Readers Respond

What a wonderful compliation of history and music made available through the web site (“History of Ski Music and Song,” September-October 2021). Appreciation to the author, Charlie Sanders. I was especially impressed by his wide ranging and through knowledge of ski related songsters from the 1950s and 1960s. Mr. Sanders really blew my mind as he described the contribution of Mike Cohen’s collection of ski songs, To Hell With Skiing! published in 1967 and his description of the contributions made by Mr. Cohen’s ski lodge Trailside, near Killington, Vermont. Mr. Sanders’ recollections were spot on and brought back a flood of memories. In the 1960s I had the opportunity to stay at Trailside. It truly was a life changing experience. Entertainment was provided by the guests themselves. Instruments hung from the living room walls. All were invited to take an instrument and share a story, tune or a song. It was the coolest thing a young teenager from the ’burbs like myself could experience. I should also add that my photograph is included as part of a song in To Hell With Skiing! I am “The Cold Skier Man.”

Mark Plaat
Albany, New York

Jubel to Norway

Congratulations with a very Norwegian issue in September-October: An extensive story on Kari Traa, review of the book on Andreas Wyller (who won two of the three first national championships, in 1938 and 1940, and led the clearing of the trail which carries his name), and then the Northland story involved several Norwegians. Keep it up!

Jon Vegard Lunde
Lillehammer, Norway

Farewell to Ron LeMaster

Ron was a very humble and quiet person, yet he produced the most amazing photo sequences of ski runs. His analyses were phenomenal and his technical expertise superb, all documented by the undeniable evidence of his photography. The photos produced the most appealing confrontation and learning opportunity for everybody—experts, beginners, professionals, amateurs, J5 or Masters.

He skied at the University of Colorado and coached there from 1977-79. He graduated and taught in the Physics Department. His passion for the physical analysis of the ski turn was legendary. The Ski World will miss Ron, the artist of motion dissection.

Richard Rokos
Former University of Colorado Ski Coach
Boulder, Colorado

Northland Revived

Here’s a followup to the early history of Northland Skis (September-October 2021). We bought the Northland trademarks in 2013 and began selling skis we make by hand right here in Steamboat. It’s a modern all-mountain carving ski made of hickory/ash laminates in the Northland tradition, reinforced with Kevlar and carbon fiber, making a unique blend of traditional and modern materials. See our website northlandskis.com.

Peter Daley
Northland Skis
Steamboat Springs, Colorado

Here’s a postscript to the article “Northland Skis: Fire and Feuds in St. Paul” (September-October) about Christian Lund, Northland Skis, and Martin Strand, who produced some of the first high-quality skis for retail sale.

In 1931, Northland donated a “very good pair” of its heaviest jumping skis for the winner of the Cle Elum Ski Club tournament. Its letter said “nearly all of the best skiers prefer skis that weigh around 15 lbs. or slightly less. It is our opinion that whenever a pair of jumping skis goes beyond 16 lbs. in weight, they are too heavy, no matter how large the hill.” Their local dealer in Cle Elum, Washington, Parchen Hardware, displayed the skis before the tournament.

The company’s letterhead has a picture of C.A. Lund, president, saying he had “taken part in many tournaments abroad and in this country, and has kept in close contact with the sport and with skiers of prominence. Mr. Lund has followed and aided in the development and growing popularity of skiing and is a recognized authority on the sport.”

John W. Lundin
Seattle, Washington

More on Megève

Regarding my article “Baroness Mimi and Mont d’Arbois,” (November-December 2021), I’d like to add that Megève heads into its second century as a partnership between Benjamin de Rothschild and the Four Seasons Hotels group, rechristened the Four Seasons Hôtel Megève. Pampered guests will find first-class amenities, Michelin-starred food and an exquisite spa. Ariane de Rothschild led the interior design work with a view to maintaining a connection to the resort’s past.

Bob Soden
Montreal

Letters to the Editor: We’re All Ears

There may not be a more experienced and distinguished readership in the ski industry than ISHA’s audience. We’d like to hear from you. Send letters to the editor to seth@skiinghistory.org. Please include your name and your town of residence.

To elaborate on “Better Than Wool” (March-April 2021), Polarfleece was an evolutionary product. The first polyester fiber insulations were created in the mid-1960s by compressing nonwoven Dupont Dacron and Celanese Fortrel, used in quilted outerwear. Later, nonquilted jackets used a tougher version made on a needle-punching machine. I made this stuff for the skiwear industry at our Seattle factory beginning in 1975; a competing factory made it in New England.

In 1978, 3M began manufacturing and selling Thinsulate in Asia. That disrupted North American insulation manufacture. U.S. skiwear makers had to compete with China. We needed a new U.S.-made synthetic insulation.

At Malden Mills, where I worked selling synthetic pile fabrics, we knew how to make sweatshirt fleece from cotton-polyester blends. In 1980, I asked Malden to make a blanket fleece fabric using a special Fortrel polyester fiber. This was fleece. It gave us a competitive product to the stuff made in Asia, and allowed skiwear brands to keep their sewing factories here in the U.S.A.

I need to add an environmental note: North American mills operate under strict EPA guidelines. Asian mills often poison their rivers. The more American products you buy, the cleaner the planet.

Doug Hoschek
Seattle, Washington

The Musical Origin of the Jim Dandy Ski Club

I enjoyed reading the article by Charlie Sanders, “A History of Ski Music and Song” (September-October 2021). . . . The nation’s first Black ski club, the Jim Dandy Ski Club, was formed in 1958 in Detroit, Michigan, named after the rhythm and blues song “Jim Dandy,” written by Lincoln Chase and first recorded by American singer LaVern Baker in 1956.

The song was recognized by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and included in Rolling Stone’s Greatest Songs of All Times. The song is about a man named Jim Dandy who rescues women from improbable situations. The lyrics begin with the phrases, “Jim Dandy to the rescue” and “Go, Jim Dandy,” and go on to describe the predicament: “I was sitting on a mountain top, 30,000 feet to drop.”

The ski club, which boasts 300 to 400 members, added to the song, “Jim Dandy does the hockey stop.” Members ski to the beat of the song. I would like to see more articles in the journal that reflect the contributions made by Black skiers, including African Americans, to skiing history. 

Naomi Bryson
Chandler, Arizona

Give Skiing History for the Holidays

Skiing History magazine is the perfect gift for the holidays. Go to skiinghistory.org/join to send a subscription to a friend, at a discounted gift rate.

Shop at smile.amazon.com and Amazon will donate .05 percent of your purchases to ISHA, at no cost to you.

Sign up at smile.amazon.com/ch/06-1347398. This link takes you directly to ISHA’s new AmazonSmile account, where you can make your usual Amazon purchases while providing a new funding source for ISHA. Just select Sign-in at the upper right corner of the page.

There is an interesting postscript to the article about bringing fashion to the Olympics (“Halston on Netflix: How Fashion Came to the Olympics,” July-August 2021). It involves Sun Valley and Kathleen Harriman, the daughter of the resort’s founder, Averell Harriman, who brought high fashion to the 1948 St. Moritz Olympics, well before Halston or Levi Strauss did so many years later.

(Photo above: 1948 U.S. Women's Ski Team in uniform; Utah Ski Archives)

Sun Valley played an important role in getting American skiers ready to compete in St. Moritz. Sun Valley hosted the 1948 Olympic tryouts “in a style that has surely never been equaled,” and paid for accommodations for the 40 men and 20 women skiers competing for Olympic berths, according to the 1948 American Ski Annual.

Kathleen Harriman was not only a fixture at Sun Valley, often accompanying her father to official events, she was an outstanding racer. She was on Bennington College’s ski team and won an Eastern Ski Championship. Kathleen and Gretchen Fraser were good friends, often skiing together at Sun Valley.

Kathleen Harriman Mortimer (in 1947, she married Stanley G. Mortimer, heir to the Standard Oil fortune) was in charge of the women’s uniforms for the 1948 Olympics. Drawing on her father’s contacts, according to the book Gretchen’s Gold, Kathleen collected a wardrobe designed by Fred Pickard of Pickards of Sun Valley. Jantzen did the grey-worsted gabardine ski suits. There also were poplin parkas with fur trim plus hand-knit sweaters by Marjorie Benedickter. Most impressive were wool alpaca coats, long black après-ski skirts and pure silk scarfs decorated with delightfully drawn skiers that Max Barsis—Sun Valley’s official watercolorist and cartoonist-in-residence—had dreamed up. As the ski suits did not come with belts, Gretchen added her own belt with the buckle she had won in the initial California Silver Belt race at Sugar Bowl in 1940.

There is no record of who paid for the Sun Valley inspired wardrobe for the 1948 U.S. women’s team, but the U.S. Olympic Committee, with a limited budget, certainly did not. One suspects that a small part of the vast Harriman or Mortimer fortunes paid for the fashionable outfits at St. Moritz.

John W. Lundin
Seattle, Washington

John W. Lundin is a lawyer, historian and author, and is one of the founding members of the Washington State Ski and Snowboard Museum (WSSSM). His book, Skiing Sun Valley: a History from Union Pacific to the Holdings, received a 2021 Skade award from ISHA. His most recent book, Ski Jumping in Washington State: a Nordic Tradition, was the companion to an exhibit on ski jumping at the National Nordic Museum in Seattle, co-sponsored by WSSSM, which John helped organize. 

Correcting the Record

The book review of Skiing Sun Valley (Media Reviews, July-August 2021) contains an error by the reviewer. The book did not include a misspelling of Marilyn Monroe. 

In “Seven Decades at Belleayre,” also in the July-August issue, a trail on Mt. Greylock was misidentified. It is the Thunderbolt Trail, not the Thunderbird Trail.

John Allen did a great job with “What Might Have Been” (March-April 2021), describing the possible mega-resort up at Ashcroft instead of down where we ski today in Aspen. In characterizing Billy Fiske, the spark plug behind the proposed development, I would offer a few details. Fiske produced Hopalong Cassidy movies and was an adventurous flyer known for his island-hopping flights across the Pacific. When he saw the above-treeline terrain in Joe Flynn’s photographs, he flew into Glenwood Springs to take a look. There was no airfield, so he picked a field and landed but had to pay the local power company to drop the power lines so he could take off. Fiske was a figure in British Society, reportedly arriving at the RAF airdrome, white scarf flying in his Bentley convertible, to fight in the Battle of Britain. In those early days of World War II, there were more pilots than Hurricane planes. Knowing their scarcity, Fiske coaxed his shot-up plane back to the field, landing despite a cockpit fire that was roasting him alive. He was the first American to be officially killed in action fighting the Germans. Just the year before in Colorado, he and Ted Ryan, his partner in the Highland Bavarian Company, purchased the Ashcroft ghost town and thousands of adjoining acres. John refers to my 1981 interview with Ryan that I featured in the film Legends of American Skiing. Without Fiske, the plans for the mega-resort fizzled. HBC’s surviving partner, Ted Ryan, passed Ashcroft and all the surrounding land to the U.S. Forest Service.

Rick Moulton
Chairman, ISHA Board of Directors
Huntington, Vermont

Painting of Fiske's final landing by John Howard Worsley/Tangmere Military Aviation Museum.

Inside the Domes

Patrick Thorne’s piece on indoor skiing (May-June 2021) was informative but didn’t address a key question: What’s the skiing like? Fifteen years ago, I did an October tour of what I called the Rhenish Alps: Four ski domes in four days in Germany, France and the Netherlands. The goal was to test a new ski design on winter snow, something unavailable in either hemisphere at that time of year. We skied Amnéville, Neuss, Bottrop and Landgraaf and found edgeable firm surfaces—not ice but not packed powder. What impressed me most were the buses parked outside each venue, transporting ski-club kids and coaches for off-season slalom training. The terrain isn’t steep enough for FIS-level slalom racing, but the snow surface was appropriate. Under the mercury-vapor lamps, it felt like night skiing. Sounds echoed off the walls and roof. 

Seth Masia
President, ISHA
Paonia, Colorado

Skiing inside the Alpincenter Bottrop: Youtube video

Paul Post’s “Back to the Future” (November-December 2020) brought back fond memories of the early days at West Mountain, of which my family was a major part. I faintly recall the opening day, December 25, 1961, when the first rope tow started spinning. The Brandt brothers (Mike, Claude and Paul) had commissioned my father, Tom Jacobs, to open the ski school and ski shop. The following season he started the junior race program at West and helped organize the Southern Adirondack Junior Racing League.

When Tom hired Izzy Ture in 1966 to take over the ski school and race program, West Mountain racing was well on its way to becoming a significant player on the New York scene. However, the pivotal moment came when Mike Annett was hired by Izzy in 1969 to run the race program.

I agree with Steve Lathrop that history may well repeat itself under his race department directorship. The program is blessed with the full support of West Mountain’s managers, Sara and Spencer Montgomery, who are providing a unique opportunity for high level training and racing at a very reasonable cost, something unique at resort and academy settings throughout the nation. It’s most gratifying to see the race program at West Mountain continue to flourish!

John Jacobs
Glens Falls, New York

Alta is for…?

The Goldminer’s Daughter’s matriarch, Elfriede Shane, recently departed this life at the age of 97. (See Remembering, page 31). Hers was a life lived with passion, purpose, generosity, wisdom and a boundless appetite for fun! 

When my parents, Neef and Shirlee Walker, took over operation of Alta’s Watson Shelter, Jim and Elfriede were among our family’s most constant friends. One afternoon during the 1966-67 season, Elfriede invited me, an eighth-grade student, to help her devise a suitable slogan for Alta. Elfriede kicked the discussion off with a suggestion I’ll never forget: “Alta + Skier = Happy!” After a short lull, my mother suddenly volunteered “Alta is for Skiers.” Elfriede’s face alit with a smile as telling as it was enthusiastic. “That’s it!” she proclaimed.

Tom Walker
Alta Historical Society
Alta, Utah

Gone Fishing

I greatly enjoyed the excellent article on the Seigniory Club (“Canada’s Forgotten Ski Center,” September-October). It’s entirely appropriate, of course, that an article on the Seigniory Club in Skiing History should focus on skiing and other winter activities, but the Club also catered to people with a passion for fishing and hunting.

As it happens, the father of a childhood friend contributed a team of horses to haul the many logs of which the main club building was constructed. His reward was access to Seigniory Club grounds for fishing and hunting. This gave my friend and me the chance to do a little fishing. Using only bits of white bread on a hook crudely knotted to a thick line on a rod and reel set bought for $1.49 at a Canadian Tire store, we were able to catch some decent brook trout. We would kill for an experience like that at the fishing club in Quebec to which I have belonged for more than 40 years.

Ivo Krupka
Canadian Ski Hall of Fame & Museum

Thank you, ISHA

I joined Skiing History in 2009 as a part-time freelance assistant editor at the invitation of John Fry to start training and learning under editor-in-chief Dick Needham, who stepped down in 2010. Over the years, my duties expanded as I took on duties as Director of Operations and eventually Executive Director.

In 2018, I decided to toss my hat in the ring and run for the Vermont House of Representatives. I won. Then I won re-election in November 2020. I am passionate about public service and the role that grassroots community leaders can and must play in guiding us to a more equitable and unified future. So while I will dearly miss my daily involvement with ISHA, I look forward to my new role as a legislator. (Learn more at my website: kathjamesforstaterep.com.)

I loved my years at ISHA for many reasons. I am a passionate skier, having spent most of my life as an enthusiastic alpine skier but switching in recent years to the peace and serenity I find in classic nordic. So it was an honor to learn about, and help to preserve, the history and heritage of the world’s most wonderful and fascinating sport and lifestyle.

But for me ISHA has always been about the people—the chance to work and learn from my mentor and dear friend John Fry, to work with a fantastic board of directors, to meet lifelong ski journalists and historians who are the most knowledgeable stewards of our sport’s past, and to connect almost every day with our wonderful members around the world. I’ll hang onto my email—kathleen@skiinghistory.org—and I hope my ISHA friends will stay in touch! 

Kathleen James
Manchester Center, Vermont

Glen Plake, the Pied Piper of Skiing

Edie Thys Morgan’s excellent profile of Glen Plake (“Evolution of Rebel,” May-June 2020) perfectly captured the person I call the “World’s Most Recognized Skier.” I’ve always been proud to call Glen and his wife, Kimberly, friends. I admire his enthusiasm for all things ski—especially the roots of freestyle—and the way he connects with all kinds, and all ages, of skiers.

Over the years, Glen has appeared many times at ski shows I’ve produced. He immediately attracts a crowd—just like he does when at the many small ski areas that he and Kimberly visit on their Down Home Ski Tours. He always makes time to talk, to pose for pictures, sign posters and, in general, make everyone feel like the most important person he’s met that day! Glen Plake is the best ambassador our sport has ever had, a true “natural resource” that the World of Snow is lucky to have. 

Bernie Weichsel
BEWI Productions
Waltham, Massachusetts

Photo above: Plake (center, blue parka) attracts fans at Mad River Glen in Vermont (above) and Black Mountain in Maine (center, plaid shirt) on his Down Home tours of small U.S. ski areas. Wallace Brodeur photo.

All Downhill For Pat Paré

I wanted to contribute a little more information about my mother, Pat Paré, who raced at the Seigniory Club with the Penguins (“Canada’s Forgotten Ski Center,” Skiing History, September-October 2020). As the story explained, in February 1939, she was 21 years old and known for her nerve. She raced out West, in Canada and the United States, at Mont Tremblant and everywhere else she could. But years later she told us, her six children, that at the time she hadn’t yet learned to ski. She just pointed herself straight down the hills, and either she crashed or got to the bottom first. That year she won the downhill at the Women’s Dominion Ski Championships at the Seigniory. She could not have won the slalom.

My grandfather lamented the cost of her medical bills to Bill Oliver, the head of Noorduyn Aviation, asking for his help because now she wanted to learn to fly. He was sure she was going to kill herself trying. Oliver called one of his pilots into his office, an airplane mechanic from Toronto who’d been flying since he was 14 years old, and told him the daughter of a rich friend was coming in to learn to fly. “Take her up, give her a good scare, and send her home,” he said. Mom never got her license, but she got her pilot, my father.

Joseph Graham
Ste-Lucie-des-Laurentides, Quebec

Big Air

In the Hans Truöl photo shown in the July-August issue (“Big Air”), the caption says it was taken in Lech, Australia. That would be Lech, Austria! The location is actually nearer to Zürs than to Lech.

Truöl took several different photos of a skier jumping over Porsche cars along that section of highway between Zürs and the Flexen Pass. The occasion was the 1956 Porsche Club Winter Ski-Treffen. For many years, starting in the mid-1950s, Porsche Club skiers would gather in Zürs with their cars for this annual event.
I’ve been back to the Arlberg a dozen times and skied the trails on both sides of the road. Never have I seen the snowbanks as high as they were in that photo. Another sign of global warming. 

Bill Hayman, PSIA Instructor
Jay Peak, Vermont

The Jet Stix Story

Several years ago, you published an article about ski inventions (“Bygone Gizmos,” September-October 2017). The story mentioned that Jack Nagel, who ran the ski school and shop at Washington’s Crystal Mountain, was the inventor of the Jet Stix. Although Jack was a valued member of the company, his responsibilities were primarily financial.

The Jet Stix story begins at Crystal, where I was a ski patroller and weekend racer. To improve my racing technique, I needed more leverage to recover from the occasional backseat turn. I decided to make some fiberglass extensions to attach to the back of my boot, and I could really feel the difference. After making an additional pair with a strap so anyone could try them, Jack asked if he could take a test run. At the end of the run he said, “Let’s go up to my office. We need to talk.” Bottom line: We changed boot design for the better!

Brent Gray
Elizabeth, Colorado

Positive ID: K2 Ad Was Shot in Seattle

In the January-February 2020 issue, the back cover was a reprint of a K2 ad from the 1970s, with a caption asking if readers knew where the photo had been shot. I’m quite sure that’s the White-Henry-Stuart Building at the southeast corner of 5th Avenue and Union Street in downtown Seattle. My office was a few blocks from that corner. At lunch time, I’d often walk past to visit the city’s leading sports store, Eddie Bauer—the only store that carried true seal-skin climbers.

John Hansen
Seattle, Washington

Photo: Alf Engen rides Sun Valley's Ruud Mountain chairlift, location of the jumping hill he designed with Sigmund Ruud, circa 1938. Photo by Charles Wanless, courtesy Alan Engen.

Alf Engen in Sun Valley (the saga continues...)

In a recent letter in Skiing History (May-June 2020), my colleague Kirby Gilbert raised several questions about Alf Engen’s role in Sun Valley’s early days. Kirby wonders whether Alf was in Sun Valley in 1936, since his presence was not mentioned in other accounts at the time.

In his 1985 oral history, Alf said he met Count Felix Schaffgotsch in Utah in early 1936, when the Count was searching for a place for Averell Harriman to build a destination ski resort. Alf showed the Count both Alta and Brighton, before the Count visited Ketchum in February 1936, and found the area that would become Sun Valley. According to Alf, “When I found out that he had picked this place [Ketchum], the Forest Service sent me up here just to see what he had actually picked out…There was lots of snow that year, and it was beautiful. And at the end of the road...of the railroad...there was only one building, there was Pete Lane’s store…I just came to see what he had picked out.”

From 1935 to 1942, Alf worked for the Forest Service as a technical advisor, assisting with planning and developing winter sports areas in four western states. Alf’s son Alan provided me with a list of 31 ski areas in which Alf played a role in planning or developing, which included Sun Valley’s Bald Mountain.

In January 1939, Sun Valley general manager Pat Rogers told Harriman that the Forest Service released Engen to work at Sun Valley. Count Schaffgotsch, Alf Engen, Dick Durrance and Friedl Pfeifer were on Baldy marking trees to be removed for a new downhill course designed by Durrance, the work would be rushed through, and the course would be ready for the 1939 Harriman Cup. Engen also supervised Civilian Conservation Corps workers stationed at a camp in the Warm Springs area, to clear new runs on Baldy to open the mountain for general skiing in winter 1940, after chairlifts were installed. In his oral history, CCC worker Fred Joswig described working with Alf on Baldy. Joswig said Pfeifer, who had a “good eye for a downhill course,” marked trees for removal, and Engen contributed “more than any one person to Bald Mountain’s development than anyone I know.”

As a part-time resident of Sun Valley, I appreciate interest in the history of our country’s first destination ski resort that Durrance said was “the most important influence in the development of American skiing ... Its concentrated and highly successful glamorization of the sport got people to want to ski in the first place.”

John W. Lundin
Seattle, Washington

John Lundin is the author of Early Skiing on Snoqualmie Pass (2018 ISHA Skade Award winner); Sun Valley, Ketchum and the Wood River Valley (Arcadia Press, June 2020); Skiing Sun Valley, a History from Union Pacific to the Holdings (History Press, publication date November 9, 2020); and Ski Jumping in Washington —A Nordic Tradition (History Press, publication date January 2021). John and Kirby Gilbert are both founding members of the Washington State Ski and Snowboard Museum (www.wsssm.org).

Engen’s Son Remembers

I received the latest Skiing History and was interested in the short piece by Kirby Gilbert that talked about my father in Sun Valley during the mid 1930s. I can’t comment much about my father’s early years at Sun Valley working for the Forest Service during summer months. I know he did some early trail cutting. He told me about encountering a wolverine face to face while cutting trails on Warm Springs. Dad backed away without incident, but it was a lasting memory.

I know my father played an important role in the design and construction of the Ruud Mountain ski-jumping hill near the old Proctor Lift. That would have been in 1936–1937 and he did have a good association with Averell Harriman during those years. I used my father’s blueprint design of the Ruud Mountain ski jump as a guide for the one I designed on a hill for Bob Barrett, original owner of the Solitude ski area, in the late 1950s. It was used for intercollegiate competitions for several years in the early 1960s, but was torn down and replaced with a regular run in later years.

Alan K. Engen
Salt Lake City, Utah

Where Grooming and Geometry Intersect

In his “Paradise Lost” article (Skiing History, May-June 2020), Jackson Hogen eloquently explained how carving represents the Nirvana of alpine skiing. I would add that carving stands at the confluence of two evolutions: ski geometry and slope grooming. 

Ski designers began experimenting with new sidecuts back in the 1960s. For instance, Dynamic designers moved the waist back about 18cm to take advantage of new racing techniques. Two decades later, alpine races were still taking place on decently prepared but significantly wavy and irregular terrain, making carving choppy and imperfect. As trail grading and grooming improved, resorts created flawless and wide snow ribbons. When shaped skis came of age, they showed their magic power on these smooth new ski runs. 

Do all skiers need to carve? I’m not convinced. Many are content with letting their boards skid into each turn. In fact, accomplished carvers account for a small portion of the skiing public. Besides, significant momentum is required to trigger carving. Its maximum efficiency promotes higher speed, but doesn’t allow for slow motion. And it often creates stress on the joints that can prove tiring after a full day on the snow. 

If carving is one useful skiing skill, skidded turns are essential in countless circumstances like moguls, crud, steep spots, blue ice, deep snow, trees and out-of-bounds skiing. A skier who doesn’t master skidding will be ill at ease on surfaces that aren’t perfectly groomed. Skidding is in fact a progressive form of edge control while carving is binary; you either carve or you don’t. As a result, I use a variety of skills when I ski, depending on the terrain, the snow and the day: carving, skidding and stem-christies (yes, these too!).

Finally, about the danger of rocker and fat skis: Those are part of the ebb and flow of “cool trends” that we’ve seen come and go in skiing. As the industry pushes them, they grow, stay for a while and falter. Rocker skis are made for the elusive deep snow while fat skis are sluggish and heavy to carry, so when their heydays are gone, they might return to niche status.

J.F. Lanvers
Park City, Utah

Jean-Francois Lanvers, who capped his ski-teaching career with a stint on the French Demo Team, came to North America as a marketing executive, first with Look and then with Lange.

Notes on the New Northlands

I want to thank Jackson Hogen for his article in the May-June issue, which brings to light the concept that we built Northland Skis around. Wider rockered skis degrade the true ski turn.

We pride ourselves in making one of the finest all-mountain carving skis on the market. We went against the trend to go wider and rockered by creating dimensions and ski construction not seen in other skis in the industry. To do this, we went back to the original Northland design. The vintage skis were made from hickory that provided strength, snap and durability. With the new Northlands, we make the core from hickory and white ash, strong hardwoods with excellent performance characteristics. To that we add a full-length layer of Kevlar to quiet and dampen the ski bottom and add strength.    
I applaud Hogen for stepping out and speaking his mind about products that the industry has dropped on the skiing public that diminish the ski experience. 

Peter Daley
Steamboat Springs, Colorado

Two Bulls and a Blunder

The lead poster in Everett Potter’s “Off the Wall” article (Skiing History, March-April 2020) was a 1932 classic by Johan Bull, best known as a popular artist in The New Yorker. He was the father of ski-country architect and ski-resort planner Henrik Bull (1929–2013), long a stalwart member of ISHA. From time to time, Henrik wrote for SKI magazine and then for Skiing Heritage, and often helped us out with lengthy translations from old Norwegian books and newspapers.

From the same issue, I need to correct my error in the article “Marie Marvingt, Superhero.” I identified Harald Durban-Hansen, the Norwegian ski coach, as a Swede. Thanks to Einar Sunde for pointing out this blunder.

Seth Masia, ISHA President
Paonia, Colorado

Meeting the Masters

Two articles in the March-April 2020 issue brought back memories of meeting two of the “greats” in skiing history.

The story about “Alf Engen’s Idaho Roots” recalled a trip to Woodstock, Vermont, in the late 1940s. We skied at Suicide Six and I took my first ski lesson. My instructor, as I recall, was Walter Prager, who at the time was coaching the Dartmouth ski team. Only later did I realize the extent of Prager’s greatness—his Hall of Fame status and achievements as a competitor and mentor to the ski world.

The article on Skiing History Day at Mad River Glen brought back another memorable experience. In the mid 1950s, a friend and I skied there for the day. Late afternoon, we met another friend for a drink at his family’s cabin, tucked in the woods across the road from the base lodge. His father prepared a special recipe for Glühwein in a saucepan on a wood-burning stove. The father was Mad River Glen founder and Vermont ski pioneer Roland Palmedo (see “The Amazing, Intriguing Roland Palmedo” by Mort Lund in the September 2009 issue of Skiing Heritage). Sadly, at the time I didn’t appreciate how special it was to be sharing toasts and conversation with a man who contributed so much to the sport I love, nor can I recall the mulled-wine recipe!

Peter Barrett
Bellevue, Washington

Before There Was Swix

Under present circumstances (COVID-19), I have plenty of time to read every article and word in Skiing History, my favorite publication. On Greg Ditrinco’s well-detailed piece about fluorinated waxes and the FIS (March-April 2020), I’m compelled to mention that a ski-wax company was in operation before Toko and Swix—the French company known as VOLA.  Indeed, it’s 85 years old!

VOLA was incorporated in 1935 at Colmar, and moved to Passy in the heart of the French Alps soon after. Reliable Racing Supply has been (and is currently) the U.S. importer/distributor for VOLA. Included in our first direct-mail catalog in 1969 was a VOLA product called “Coloneige.” This product was used to identify the placement of slalom poles into the piste (necessary to reset bamboo poles that were often knocked out by the racers). Soon after, we distributed “Durcineige,” an early use of a chemical to harden the snow. 

Currently, Reliable Racing offers several VOLA products direct to the consumer, not limited to ski wax, but including FIS-homologated helmets, goggles, accessories and ski-tuning products.  In 2019 they introduced E-wax, a 100 percent biodegradable product, made from plant and animal sources. For the 2020-2021 season they have introduced MyEcoWax, a non-fluorinated race wax with excellent gliding properties, in which more than 50 percent is made from plant and animal sources.

VOLA is a major manufacturer with 34 international distributors, and is a big player on the European competition scene. The current CEO, JF Ferreira, attended the University of Colorado at Boulder, and was an NCAA All-American in skiing. 

John Jacobs
Reliable Racing Supply
Queensbury, New York

1898: First Tracks in Zermatt

The recent article on Zermatt (Skiing History, January-February 2020) left the impression that skiing began there in the 1928–1929 season. But in the Kleines Zermatter Brevier, we read “it was a gloomy and snow-filled day on 29 December 1898 when the first ski tracks were seen in Zermatt.” These were the tracks of Dr. Hermann Seiler and Viktor Beauclair.

In 1905, “certain amateurs simply solved the question of winter quarters by breaking into inns, calling them huts to reassure their conscience,” according to an account in La Montagne (March 20, 1905). One “modest little inn” was open in 1908, the year the Ski Club Cervin (the French name for the Matterhorn) was founded. Arnold Lunn—the panjandrum of British skiing—weighed in with the judgment in 1913 that it “by no means follows that a good summer centre will make a good winter centre. Zermatt is a case in point.” After the war, the Cervin Club built a jump on the Steinmatte, about a 10-minute walk from the village.

When the “season” began in 1928–1929, General Wroughton, one of the Ski Club of Great Britain’s stalwarts, commented that “Zermatt’s slopes are too steep and rocky to be inviting,” while others judged them “too precipitous for good ski-ing.” “Incidentally,” wondered an old mountaineer almost a decade later, in 1937, “would the place be much good for ski-ing anyway?”

E. John B. Allen
Rumney, New Hampshire

Alf Engen in Sun Valley (Part 2)

I enjoyed the March-April “Short Turns” highlighting Alf Engen’s role in early Sun Valley. The article mentions Alf recalling first visiting Sun Valley in winter 1936, which is interesting because that visit is not mentioned in other accounts. Engen was so well known at that time, one would think the media or correspondence of that winter would have noted it. Rather, the founding skiers who greatly helped to determine the layout of the ski runs and lifts on the hills above Ketchum were Charley Proctor, Count Felix Schaffgotsch, Count Erwein Wilczek, Richard Scott, John E.P. Morgan, and some local boys who could ski.

While Alf did direct CCC crews to cut the first runs on Baldy, as the late Mort Lund and others have documented, the trails were laid out primarily by Friedl Pfeifer and Dick Durrance with Alf’s help. It’s also interesting that Dartmouth Outing Club (DOC) members had a role in helping to get Baldy ready. Alf’s CCC crews could not overnight on the mountain, so they could only clear Baldy’s lower slopes in a day’s work. For the upper slopes, Harriman had Dick Durrance hire DOC members to do the clearing and stay in eight-man camps in August 1939. I hope we all get to enjoy the fruits of Alf’s labor when we meet in Sun Valley for Skiing History Week in December!

Kirby Gilbert
Bellevue, Washington

Javelin Turn: Still Sharp

At Christin Cooper’s suggestion, I’d like to provide a picture of a modern use of the Javelin Turn, which I wrote about in the January-February 2020 issue of Skiing History (Timeless Tips). In the article, I described how this tip-crossing tip was promoted by Vermont instructor Art Furrer in 1967, and has been in constant use ever since.

In recent exchanges on the Facebook group “Technical Analysis of Alpine Skiing,” a forum where ski instructors and coaches exchange ideas about their work, Javelin Turns have been suggested as a good approach to addressing specific issues in seven different discussion threads just in the last few months. Clearly, it’s alive and well.

Ron LeMaster
Boulder, Colorado

The First U.S. Ski Journalists

A recent article in Skiing History focused on the big guns of ski reporting during the 1950s to 1980s print journalism heyday (“When Print Was King,” January-February 2020).

The profession of “ski journalist” was invented in the 1930s, when U.S. newspapers—especially in Boston and New York—became important sources of ski news. During that decade, ski columnists such as Frank Elkins of the New York Times and Henry Moore of the Boston Herald competed with “Old Man Winter”—Benjamin Bowker—of the rival Boston Evening Transcript.

These pioneers taught novices about the up-and-coming new sport, offering advice on clothing, equipment, technique, snow conditions and weekend snow-train destinations. Race results were a staple and fashion notes added a social touch.

To take one example, Henry Moore’s column of December 2, 1938 covers the Dartmouth College ski team, where the Sunday snow train is going, that ski tows were “rigging up for the weekend crowd,” and that Caroline French looked very cute in her new ski outfit along with “ace racer” Mary McKean. Sometimes artwork would add a visual touch; illustrator Max Barsis was popular.

A few early women columnists made a mark, too: Gwendoline Keen of the Transcript wrote special features, including one about pine-needle skiing. The much-traveled Christine Reid was informative and popular.

For the ski crowd in the Northeastern United States in the decade before World War II, the Friday-night newspapers provided the right combination of enthusiasm, interest, information and pizzazz that heralded a Saturday and Sunday on skis.

John Allen
Rumney, New Hampshire

Who was in the K2 ad?

I loved seeing the K2 “Welfare of the People” ad on the back cover of the January-February issue. In the caption, Seth Masia offered “bonus points” to anyone who could name the city. I can!

My uncle, Russ Butterfield, worked for K2 at the time and his twin daughters are deep in the frame on the right. Sandra is holding the books and purse while Lorna is pushing the stroller. Derek Weigle, the baby in the stroller, recently turned 50.

According to Lorna, the photo shoot was held early in the morning on the main street of Vashon, Washington. The signage was composited (or as we say now, “Photo-shopped in”) later by the advertising agency. Most of the people in the ad were K2 employees, plus their family, friends and significant others. Heckler and Bowker’s ads were creative and cutting edge in the 1970s ski industry. 

David Butterfield
Sun Valley, Idaho

“Think ecology, Mrs. Frobish.”

SKI November 1973

Correcting the Record

Due to an editing error, a caption on page 23 of the January-February 2020 issue was incorrect. In the article “When Print Was King” by ISHA director Jeff Blumenfeld, chronicling some of the sport’s most influential journalists, British writer Arnie Wilson was the ski correspondent for the Financial Times, not the London Times. Sorry, Arnie! —Kathleen James, Editor