Media Review

A passion for Nordic skiing drove the sport in the Upper Midwest

In the winter of 1841, Wisconsin farmers spotted some strange markings in the snow. They had been made by skier Gullit Laugen, a Norwegian immigrant, while on his way to purchase flour.

In Winter’s Children: A Celebration of Nordic Skiing, Ryan Rodgers tells of the development of Nordic skiing in the upper Midwest, from Laugen’s shopping trip to recent times. The great strength of the book is its focus on individual stories, from tragic to triumphant.

The first chapter, “Just Add Norwegians,” covers the 1840s to 1900 during the great wave of Scandinavian immigration. By the 1880s, some of the very best Norwegian skiers had emigrated to the U.S. (including Sondre Norheim and brothers Mikkel and Torjus Hemmestveit). Ski clubs were formed, the first St. Paul Winter Carnival staged (1886), regular jumping and cross-country competitions established, and ski factories founded. An 1890 attempt at an umbrella organization to sponsor tournaments failed to survive the Panic of 1893. Fast forward to 1905, when Carl Tellefsen launched the National Ski Association (today’s U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association).

Each chapter covers two decades. The period from the 1890s to the 1910s saw growing enthusiasm for ski jumping, while public interest in cross-country racing declined (the 1917 National Championships were cancelled because not a single entry was received). New ski companies were launched, notably by Martin Strand, who suffered two devastating factory fires but persevered until 1947, and Christian V. Lund, who turned Northland Ski Mfg. Co. into the world’s largest ski maker.

Ski jumping remained very popular through the 1930s, in good part because of the talent of young jumpers like brothers Lars and Anders Haugen and, later on, brothers Alf, Sverre and Corey Engen, plus the amazing Torger Tokle. On the other hand, cross-country skiing competitions remained in the doldrums and the invention of the Kandahar binding in 1929 by Guido Reuge, a Swiss ski racer and engineer, was a harbinger of the future growth of Alpine skiing. Rodgers also highlights significant improvements in the manufacture of laminated skis and ongoing debates concerning the participation of women in both cross-country and jumping events.

Neither the 1936 National Ski Association’s tournament nor the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch helped the cause of cross-country per se, but talented Midwestern Nordic skiers continued to make their mark, including Peter Fosseide, Eric Judeen, George Hovland and others. Skiers also undertook notable expeditions, such as the 100-mile Colorado trek in April 1926 from Estes Park to Steamboat Springs made by Erling Strom and Lars Haugen, Strom’s 125-mile 1930 expedition and the winter 1932 Denali expedition organized by Strom and Al Lindley.

The late 1930s through the ’50s confirmed the ascendancy of Alpine skiing. Here, Rodgers focuses on Tony Wise of Hayward, Wisconsin. After earning Bronze and Silver Stars for service in WWII, Wise skied in the Alps and was inspired to replicate that experience back home. He opened Mount Telemark in late 1947 and, as Rodgers puts it, “cross-country skiing went from being a niche activity to a niche within a niche.” Alpine skiing quickly pushed cross-country to the periphery. In the National Ski Association’s 1947 Ski Annual, “all of its 50 pages of advertisements are for downhill—clothes, hills, skis, and even portable chairlifts,” writes Rodgers.

Cross-country skiing rebounded strongly at all levels starting in the mid 1960s. By 1973, Wise was able to make a success of Wisconsin’s American Birkebeiner race, and Glen Johnstone launched Mora Vasaloppet in Minnesota. It was followed by races like the Snowjourn (1976), the Minnesota Finlandia (1979), the Pepsi Challenge in Biwabik (1985), the Noquemanon Marathon (1998) and the City of Lakes Loppet (2003) in Minneapolis. The era witnessed Bill Koch’s silver medal at the 1976 Olympics, the skating revolution and the arrival in the Midwest of World Cup cross-country races.

The final chapter, “A Thriving Ski Scene,” celebrates the present state of Nordic skiing in the Upper Midwest. For the 2019–20 season, Minnesota had 96 schools with ski teams, plus some that joined with others to pool resources. Jumping is a special case, “kept alive by a combination of individual passionate coaches and the pull of clubs with rich histories,” Rodgers writes. Growth of both cross-country and jumping are driven, in part, by Title IX; after a century of exclusion, there are now about as many girls jumping as boys. The only cloud on the horizon: our warming climate.

This is a sprawling book with fascinating characters. This short review cannot do it justice. Also featured are an outstanding selection of photos and illustrations, an extensive section of sources and a good index. 

Winter’s Children: A Celebration of Nordic Skiing by Ryan Rodgers, Published by University of Minnesota Press (2021), 388 pages, hardcover, $35

These films were honored at the 30th Annual ISHA Awards in Sun Valley.

In Pursuit of Soul

Teton Gravity Research

The timing of this 34-minute film is prescient. In a year when skiers across the country have been frustrated by overcrowded and overpriced “corporate” resorts, In Pursuit of Soul portrays ski areas that have chosen to remain independent, relaxed and, perhaps, underdeveloped. These resorts, many of them family owned, seem rooted in an earlier time, one for which many skiers feel deep nostalgia.

The producers interviewed skiers, employees, managers and owners at Saddleback, Maine; Cannon Mountain and Black Mountain, New Hampshire; Bolton Valley and Magic Mountain, Vermont; Berkshire East, Massachusetts; Lost Trail, Montana; Brundage Mountain, Idaho; Snow King, Wyoming; and Mission Ridge and 49° North, Washington.

The typical independent resort is vital to the local economy. Without seasonal employees and visiting skiers, restaurants and retail stores fail, property values sink, and the tax base evaporates. These areas also teach local kids to ski, often for free through public school programs, assuring a new generation of customers and resort employees.

Some of these resorts have closed, then reopened. The challenges are many: snow drought, insurance premiums, capital investment and maintenance costs. They can’t afford to compete with destination resorts on luxurious lodges and high-speed lifts. But they can offer $40 daily lift tickets and affordable season passes. Local skiers forge friendships with resort staff and become loyal supporters, often over two or three generations. While some 60 percent of mom-and-pop ski resorts have disappeared over the past two or three decades, the roughly 400 survivors are beloved by their communities. Their owners are determined to persevere despite 100-hour work weeks.

The independent local ski hill is a sweet concept, and this is a sweet movie. 

View at skiinghistory.org/resources/video/pursuit-soul

Spider Lives: The Untold Story of an American Skiing Super Hero

From the Bob Beattie Ski Foundation

An hour-long tribute film, Spider Lives is a journey into the rich history of ski racing. It chronicles Spider Sabich’s career trajectory from racing phenom to Olympian to World Cup victor to pro racing luminary, including the epic season-long battle with Olympic triple-gold-medalist Jean-Claude Killy for the 1973 World Pro Ski title. Previously untold stories recount the talent, charisma, generosity and celebrity of a once-in-a-generation superstar who seemed destined to become an industry icon in his post-competitive life. He was tragically killed in his home in Aspen at age 31.

The film, along with Sabich’s recent induction into the Hall of Fame, places the legendary skier in his rightful place among the pantheon of great American ski champions. According to the producers, the film was created because of the great love Sabich’s friends still hold for him. While financial constraints have made this production rough, it meets ISHA’s criteria for an award because of its oral-history content. A dizzying array of skiing colorfully illuminates not only Sabich’s life but explains the spirit of the decade during which he was at the top of our sport.

Dear Rider: The Jake Burton Story

An HBO Documentary
Director: Fernando Villena
Producer: Ben Bryan

This 90-minute documentary recounts the life and work of Jake Burton Carpenter, who turned the Snurfer snow-toy into the billion-dollar snowboarding industry. After bailing on a Wall Street career, Burton began making laminated hardwood snowboards in a backyard shed in 1977. He learned that in order to sell product, he needed to build a sport and set out to do just that by organizing snowboard competitions and signing young athletes.

With wife and partner Donna, he realized that his target market was teenagers. Then, facing institutional inertia at ski resorts, the company cannily seized on the rebellious spirit of a new generation as Burton’s marketing theme. Today, two years after Burton’s death at age 65, Donna runs a company with annual revenue of about $400 million.

Jake and Donna loved shooting home movies. The documentary makes great use of intimate family footage, handheld scenes of early snowboarding and, notably, high-quality audio interviews with Burton himself. What comes through, in addition to his passions for family life and riding, is his focused, territorial approach to commercial competition. This manifested in his feud with Tom Sims, a grudge against mainstream media and pugnacious opposition to letting FIS and the IOC take charge of snowboarding competition. Burton was a creative force of nature on a par with a character like Yvon Chouinard—able to strike out in a new direction, unify a culture and pull millions of customers along for the ride.

The title “Dear Rider” comes from the salutation Burton used at the top of his annual letter to snowboarders, published in the company catalog and read in the film by Woody Harrelson. 

Stream Dear Rider on HBO

120 Years Ski Club Arlberg

Blue Danube Media

In German, with English subtitles

Founded by six passionate mountaineers in 1901, the Ski Club Arlberg became the cradle of Alpine ski teaching and racing in Austria.

In 1907, at age 17, Hannes Schneider joined St. Anton’s Hotel Post, and the area’s ski club, as the first professional instructor in town, and after World War I his influence spread worldwide. With Arnold Lunn, Schneider organized the first Arlberg-Kandahar downhill race in 1928, when Alpine skiers still free-heeled on edgeless skis. As ski equipment improved and the sport grew popular, Schneider sent disciples across the globe—particularly to North America—to spread the gospel. When American friends liberated him from a Nazi jail in 1938, Schneider fled to New Hampshire.

This 24-minute film begins with a color portrait of the ski club as it exists today—as a training ground for local kids headed for international competition and as a social center for more than 9,000 skiers around the world. It then paints the history of skiing in Lech, St. Cristophe and St. Anton in broad strokes. Along with old footage of the Schneider days and of champion racer Karl Schranz, the film features interviews with Olympic champions from Trude Jochum-Beiser to Patrick Ortlieb. 

See the film at skiinghistory.org/resources/video/120-years-ski-club-arlberg

Ski Jumping in Washington State
A Nordic Tradition
By John W. Lundin

Ski jumping, once Washington’s most popular winter sport, was introduced by Norwegian immigrants in the early 20th century. In the Pacific Northwest, competitive jumping began at Rossland, British Columbia, in 1898. The sport migrated to Spokane’s Browne’s Mountain in 1913 and Seattle’s Queen Anne Hill in 1916, moved to midsummer tournaments on Mount Rainier in 1917 and expanded statewide as new ski clubs formed. Washington tournaments attracted the world’s best jumpers—Birger and Sigmund Ruud, Alf Engen, Sigurd Ulland and Reidar Andersen, among others. In 1941, Torger Tokle set two national distance records there in just three weeks. Regional ski areas hosted national and international championships as well as Olympic tryouts, entertaining spectators until Leavenworth’s last tournament in 1978.

Big-hill ski jumping in the Northwest suffered a major blow when the Milwaukee Road Ski Bowl at Hyak burned down in 1949 and was not rebuilt. By the 1970s, public interest had faded and the Northwest’s historic facilities were all dismantled. Leavenworth’s really big jump was the last to go. Unsustainable maintenance and insurance costs contributed to the demise.

Seattle-based lawyer, historian and award-winning author John W. Lundin re-creates the excitement of this nearly forgotten ski jumping heritage. The book was written in conjunction with an exhibit put together by the National Nordic Museum and the Washington State Ski and Snowboard Museum. This is the author’s third ISHA Skade Award: He was honored in 2018 for Early Skiing on Snoqualmie Pass and in 2021 for Skiing Sun Valley: From the Union Pacific to the Holdings. –Seth Masia 

Ski Jumping in Washington State: A Nordic Tradition by John W. Lundin, History Press, 226 pages. $32.99 hardbound, $23.99 softcover.

Celebrate Winter
An Olympian’s Stories of a Life in Nordic Skiing
By John Morton

A Middlebury College graduate and Vietnam War veteran, John Morton participated in seven Olympics, twice as an athlete for the U.S. Biathlon Team. He served as chief of course for Biathlon events at the Salt Lake City Olympics, and for 11 years was head coach for the Dartmouth College Ski Team. In 1989 he founded Morton Trails, designing cross-country trail systems.

Much of this book is taken from Morty’s radio broadcasts for Vermont Public Radio. The chapters cover a range of topics, elucidating the history of American Nordic skiing in the 1970s and ’80s. Celebrate Winter is an encyclopedia of sorts. Morty writes of his adventures coaching and acting as a team leader at Olympic Games and World Championships. Much of this stuff is hilarious, including “Victory in the Sauna” and “The Joys of Roller Skiing,” while other chapters convey key aspects of cross-country, such as the “The Art and Magic of Waxing Cross-Country Skis.”

Morty is at his best when he waxes philosophical. Few authors describe so well the benefits of international competition. He writes about his friendship with the top Russian biathlete, Alexander Tikhonov. Morty raised money from his athletes to buy a U.S. rifle (of all things!) for his Russian friend. I, too, was very friendly with the Russians on their XC and Nordic combined teams, and even helped them out with some waxing needs. I’m sure we were both criticized by our conservative friends, but Morty covers the idea of friendship among athletes from different countries.

It’s a wonder that U.S. skiers ever moved ahead in the results during these years. “Nordies” had no full-time paid staff. Coaches were assigned as needed at the Olympics or the World Championships, given a plane ticket and sent on their way. Most of the money went to Alpine. I was the cross-country coach for the U.S. Ski Team during this period, and I can corroborate or even expand on Morty’s text.

This is a must-read for skiers of any sort. And you can find out what Morty has been doing all this time. –John Caldwell

Celebrate Winter: An Olympian’s Stories of a Life in Nordic Skiing, by John Morton. Independently published. 6 x 9 inches, 260 pages. Paperback $14.95 (Kindle edition $2.99).

Written in the Snows
Across Time on Skis in the Pacific Northwest
By Lowell Skoog

Written in the Snows is a comprehensive history of skiing—mainly of ski mountaineering—in the Northwest. Well-researched and sustained by a gripping narrative, the book takes the reader on an exhilarating ride as the backcountry skiing reaches ever higher elevations and levels of difficulties to the point where even the best practitioners are forced to recognize their limits.

Surmounted by Mt. Rainier, the high peaks of the Cascades trapped every drop of moisture brought by prevailing winds off the Gulf of Alaska. The profound snowfall was impassable in winter, until, in 1887, the Northern Pacific Railroad crossed Stampede Pass. The Great Northern crossed Stevens Pass in 1893, and the Milwaukee Railroad crossed Snoqualmie Pass in 1909. Seattle-area skiers, rich with Scandinavian immigrants, quickly pioneered ski trails branching off the rail lines, building small hotels and ski cabins in promising high meadows. In 1906, 151 women and men chartered The Mountaineers. The club has organized outings, winter and summer, ever since and served as a locus for jumping tournaments, racing, and exploratory expeditions.

Lowell Skoog, an ardent practitioner of high-altitude, self-propelled skiing, brings dozens of key events to vivid life, going so far as to replicate, on his own and with friends, some of the pioneering routes and early races. He explains how skiing has been shaped by larger social trends, including immigration, the Great Depression, war, economic growth, conservation and the media, and recounts the adventures of local characters like Milnor Roberts, Olga Bolstad, Hans Otto Giese, Bill Maxwell, Gretchen Kunigk, Don Fraser and John Woodward.

There are excellent photo illustrations throughout and a useful appendix covering ski mountaineering highlights, plus a very useful glossary, valuable listings of references and resources, and a superb index.

As a skier, climber, writer and photographer, Skoog has been a keen observer of Northwest mountaineering since the 1970s. He is the creator of the Alpenglow Gallery and founder of the Northwest Mountaineering Journal, websites that celebrate local mountain culture, and he was a key member of the team that launched the Washington State Ski and Snowboard Museum. Skoog is the chairman of The Mountaineers History and Library committee. He lives in Seattle.

This is the author’s second ISHA Award. He won the 2010 ISHA Cyber Award for alpenglow.org. –Seth Masia

Written in the Snows: Across Time on Skis in the Pacific Northwest, by Lowell Skoog. Mountaineers Books, 7 x 9 inches, 336 pages. Paperback $29.95 (Kindle edition $14.99)

Thirty Years in a White Haze
Dan Egan’s Story of Worldwide Adventure and the Evolution of Extreme Skiing
By Dan Egan & Eric Wilbur

Dan Egan’s autobiography is a colorful inside look at the evolution of “extreme” skiing into what we now call big-mountain free-skiing. Dan was a multi-talented athlete with a good business head. Emerging from a large, devout yet unruly Catholic family, he found success in skiing, soccer and sailing. But sports, and the related party scenes, interfered with academics. It took a sporadically heroic effort of self-discipline to complete a college degree in marketing.

After joining his older brother John as a star of Eric Perlman and Warren Miller films, Egan’s talent for marketing enabled him to line up lucrative sponsorships. He seized on emerging VCR technology to become a video-distribution mogul as president of Egan Entertainment Network. Twenty-five years later, after digital technology made VCR distribution obsolete, Dan had to reinvent himself. He went on to careers in ski resort management and marketing; coaching skiing; soccer and sailing; journalism; and consulting on a wide range of video and sponsorship projects in skiing and sailing.

Sibling rivalry was brought to a crisis in 1990, after Dan survived a fatal 38-hour storm high on 18,500-foot Mt. Elbrus in the Russian Caucasus. The brothers went on to collaborate on many more projects, including their X-Treme ski clinics held across North America, and in Chamonix, Val d’Isère and other European destinations. Dan and John Egan were elected to the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame in 2016.

Co-author Eric Wilbur is a journalist who has been covering the New England sports, travel and skiing scenes for nearly three decades. His written work has appeared in the Boston Globe, New England Ski Journal, Boston.com, Boston Metro, and various other publications. He fell in love with skiing at an early age, a dedication to the sport that only increased upon moving to Vermont during his college years. He lives with his wife and three children in the Boston area. This is his first book. –SM

Thirty Years in a White Haze: Dan Egan’s Story of Worldwide Adventure and the Evolution of Extreme Skiing, by Dan Egan & Eric Wilbur. Degan Media, Inc., 6 x 9”, 418 pages, paperback. $39.95 (Kindle edition $9.99)

Ski Jumping in Washington State
A Nordic Tradition
By John W. Lundin

Ski jumping, once Washington’s most popular winter sport, was introduced by Norwegian immigrants in the early 20th century. In the Pacific Northwest, competitive jumping began at Rossland, British Columbia, in 1898. The sport migrated to Spokane’s Browne’s Mountain in 1913 and Seattle’s Queen Anne Hill in 1916, moved to midsummer tournaments on Mount Rainier in 1917 and expanded statewide as new ski clubs formed. Washington tournaments attracted the world’s best jumpers—Birger and Sigmund Ruud, Alf Engen, Sigurd Ulland and Reidar Andersen, among others. In 1941, Torger Tokle set two national distance records there in just three weeks. Regional ski areas hosted national and international championships as well as Olympic tryouts, entertaining spectators until Leavenworth’s last tournament in 1978.

Big-hill ski jumping in the Northwest suffered a major blow when the Milwaukee Road Ski Bowl at Hyak burned down in 1949 and was not rebuilt. By the 1970s, public interest had faded and the Northwest’s historic facilities were all dismantled. Leavenworth’s really big jump was the last to go. Unsustainable maintenance and insurance costs contributed to the demise.

Seattle-based lawyer, historian and award-winning author John W. Lundin re-creates the excitement of this nearly forgotten ski jumping heritage. The book was written in conjunction with an exhibit put together by the National Nordic Museum and the Washington State Ski and Snowboard Museum. This is the author’s third ISHA Skade Award: He was honored in 2018 for Early Skiing on Snoqualmie Pass and in 2021 for Skiing Sun Valley: From the Union Pacific to the Holdings. –SM 

Ski Jumping in Washington State: A Nordic Tradition by John W. Lundin, History Press, 226 pages. $32.99 hardbound, $23.99 softcover.

The Education of Lindsey Vonn

“What were you thinking in the starting gate?” If you’re annoyed every time you hear a reporter ask this of a skiing champion, read Lindsey Vonn’s memoir, Rise. It answers the question definitively.

The title has a double meaning. More confessional than autobiography, Rise recounts not only Vonn’s ascent to the top of the ski-racing food chain, but her career-long challenge to surmount depression, social anxiety and six or eight potentially career-ending surgeries. It records her psychological growth from a stubbornly determined nine-year-old to a sobered, self-aware 36-year-old.

Vonn has always been a mystery to her admirers. She appears to possess an obsessive-compulsive work ethic along with incredible physical courage. Rise reveals that the source of the work ethic is an overwhelming impulse to honor the sacrifices her family had made on behalf of her career—and a generalized compulsion to please people. On top of that, she lacks the instinct for self-preservation—a psychological quirk that led to skiing on the edge of the possible, especially when hurt. Time and again Vonn defied injuries to knees and self-esteem, and set a new standard of competition. She often had the support of people who loved her but just as often fell victim to the isolation of clinical depression—an imbalance of brain chemistry that seems to be her only physical flaw.

Rise doesn’t pretend to be a record of 434 starts, 148 podiums and 85 wins in World Cup, World Championship and Olympic events. Vonn recounts only the races she regards as turning points. There’s some nut-and-bolts stuff, too: her choice of men’s skis, finding speed in the fall line and the processes of rehab. Perhaps there’s another book to be written, with gate-by-gate accounts of her greatest races. But this one is a doozy. —Seth Masia

Rise, by Lindsey Vonn. Dey Street Books (2022), hardcover, 336 pages, $28.99 (Kindle edition $14.99)

Skade Award: New England’s Backcountry Trails

In The Best Backcountry Skiing in the Northeast: 50 Classic Ski and Snowboard Tours in New England and New York, David Goodman has created a comprehensive and timely guidebook for the renaissance of backcountry skiing. The book covers the premier ski tours in New Hampshire (detailing 21 of them), Maine (5), Vermont (18), New York (5) and Massachusetts (1). What impressed ISHA—and is key for the preservation of skiing’s roots—is Goodman’s inclusion of each locality’s skiing history.

Each of the 50 numbered tours begins with an overview, followed by trail statistics (elevations, distances, difficulty and how-to-get-there hints). An Appalachian Mountain Club topographical map for each region is included that’s overlaid with the color-coded ski trails, followed by the skiing history of that region. The tours are described in elegant and informative detail, most often accompanied by a beautiful color photograph of a skier or snowboarder enjoying a key feature of the route.

The layout and writing are engaging, and the author’s love for his sport is evident on every page: from the technicalities of Tuckerman’s Ravine to the beauty of Acadia National Park to the preservation challenges and deep powder on Big Jay. Even backcountry skiers who are not from the East will want to ski some of these tours after reading the book, and those who have let their backcountry involvement lapse will likely be enticed back. Backcountry skiing still represents the elemental roots of our sport, with its telemark turns, skins and untracked snow.

Goodman thought his first book, published in 1988, would sell 100 copies (95 of them to his friends). Four iterations later, and as Covid drives skiers away from crowds and into the backcountry, this edition seems to be the right book, at the right time. Goodman knows what he’s doing and he knows how to do it well. —Bob Soden

The Best Backcountry Skiing in the Northeast: 50 Classic Ski and Snowboard Tours in New England and New York, by David Goodman. From the Appalachian Mountain Club publishers (2020), softcover, 312 pages, $21.95

Ullr Award: 36 Artists

Skiing In the Eye of the Artist, the latest book from E. John B. Allen, the author of Skiing History’s Ski Art column (see page 9), is a gem. In a pocket-sized format, it gathers 43 paintings, posters and drawings from 36 19th- and 20th-century artists (plus a bonus cover). The selected images are charming, ranging from nationalistic to satirical, promotional to contemplative. Landscapes, magazine illustrations, cartoons and fine art are represented, from Scandinavia, the Alps, the Balkans and North America. The lively artist biographies facing each color plate constitute a short course in the history of ski art.

Allen is a retired professor of history and a member of the Skiing History editorial board. He has written for this magazine since time immemorial, and this book is his fourth to win an ISHA award. In addition, in 2009 Allen received ISHA’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

I received Eye of the Artist as a Christmas gift and gobbled it right up. It would fit in a stocking. —Seth Masia

Skiing in the Eye of the Artist by E. John B. Allen. Egoth Verlag, hardbound, 86 pages, 8 x 5 inches, $18.41

Skade Award: Harris Hill Jump

Harris Hill Ski Jump: The First 100 Years provides a faithful and detailed account of the origins and history of this iconic ski jump in Brattleboro, Vermont. A storied venue, now an Olympic sized, 90-meter ski jump—and the only one in New England—Harris Hill has hosted 18 U.S. national and regional championships since its inauguration.

The book is the product of a nonprofit group effort, the 100th Anniversary Committee: Mel Martin (creative director), Kevin O’Connor (writer), Dana Sprague (historian), Lynn Barrett, Pat Howell, Sally Seymour, Heidi Humphrey (designer) and Kelly Fletcher (photo editor).

Fred Harris, founder of the Dartmouth Outing Club in 1910, launched the Brattleboro Outing Club in 1922 and immediately led a fund-raising drive to build the jump. With $2,200 and a few helpers, Harris built the initial structure. He also designed the first Winged Ski Trophy, crafted by Cartier. The hill was officially named after its creator in 1951.

Though the jump was upgraded and extended continuously over the years, in 2005 the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association decreed the antiquated wooden tower unsafe for competitions. A new community funding effort was launched to raise the estimated $1 million required to restore it. By 2007 the town had raised only $250,000; then the Morton Foundation of New York sailed in to the rescue with a check for $130,000 and assurances that more would be available when required. The re-engineered jump opened on Valentine’s Day in 2009, at a final cost of $600,000.

Many ski jumping luminaries have taken flight in Brattleboro over the years, including Birger Ruud, Torger and Art Tokle, Art Devlin and Hugh Barber. Harris Hill has been open to women jumpers since 1948; the Olympics would not follow suit until 2014.

This book is lavishly illustrated with archival images and documents (thanks in part to the collaboration of Jeff Leich at the New England Ski Museum) and more current color photographs. It also catalogues the winners over the jump’s 100-year run, the names of those who retired six of the winged trophies and a detailed timeline. —Bob Soden   

Harris Hill Ski Jump: The First 100 Years by the 100th Anniversary Committee. Harris Hill Ski Jump, Inc. (2021), softcover, 120 pages, $28.95

To Heaven's Heights: An Anthology of Skiing in Literature, by Ingrid Christophersen

Skiing has produced its share of good literature. The sport owes its worldwide popularity in great part to the writing skills of Fritdjof Nansen and Arnold Lunn. Novelists who wrote about skiing, either occasionally or only once, include Arthur Conan Doyle, Ernest Hemingway, Irwin Shaw, Romain Gary, Thomas Mann, D.H. Lawrence, Graham Greene, John Cheever, John Updike, James Salter, Gay Talese, Oakley Hall and Leon Uris. Thrillers often toss in a ski chase, a few of them believable. Now and then a magazine of literary quality—The New Yorker or Harper’s for example—picks up a lengthy bit of journalism. Not a few “real” lifelong skiers have produced lyrical work.

The last time some gems of skiing literature were gathered together in English was the 1982 anthology The Ski Book, edited by Morten Lund, Bob Gillen and Michael Bartlett. Now Ingrid Christophersen offers her favorite selections in To Heaven’s Heights: An Anthology of Skiing in Literature.

Christophersen retired in 2019 after a lifetime of racing, teaching and coaching. She was a FIS delegate and coached five decades for Britain’s Downhill Only Ski Club, traditional rival to the Kandahar Ski Club. Born in Norway, Christophersen has the advantage of fluency in some half a dozen languages.

And that is her book’s strength. It draws equally from Scandinavian and English-language sources. Many of the Norwegian excerpts, comprising about half the content, Christophersen translated specifically for this book, and are therefore available in English for the first time. I found delightful surprises amongst these authors, many of whom wrote about adventures in childhood, or as young adults. But there’s a lengthy passage from the Kalevala, the Finnish folk epic, a revelation.

Many of the excerpts run just a page or two, and I often wanted more. Christophersen has given me a new list of books I want to read in full. I therefore wished for publishing details on the books from which the excerpts are drawn, so I could find them without resorting to much internet searching.

To Heaven’s Heights grabbed me, and I wound up reading its 70-odd chapters in two days. 

To Heaven’s Heights: An Anthology of Skiing in Literature. Compiled by Ingrid Christophersen, MBE. London: Unicorn Publishing Group (unicornpublishing.org), 2021. 336 pages, hardbound. $45 (Kindle edition available).

Ski Life

At the FIS meeting in Oslo in 1930, the Norwegians finally voted to include Alpine skiing into the FIS championship program, and they would soon reap dividends. A number of youngsters living in the Holmenkollen area quickly took advantage of the steep slopes on the west side of the mountain. This biography focuses on one of them, the exceptionally talented Alpine skiing champion Andreas Wyller.

As Liv Wiborg documents, the emergence of Alpine skiing in the Holmenkollen/Tryvann area above Oslo was enabled by the extension of the “T-Bane” (municipal commuter rail system) to Frognerseteren in 1916. The improved access resulted in more residential development. Wyller’s family moved to the “heights” at Voksenlia. With his siblings he could ski from the front door. By the late 1920s the neighborhood included many youngsters who would make their mark in Alpine racing, including Wyller’s next-door neighbors Stella and Johanne Dybwad, his good friends Thorleif Schjelderup and Tomm Murstad and, down the road at Besserud, the Eriksen family (Marius was three years younger than Andreas).

In 1933 Tryvannskleiva, one of the relatively steep slopes on Holmenkollen’s west side, opened as a slalom hill. Wyller then focused on slalom and downhill. National championships and selection to the Norwegian FIS teams followed. The Dybwad sisters and the very precocious Laila Schou Nilsen also qualified. But war clouds were gathering. On the night of April 8-9, 1940, Wyller and a group of racers returned from the national championships, arriving in Oslo to a station in chaos. German troops had invaded Norway by air and sea. The royal family and the cabinet were desperately trying to escape northward by train.

Wiborg captures the confusion, uncertainty and isolated moments of heroism following the invasion. The young men gravitated to Nordmarka, the extensive forested part of Oslo that they knew so well. There, a number of huts provided temporary shelter as they discussed how to respond to German occupation. Gradually, networks arose to enable resistance, routes were established to assist those fleeing to the relative safety of Sweden or England, and connections were made to the British Special Operations Executive (formed to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance). After roughly a year Wyller made the dangerous escape to England via a fishing boat to the Shetland Islands, and from there went to London to join the RAF. He was quickly sent to Canada for flight training, at the base outside Toronto known as “Little Norway,” arriving there on June 11, 1941.

Norwegians stationed there wanted to ski. The camp commander, Ole Reistad, who was a noted athlete (Holmenkollen ski jumping competitions in 1916, modern pentathlon at the 1920 Summer Olympic Games, and gold medalist at the 1928 Winter Olympics in the military ski patrol), encouraged participation in civilian ski events. The flight school received invitations from a number of colleges and from both the Canadian and American ski associations. Reistad took a group of skiers, including Marius Eriksen, to the Winter Carnival at Dartmouth in February 1941. Wiborg explains how flying cadet Ola Gert Myklebust Aanjsen, of Trondheim, became the 1942 U.S. National Jumping Champion.

After finishing his training in multi-engine aircraft, Wyller was named pilot on a 10,000-mile tour around the U.S. to raise funds for Little Norway. He returned to London on February 11, 1943, and was assigned to RAF Coastal Command 333 (Norwegian) Squadron out of Leuchars, Scotland. With navigator Bård Karl Benjaminsen, he flew fast Mosquito fighter-bombers, attacking German shipping off the Norwegian coast. On February 23, 1944, they tangled with a twin-engine Ju 88; both planes crashed into the sea. In 1994, on the 50th anniversary of his death, a plaque honoring Wyller was installed at the base of Wyllerløypa, the longest, steepest run at the Oslo Winter Park.

This is a valuable book. Wiborg has appended a helpful list of sources by chapter. An index and better editing would have been appreciated.  

Andreas Wyller: alpinist, motstandsmann og krigsflyver by Liv H. Wiborg, John Grieg Forlag (2020), hardcover, 340 pages. In Norwegian.

Must-Read for Sun Valley Fans

Skiing Sun Valley is a deeply researched, scholarly book about the connections between the Sun Valley of today and the people, places, cultures, economics, wars, inventions, wilderness, ecology, risks and personal relationships in the 19th and 20th centuries that made it what it will be in the 21st. Every aspect of the story is accompanied by an abundance of photos that on their own are worth the price of the book. Every person with a connection to and love for Sun Valley will be better informed, inspired and wiser after reading it.

The first paragraph of the epilogue says it all: Sun Valley has had a history like no other ski resort, since Averell Harriman started it in 1936 as a tool to restore passenger revenue for the Union Pacific Railroad in the middle of the Great Depression, saying, “We didn’t run it to make money; we ran it to be a perfect place.” Sun Valley had a monopoly on skiing grandeur for several decades, and it influenced areas that were developed later. In its over 80 years of existence, the resort has had only three owners, each showering it with love, support, and money, and each taking it to a higher level.

Skiing is a microcosm of the larger world, and Skiing Sun Valley explores some of its racism, sexism, inequality and Nazi connections, as well as its better-known ties to Hollywood glamour and celebrities from world and U.S. politics, economics, athletics, cuisine and crime. These dynamics are still alive in the world, but the reader learns how Sun Valley has contributed to making it a better place than it was in 1936.

The profound and lasting impact Sun Valley has had on American and world Alpine ski racing, backcountry skiing, Nordic racing, ski jumping and freestyle skiing is more rigorously and clearly explored in this book than in any other.

There are enough typos, misspellings (my favorite is Monroc for Monroe, as in Marilyn) and errors in attribution of sources to show that the book was not as deeply copyedited or proofread as it was researched. Some of my own work is included in the book, where there are mistakes in attribution. One excerpt I don’t remember writing, and which is not the sort of material I would write, is attributed to something I did write—but that excerpt is not in it. Like every history, Skiing Sun Valley is not perfect—but it is a must-read for Sun Valley aficionados.

Skiing Sun Valley begins with this:

This book is dedicated to filmmaker and philosopher Warren Miller (1924–2018). Warren will always be associated with Sun Valley through his ski movies and his early days living in a freezing cold trailer in a parking lot at the resort with the approval of Sun Valley’s manager Pat Rogers, who felt Warren offered “local color.” He inspired my generation to seek freedom through skiing. When I was growing up, the ski season in Seattle did not start until Warren showed his new movie. He asked people to ski their favorite run when they heard of his death. His was Christmas Ridge at Sun Valley. Thanks for the memories.

And ends with this: Sun Valley, like all ski areas, faces severe challenges from global climate change. In the last few decades, 272 ski areas have closed in the United States, more than a third of the country’s total, because they could no longer count on sufficient snow. Snow conditions that currently exist at 6,000 feet will rise to 7,000 feet by 2025. A two-degree Celsius temperature change means ski resorts will have 32 fewer days each season for snowmaking at 7,400 feet. “Ski resorts are going to have to reconfigure their operations to get skiers and boarders higher than they currently go,” according to one environmental planner. “Then they are going to have to figure out a way to get them back to the bottom—a bottom that may be more mud than snow in another 30 years. Some resorts may have to go to plastic grass that can be skied on year round.” No matter what happens in the future, Sun Valley will remain one of the world’s great ski areas and a lasting memorial to the vision of Averell Harriman, as enhanced by Bill Janss and the Holding family. 

Skiing Sun Valley: A History from Union Pacific to the Holdings by John W. Lundin. Published by History Press (2020), 528 page, hardcover, $50; Winner 2021 ISHA Skade Award.

A Skier’s Bucket List

This 616-page book is not something you lug to the beach. It’s a skiing media extravaganza that takes you from the Alpine heart of Europe through the Mediterranean—skiing on Corsica, anybody?—then to the north. Denmark’s green carpet of Neveplast on the roof of Copenhagen’s power plant can give you an 85-foot vertical, 365 days of the year. Move on to Eastern Europe, and to the Americas north and south, and elsewhere on the corners of the globe. This is, after all, Skiing Around the World, Volume II: Collecting Ski Resorts, by Jimmy Petterson.

Journey to the sands of Qatar and Oman, and to the massive indoor-skiing center of Dubai (104° F outside and 25° F inside). Continue to Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, North Korea—Kim Il Jung’s Masikryong does not compare well with PyeongChang, the 2018 Olympic venue in South Korea, especially for lifts.

Petterson travels as far east as Kamchatka and finishes in Antarctica: an exhausting, pleasurable, sometimes enchanting 45 chapters. Whew! You could consider it a hardcover skier’s bucket list.

How does Petterson do it—and on senior-citizen knees? The answer: live a life full of curiosity, as we are all told we should do, spiced up with the athletic joy to keep your body in motion. Every page supports that life theory. Here are magnificent skiing photographs: powder spumes follow Petterson making first tracks at Livigno and on pristine glaciers in Antarctica, then panoramic views of Kamchatka. Then ‘tourist’ photos: the author posing with skis on shoulder at St. Basil’s cathedral in Moscow, Ugandans and their animals, the 1,500-room Atlantic Palace Hotel in Dubai. There are enthusiasts skiing and swimming naked, and not a few celebrations, libations and guitar at hand.

Here I sit in rural New Hampshire and I revel in Petterson’s exploits. I ski along with him in the Alps and Scandinavia, at resorts I, too, have known, and I feel a nostalgic rush.

I turn a page or two and am in Peru, then Lesotho (not highly recommended), Greenland and the Ukraine. Turkey looks intriguing. There is a feel for the spray of powder, living free, and having a heck of a time of it for over 40 years. —E. John Allen

Skiing Around the World, Volume II: Collecting Ski Resorts by Jimmy Petterson, Published by Ski Bum Publishing Company, (2019), hardcover, $97, Winner: 2021 ISHA Baldur Award. www.skiingaroundtheworldbook.com

The Forgotten Race of the 10th Mountain Division

On June 3, 1945, the 10th Mountain Division of the US Army held a special race on Mount Mangart. At first glance, this is hardly a breathtaking announcement, but it was the first peace-time race, only 26 days after Germany’s unconditional surrender ended World War II in Europe. However, the authors of Američani na Mangartu 1945. Smučarska tekma 10. gorske divizije na Mangartu 3. junija 1945 (English translation: Americans on Mount Mangart: Ski Race of the 10th Mountain Division at Mount Mangart, Slovenia, on June 3, 1945) are more interested in detailing “a race long forgotten by Americans,” and one of which Slovenians—whose national winter sport is skiing—were unaware.

The race took place on Mount Mangart, 2,679 meters (8,789 feet), situated in today’s Slovenian Triglav National Park. This corner of the world has a varied border history whose modern roots lie in the line between the Kingdom of Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After World War I, a new border was drawn by the 1920 Rapallo Treaty. After World War II, the Morgan Line of demarcation separated Tito’s partisans and the area under Allied military administration. It was signed on June, 10, 1945, and lasted until September 15, 1947, so this ski race took place during the uncertain days of immediate post-war land settlements.

The book, in Slovenian but with chapter summaries in English, includes 10 papers presented at a conference titled Americans on Mount Mangart. The centerpiece is Brigadier Janez Kavar’s essay on the race itself. The essay details the top times: Sgt. Prager (1.05.2), followed by Sgt. Steve Knowlton six seconds back (1.11.4).

There were an astonishing number of DNFs. I can only suppose this is because none of the men had any real race practice while fighting in Italy. Readers will recognize Herbert Schneider, Dev Jennings, John Litchfield and Arthur Doucette to pick four prominent personalities among the 50 men listed.

Supporting essays explain the border problems (Karla Kofol), the general history of military skiing and the Yugoslav Partisan Olympics held in January 1945 (Aleš Guček). Col. Boštjan Blaznik, commander of the NATO Centre of Excellence for Mountain Warfare, presents an overview of modern military skiing.

The book also maintains that Alpina boots and Elan skis made their mark in North America as a result of the American connection. At just over 100 pages, with many photographs, the book brings this uncelebrated military race out of the shadows of
history. —E. John Allen

Americans on Mount Mangart: Ski Race of the 10th Mountain Division at Mount Mangart, Slovenia, on June 3, 1945. Editor: Janez Kavar. Proceedings Editor: Matijo Perko. Editor: Bohinjska Bela, Association of the Slovenian Military Mountaineers. Winner: 2021 ISHA Ullr Award. Available from tomaz.pirjevec@telemach.net.

Visions of Arlberg Past

There has been a recent focus on ski-history photography. In the United States, the interest ranges from an upcoming exhibition of 1950-2000 photos by the New England Ski Museum in Franconia, New Hampshire, to the donation of Ray Atkeson’s photo archive to the University of Oregon. In Europe, an exhibition is planned of the works of Emanuel Gyger and Arnold Klopfenstein, Swiss photographers of the 1920s and ’30s, by the Swiss Alpine Museum in Bern. And now here is Martin Rhomberg and Christof Thöny’s Sichtbar: Eugen Heimhuber: Fotographien am Arlberg und Hochtannberg (English translation: Eugen Heimhuber’s Vision: Photographs of the Arlberg and Hochtannberg.) It’s 128 pages of stunning photographs by Heimhuber (1879-1966), mostly from the 1920s but some earlier.

The book is sourced from a trove of 30,000 glass plates from Heimhuber and covers a number of his excursions. This is, the editors tell us, probably the largest photo collection (estimated 250,000 taken from 1876 to 1960) from a single source with documentation to go with it.

Sichtbar has four short essays in German and translations in English. Sections portray Stuben, St. Christof, St. Anton, Lech, Zürs and Warth. We see the Arlberg before any lifts. We see single and double ski spoor in a lonely line up the Widderstein in February 1911, and on the Schindler Spitz in 1920. It’s a world gone by.

There is St.Anton before the razzmatazz of industrial downhill skiing. And Zürs, today claiming 88 lifts, but the photos show the Edelweiss and Alpenrose inns alone in the landscape.

We learn the importance of regional pioneers such as Dr. Max Madlener of Kempten and Dr. Christof Müller of Immenstadt and, yes, there is a photo of Hannes Schneider jumping off the Rendelschanze (Rendel jump) in 1914. This book is a wonderful evocation of the Arlberg, through the lens of a skilled photographer. — E. John Allen

Eugen Heimhuber’s Vision: Photographs of the Arlberg and Hochtannberg edited by Martin Rhomberg and Christof Thöny. Published by Lorenzi Verlag (2019), 128 pages, hardcover, $30. Winner: 2021 ISHA Skade Award.

Mount Assiniboine: The Story

This coffee-table book, with 336 pages and 382 images, is a tribute to the many people who made Mount Assiniboine so special. Historian Chic Scott has written more than a dozen books on the Canadian Rockies and knows the collections of the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, perhaps, like no other. So it’s not surprising to find Mount Assiniboine: The Story full of evocative photos of the mountains and its people.

The first section starts with the local First Nations, followed by the explorers, priests, and early mountaineers. It ends with James Outram’s first ascent of Assiniboine in September 1901. Four more sections are dominated by personalities.

During 1913-1927, A.O. Wheeler promoted the area to mountaineers and tourists, and in 1922 the Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park came into existence. Then came two mercurial skiers, the Marquis degli Albizzi and Erling Strom, who brought the first skiers into Assiniboine and got the initial Assiniboine Lodge constructed. Strom’s 55-year tenure at the lodge introduces all sorts of characters: horse wranglers, Chinese cooks, guitar-strumming cowboys, dog-sled drivers, Swiss guides, pilots, and a parade of strong women, not least Lizzie Rummel, who ran her own camp for 20 years.

During World War II, the lodge was open only in summer. After the war, although summer tourism picked up, skiing tourists preferred the rope tow, t-bar, and chairlifts. The long haul to Assiniboine on cross-country skis was no longer attractive to clients who did not have a month to spend, but only a weekend for mountain skiing.

Part Five covers the Renner Years (1983-2010), introducing many improvements. It tells how regional bureaucracy at its worst almost removed Sepp and Barb Renner as hosts; they were about to leave the lodge when they learned that their contract had been renewed. After 2010, their work was taken on by their son and two friends—a happy ending.

This book includes the sources used, a good bibliography and index, which all add to the tales of camp and lodge living, to knowledge of the prime movers and to the story of those for whom the mountain came to dominate their lives. —E. John Allen   

Mount Assiniboine: The Story by Chic Scott. From Assiniboine Publishing (2020), hardcover, 336 pages and 382 images. $75. Available from The Assiniboine Lodge (assiniboinelodge.com)

The Winter Army, Les Peuples du Ski, Marcel Hirscher

Ullr Award: The Winter Army, by Maurice Isserman

With the publication of his new work, The Winter Army (a 2020 ISHA Ullr Award Winner), Professor Maurice Isserman of Hamilton College has made a valuable contribution to the substantial body of literature tracing the history of the US 10th Mountain Division in the Second World War. Using a variety of available sources written by both historians and the troopers themselves, he has woven a readable history of America’s ski troops from their founding in a New England tavern in 1940, through their rigorous training at Mount Rainier and Camp Hale in the Colorado Rockies, and to their very bloody but victorious campaign in Northern Italy at the very end of the war.

Though the book’s concentration is on the military rather than the skiing aspects of the 10th Mountain Division story, there are still many interesting references to the giants of American ski lore connected to the 10th, including Minnie Dole, Friedl Pfeifer, Pete Seibert and the rest. The author’s real strength is realized, however, when he explores aspects of the 10th Mountain Division’s combat experience that have not been fully covered in the many past works on the famous unit.

Isserman relies heavily on the memoirs of several Division members, especially Marty Daneman’s superb autobiography Do Well or Die. First-hand accounts detail unexplored events, notably the utter carnage on Mount della Torraccia immediately following the Division’s victories on Riva Ridge and Belvedere in February of 1945. Lt. Colonel John Stone made a tragic tactical error, placing his men in a forest to conceal them from German mortar and artillery fire. Isserman cites Daneman’s account of the horrendous results caused to hundreds of soldiers when explosives hit trees above and rained shrapnel into their foxholes and dugouts. While the 10th was perhaps the most well-conditioned and best-educated unit in the U.S. Army, no training could have avoided that catastrophe of failed battlefield leadership.

Another valuable contribution is Isserman’s focus on often-overlooked Nazi atrocities against the local Italian population. In Ronchidoso and elsewhere, SS units had recently murdered Italian children as retribution for partisan activity. When American troops found the bodies, they reacted with a renewed sense of urgency to beat back the Nazis and end the war in Europe.

Despite a few minor quibbles and oversights (the failure to note that ski champion Torger Tokle’s death was caused by friendly fire, the specific insistence that the 10th was not populated with an abnormally high percentage of Catholic, Jewish and Native American members when anecdotally it clearly was), The Winter Army is a fine addition to any ski and 10th Mountain Division library. —Charles J. Sanders

The Winter Army: The World War II Odyssey of the 10th Mountain Division, America’s Elite Alpine Warriors by Maurice Isserman. From Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 336 pages. Hardcover, $33; softcover $16.99, and Kindle editions.

Ullr Award: Skiing Peoples: 10,000 years of history, by Maurice Woerhlé

Where and when did skiing originate? The Ullr Award-winning Les Peuples du Ski: 10,000 ans d’histoire (Skiing Peoples: 10,000 years of history) tackles that question. In 1888, Fridtjof Nansen and his friend, the amateur philologist Andreas Hansen, theorized that it arose in the region between Lake Baikal and the Altai Mountains of Central Asia. From there, they surmised, it spread with migrating tribes to the rest of Siberia and Europe. In recent decades this theory has been accepted and promoted by Chinese and Mongolian anthropologists. Archaeological evidence for skiing in Central Asia goes back about 5,000 years, to the local bronze age.

But archaeological sites in European Russia and recent DNA evidence suggest that skiing began in the Southern Baltic region at the close of the last Ice Age. It then spread eastward all the way across Asia before Arctic tribes settled in what is now Finland, teaching their Scandinavian neighbors to ski.

This is the argument proposed by Maurice Woerhlé in this exhaustively researched book. Drawing on 50 years of Russian archaeology not previously published in the West, and on copious new DNA research, Woerhlé reconstructs the migrations of prehistoric tribes across Eurasia. As glaciers retreated from Europe beginning 15,000 years ago, nomadic hunters moved northeast from near the Pyrenees, and northwest from what is now Ukraine, to create a stable culture south and east of the Baltic. Here, flat marshy land promoted winter travel using sleds and dogs, snowshoes and skis. Tribes so equipped migrated quickly to the Urals and beyond. The Russian archaeologist Grigori Birov has unearthed sled runners and skis carbon dated more than 9,000 years old.

Woerhlé retired 20 years ago after a four-decade career as research engineer at Rossignol (he helped to create the Strato, and all alpine race skis thereafter). Since 2000, he has been traveling to archaeological sites, interviewing scientists, arranging for translations of their studies, and compiling this impressive book (in French). Skiing History will publish, in English, an extract later this year. –Seth Masia

Les Peuples du Ski: 10,000 Ans d’Histoire by Maurice Woehrlé. From Books on Demand, 324 pages, illustrated. €33 softcover, €11.99 e-book.

The 2021 ISHA Awards will be presented April 29 via webinar. See skiinghistory.org/events for details..

Marcel Hirscher: The Biography, edited by Alex Hofstetter

This is the official biography, in German, of Marcel Hirscher, Austria’s recently retired most celebrated skier. Assembled by sports journalist Alex Hofstetter, it draws on diary entries by trainer Michael Pircher, and input from PR chief Stefan Illek. They offer an explanation of the extraordinariness of Hirscher’s skiing career. “Sometimes,” as Hirscher himself said, “I found myself a puzzle.”

The book contains many short essays illustrated by numerous black and white photographs and several sixteen-page folios of photos. At the end are 27 pages of statistics, followed by 17 pages covering the years from Hirscher’s birth in 1989 to his first race in 1996, and on to his retirement in September 2019: a phenomenal career. For those who do not read German, these appendices are easily understandable.

One of the first photos shows airport wagons loaded with equipment, and five members of Team-H setting off for the 2019 Olympics in PyongChang, where Hirscher won gold medals in giant slalom and combined. The photo illustrates that Hirscher’s success was tied to people he trusted implicitly: the vital service-man, ski trainer, physical trainer, psychotherapist, and media man.

Hirscher also relied on the Ferdl-Factor, referring to his father Ferdinand, well known on Austrian television. Ferdinand ran a ski school at Annaberg and had put Marcel on skis at age two. As he grew up, Ferdinand recognized his son’s talent. “It was unbelievable how fast the kid skied,” said Ferdinand.

Ferdinand shot endless videos, piled up notes on equipment used, snow conditions, training. (“Our feet fit in the same shoes”). By 2006, Michael Pircher, at that time training the Austrian World Cup slalom team, saw “einen neuen Star kommen!” And so they worked on “Project Speed,” racing trips in America, all chronicled in Pircher’s diary entries, which give the tale immediacy.

Hirscher had also become an internet star: 605,000 followers on Instagram, 582,000 on Facebook, 179,000 on Twitter. His ‘retirement’ press conference in 2019 was held on prime-time ORF television and live-streamed around the world. It would not surprise me if his flashing style soon graces an Austrian postage stamp, joining the likes of Hermann Maier, Karl Schranz, Benjamin Raich, and Elisabeth Görgl.

In attempting to answer the puzzle of Hirscher, the authors have chosen the “race of all races,” the world championship slalom at Schladming in 2013. The previous winter Hirscher had won his first (of eight) overall World Cup titles. Now all of Austria waited for him to win gold, on native soil. The night before the race, he had not slept, had a stiff neck, migraine and was absolutely washed out. But the next day, 55.47 seconds after he left the starting gate, the 1.9 million Austrians watching on television and 50,000 watching from the side-lines let loose; Hirscher had not failed them.

If he had not skied to the gold medal, he said, “They will slaughter me.” The Schladming race, where he had felt that “a herd of wild dogs was at his heels,” remained for him “the most emotional, impressive victory of my career.” The authors conclude that Marcel no longer has to function like a machine, but has to learn how to live. He will manage all right, “ganz sicher,” that’s certain. —E. John B. Allen   

Marcel Hirscher, die biografie, by Alex Hofstetter, Stefan Illek and Michael Pricher. Available from: Egoth Verlag (egot.at). € 29.90