their entire careers could depend on a single day’s result in the Winter Olympics, or once every four years when a separate FIS World Championships were held. Nothing big happened in odd-numbered years. Careers were short. Few racers enjoyed the chance to ski in two Olympics. We often discussed our frustration, and what could solve the problem. 

We were all fans of Formula 1 car racing, in which the best are determined by accumulated results over a season-long competition. So it was easy for us to embrace the plan for a World Cup of Alpine Skiing formulated in 1966 by journalist Serge Lang, collaborating with   America’s Bob Beattie, France’s Honoré Bonnet, and Austria’s Sepp Sulzberger, supported by the Paris-based sport daily l’Equipe and journalists like Michel Clare—and John Fry, who added the Nations Cup to the mix. 

During the August 1966 World Alpine Championships at Portillo, Chile, FIS President Marc Hodler gave it the green light. It would enable us to accumulate points in a series of races, including the classics of the Kandahar, Kitzbühel and Wengen, as well as races every winter in America. The mineral water company Evian supplied beautiful crystal trophies. 

At Portillo, I remember being in the finish area of the downhill after my gold medal win. Everyone was crying. Serge Lang said to me, “The World Cup is coming. What’s your strategy going to be?”

“I’m going to fly through it,” I answered. “It’s going to be a lot of fun.” In my mind, I was going to get the most out of the new system in order to take my sports career to a new level. From then on, more than just the big classic events in the Alps would be the measure of a successful season.  

How would you describe the relations among members of the French team?

We trained together and we competed against each other every weekend. Even to this day, we’re like brothers. 

In the spring of 1966, we skied run after run together on the Pissaillas glacier at the Col de l’Iseran, preparing for Portillo, Chile—the only FIS World Alpine Championships ever held in the southern hemisphere. Our different strengths and personalities helped us to support each other. There was always a deep feeling of mutual respect and humility. 

Our inspirational leader Bonnet, 47, a year away from retiring, had put in place a system that functioned superbly, both for the men and for our great women’s team at the time. Each member of the team had his own role. Michel Arpin took care of my skis and did timekeeping. I could fully rely on his technical expertise. 

Jules Melquiond brought to the team a calm, serene temperament; we were roommates for seven years, and we never had even the most minor ego clash. Team captain Guy Périllat was listened to and respected. Léo Lacroix contributed his optimism, good humor, and especially his talent. Georges Mauduit, the giant slalom specialist, and Louis Jauffret, the slalom specialist, were magnificent skiers.

All of these talents, plus the combination of our different temperaments, made for a tremendous and cohesive squad.

The 1967 season began in December 1966 at your home resort of Val d’Isère, with the traditional Critérium de la Première Neige . . .

The race was special that year because it was the first time it was held on the new Daille run, called Oreiller-Killy or OK, which I had helped to design. (Editor's note: Henri Oreiller was 1948 Olympic downhill gold medalist.) Léo Lacroix, who won the race, still laughs when he recalls it today. “I’m the only one to have beaten Killy in downhill in the 1967 season,” he says. I remind him that it was in December 1966. The Critérium didn’t yet count for World Cup points. The World Cup didn’t begin until January 5^th at Berchtesgaden, Germany, where I finished third in the GS. 

Your first success came a couple of days later in the GS at Adelboden, Switzerland, the first in a series of eight victories, counting the Combined. You went on to win twice (downhill and slalom) at Wengen, also in Switzerland. What was the importance of this double win?

At Adelboden, I won with the GS with bib number 13. It was no bad luck for me! Adelboden has always been a benchmark for the GS. Winning there confirms a certain level of physical training and technical skill. In any season, too, the first win is significant.

At Wengen, in the downhill on the Lauberhorn, I was 25 hundredths of a second faster than Léo Lacroix. It was the first French victory in the Lauberhorn since Guy Périllat’s win in 1961. It was even sweeter because the Austrians, who maybe thought our triumph in the World Championships five months earlier at Portillo was a fluke, were expecting us to fail. It was an important moment for the whole French team.

At Wengen I also dominated the slalom, which I felt was the steepest and hardest of the year. With this triple victory-—I won the combined—I got the impression that I was finally playing in the big leagues for good. The next week would be the incredible challenge of Kitzbühel.  

In the March-April 2017 issue of Skiing History, we’ll present the second part of this exclusive interview with 1967 World Cup overall men's alpine champion Jean-Claude Killy, plus an interview by journalist Michel Beaudry with Nancy Greene-Raine of Canada, who won the 1967 women’s overall World Cup title. The World Cup is celebrating its 50th anniversary this season.

Interview by Yves Perret
Yves Perret, who heads a sports media agency in Grenoble, is the former sports editor of the Dauphiné Libéré newspaper, and was editor-in-chief of Ski Chrono.