Resorts

When it opened in 1930, the Seigniory Club was the largest ski resort in Canada...and possibly in North America.

By Joseph Graham and Pierre Dumas

The historic Le Château Montebello, 50 miles east of Ottawa in the Outaouais region of western Quebec, claims to be the largest log structure in the world. That may or may not be true.  But while the architecture is impressive, the almost-forgotten ski history of the
hotel is legendary. 

Extensive research by the late Pierre Dumas, a retired engineer who won an ISHA Award for his work in identifying and cataloging every ski area and jump in the history of Quebec (Skiing History, July-August 2017), has revealed that when it opened in 1930 the Seigniory Club, as the complex was then called, was the largest ski and winter sports resort in Canada...and possibly in North America...

Built by architect Ralph Erskine, the Borgafjäll Hotel in Swedish Lapland is an enduring outpost of ski culture and solitude.

Not long ago, my friend Axel Persson and I embarked on a ski journey that took us north to Lapland—and back in time. Our destination was Borgafjäll, a remote mountain village in Swedish Lapland that’s home to Sami reindeer herders, a small lift-served ski area, extensive backcountry terrain, and a unique hotel and spa with an interesting history.

Above: Erskine built the hotel roof to be a ski slope, with a railing on three sides to prevent skiers from falling off. It opened in 1955.

Swedish Lapland, in the northernmost portion of the country, covers roughly 110,000 square kilometers and is home to only 94,000 people. That calculates to a population density below one person per square kilometer. It’s a place where skiers can still find a bit of elbow room while connecting with the sport’s heritage, which is rooted in solitude.

Our trip began in the city of Gothenburg on April 27, a lovely spring day in western Sweden. The forest near my home was a blanket of white, and the wood anemones were in full bloom. The girls that parade under those stately trees, walking daily along Gothenburg’s main avenue, had exchanged their winter wardrobes of black clothes and long overcoats for short dresses in spring pastels. When we arrived at our remote destination, the Lapland wilderness was also covered by white … but it was snow.

After taking the train to Stockholm, a local propeller plane flew us to Wilhelmina, a small settlement of 4,000 people in the province of Västerbotten. About 1,000 air kilometers north of our original Gothenburg starting point, the small aircraft touched down in a little clearing in the woods that they call an airport. From there, we borrowed a friend’s car and drove 112 kilometers northwest. Ninety minutes and a couple of reindeer herds later, we arrived at the Borgafjäll Hotel.

Here in southern Lapland, the pace of life is slow, small is good, and skiing never has been and never will be an “industry.” They say the Sami people have 100 different words to describe snow. I suspect they need no word for crowd, as the phenomenon does not exist.

A remote but enduring outpost of ski civilization, Borgafjäll has a unique history. Its tale begins in 1939, when architect Ralph Erskine was visiting Sweden from his native England. When World War II broke out during his stay, the pacifist Quaker decided to remain in neutral Sweden rather than return to the United Kingdom. Hence, Erskine’s early work was done primarily in his newly adopted homeland.

One of Erskine’s first significant achievements was the Hotel Borgafjäll, a fascinating piece of architecture that today still stands out as an iconic remnant of 1950s culture. Like the great Frank Lloyd Wright, Erskine sought to create harmony between his buildings and the surrounding environment. Not only did he build the hotel primarily from local materials, but he also built the roof to be a ski slope, with a railing on three sides to prevent skiers from falling off. Inside, sections of the hotel are connected by walkways that resemble ship’s gangways, while idiosyncratic fireplaces warm the lobby and dining room. The rooms are quirky, too: Many are laid out on three levels. The double room, for example, accommodates up to four people, with two single beds on the top level, sofa bed and TV on the central level, and bathroom below. A detached ski lodge has bunks and showers for budget-minded skiers.

Drawn by the hotel’s quirky reputation, skiers started to find their way to this remote Lapland outpost in the late 1950s. The pace picked up starting in 1962, when Erskine’s friend Arne Isaksson invested in a Weasel — a tracked military vehicle designed during World War II to move quickly over snowy terrain. For skiing purposes, it was the predecessor of the snow cat, and Arne used his Weasel to drag skiers up the slopes around the hotel.

Now 82, Arne is still around, and he reminisced with me about those pioneer days.

Skiing was growing in popularity in the early 1960s, and within a few years, he owned five Weasels, each driven by one of his brothers. Each Weasel could carry six passengers and haul an additional 25, each holding on for dear life to one of three ropes tied to the back.

Meanwhile, his wife was also active in this budding ski enterprise, serving waffles, sandwiches, sausages, coffee and soft drinks at a small hut on the slopes. The first surface lift was installed in 1967. Because it only took beginners about 165 vertical feet up the nearest slope, it didn’t provide much competition for Arne’s Weasels, which transported skiers about 1,300 vertical feet up the local mountains. When the first long T-bar was built in 1973, Arne retired his fleet.

Perhaps the most interesting bit of trivia regarding Arne’s early days is the manner in which he purchased the Weasels. He bought them from the U.S. Army, which had no use for them after the war.

“A lumber company bought such old military equipment per square kilometer,” Arne told me.

“Sorry, Arne. I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said. “How can one buy a Weasel by the square kilometer?”

“Well,” the old timer drawled, “the lumber company negotiated a price for whatever old army vehicles were situated on one square kilometer of land. Everything remaining on that chunk of earth was theirs for that price. Later, the lumber company sold some of the equipment to me and others.”

While Ralph Erskine and Arne Isaksson have certainly left their legacy on the little ski area, an important person in today’s Borgafjäll is Magnus Nilsson. Magnus now owns the lifts and slopes, and at the time of my visit, he also ran a cat-skiing operation—a descendent of Arne’s Weasel business. Over the years, in addition to transporting skiers and boarders up the mountains with his snow cat, Magnus has also taken people off-piste with a chopper and guided them on touring skis.

When we arrived, the cat skiing had finished for the winter because the reindeer had begun to return to the mountains, but Magnus took some time to show Axel and me around. The ski area has two lifts. The longer and higher Borgalift, which serves a vertical drop of 950 vertical feet, is by far the more interesting. It has five pistes of differing gradients, all facing the picturesque Borga Lake and cliff-lined north face of Borgahällan (3,378 feet) on the opposite shore. The shorter Avasjö Lift and beginner lift on the east-facing side cater to families, but does access some nice off-piste tree skiing. After a trip to the sauna and four-star dinner of reindeer carpaccio and butter-fried whitefish, I slept like a baby.
 

The following day, we traveled by snowmobile with Magnus to the base of Klöverfjäll (4,273 feet), where we strapped skins to our skis and replaced the machines with manpower. As we skied, Magnus explained the long-running conflict between skiers and snowmobilers in Lapland. Nothing is more disturbing to a skier in search of solitude than a noisy machine cutting deep ruts through virgin snow. Meanwhile, snowmobilers want to race around the valleys without worrying about some errant skier who might end up as collateral damage. Magnus hoped his resort could be a melting pot where the two would coexist.

For the next few hours, we glided up through a moonscape of undulating white. The higher we skied, the farther the eye could see, and the panorama that unfolded as we approached the top was breathtaking.

Just under the summit, we paused for a short picnic. Near the peak, the wind had blasted the rocks with a coat of rime. It was early May, but the day was cold. Magnus had told us that the best time of day for corn snow would be between two and three o’clock in the afternoon, and he was right.

After our first few turns, the spring snow turned to the perfect texture. Little kernels riffled off our ski edges like a May hailstorm. Skiing corn is so effortless that one hardly requires a pause, and before we knew it, we were back at the snowmobiles, gazing up at our tracks that glistened in the sunshine. Later, sitting by the pool, I reflected on the common ground that skiers and snowmobilers share. Sure, snowmobiles are noisy and leave a trail of exhaust in the air that I can’t avoid breathing as I glide silently uphill to my destination. Both sports, however, share a love of speed, a sense of freedom, and a desire for communion with nature.

And then I remembered Ralph Erskine and the reindeer. They are the rightful rulers of this territory. They, too, want to roam freely in the mountains. Magnus had recently compromised his financial interests and shut down his snow cat operation for the season in deference to the return of the herds to higher ground. It was all about respect. 

American-born writer Jimmy Petterson has produced 15 ski films and written and photographed Skiing Around the World, Volumes 1 and 2. See www.skiingaroundtheworldbook.com.

Thousands learned to ski at the Borscht Belt hotels of New York's Catskill Mountains.

Starting in the early 1950s, hundreds of thousands of Americans learned to ski not on the slopes of major resorts like Sun Valley, Stowe or Aspen, but at more prosaic ski areas and resort hotels with names like Big Vanilla at Davos, the Concord, Gibber’s, the Granit, Grossingers, Homowack Lodge, Kutsher’s, Laurels, the Nevele, the Pines and the Raleigh. These were among the Borscht Belt hotels in the Catskills, about 90 miles northwest of New York City.

The Borscht Belt—named for a sweet-and-sour beet soup associated with immigrants from eastern Europe—identifies the show-biz culture that arose from Yiddish theater and spawned comedians such as Lenny Bruce, Red Buttons, Sid Caesar, Billy Crystal, Buddy Hackett, Danny Kaye, Carl Reiner and Jerry Stiller. They honed their stand-up acts in the region also affectionately nicknamed the Sour Cream Sierras (sweet red borscht was often served with a dollop of sour cream), or even the Jewish Alps.

The resorts became fictional locations for movies like Dirty Dancing and A Walk on the Moon, and TV shows like The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, although some were actually shot at look-alike resorts in Virginia, North Carolina or the Adirondacks.

“From the early ’50s up to the early ’70s, the area’s hotels were a haven for upwardly mobile Jewish families who came year-round to eat prodigious amounts of food and chortle at comedians like Jerry Lewis who defined their era,” says Steve Cohen, who wrote lively articles about the Catskills for SKI in 2000 and 2006.

Legendary New York Times snowsports journalist Michael Strauss wrote in SKI in January 1960 (subsequently reprinted in “Borscht, Bagels and Bindings,” Skiing Heritage, December 2000) that “The Catskills were the Alps of mid-coast, middle-class Americans on ski vacations in the mid-20th century.”

He credits Swiss-born instructor Tino Koch for taking “dime-sized beginner’s areas and turning out hundreds of polished beginners yearning for the more trying slopes of upper New York State and New England.”

For me, it was my boyhood home. Living just a few miles from tiny Holiday Mountain was a dream come true for me, although not so much for drivers who had to contend with machine-made snow drifting onto the adjacent Route 17. Holiday offered only a 400-foot vertical, but I remember the glee of endlessly yo-yoing its narrow white-gauze-bandage runs, riding a Poma and two slow double chairs on weekends and Wednesday evenings after school. I was part of a local vacation attraction that dated back almost 100 years.

SKIING BEFORE THE WAR

Beginning in 1936, Liberty Winter Sports operated the Walnut Mountain rope tow in Liberty, on the site of the now-demolished Walnut Mountain House. Skiers brought refreshments in knapsacks and sunned, like lizards, atop a boulder, according to the CD-ROM Liberty, NY: Memories, produced by Between The Lakes Group (Taconic, Connecticut). In the era before snowmaking, Walnut Mountain depended on natural snowfall. With World War II, and the departure of its male skiers to war, Walnut closed.

October 1948 saw the launch of Christmas Hills in Livingston Manor, now a partially gentrified second home community in the northern part of Sullivan County. According to Sullivan County historian John Conway, writing for the New York Almanack, Christmas Hills had a lot going for it, and there were high hopes for its success. Conway quotes Jeffersonville’s Sullivan County Record (October 21, 1948): “During its first season of operation Christmas Hills will be open every weekend, except during the holiday season when a daily schedule will take effect. It will provide two of the latest type electric ski tows, varied slopes, including alternate ski trails through the woods and a professional ski school.”

The Republican Watchman reported the next day, “There will be the added feature of ‘ski-joring’—the use of a horse for level towing on skis—is planned (sic) as an added thrill for the fast growing ski public.

“The Christmas Hills slopes compare favorably with the best on the Eastern Seaboard. More than 1,500 feet long, the main ski run varies in rise from 30 degrees for the ski expert to a mild 10 to 15 degrees for beginners. Snow conditions should be ideal over a long period and the southern exposure of the slopes afford an exceptionally beautiful setting.”

Conway writes, “Just as it had with the Walnut Mountain ski hill a decade before, the lack of snow prevented Christmas Hills from ever becoming as successful as it might have been.”

The Concord Hotel in nearby Kiamesha Lake has claimed to be the first ski area to make its own snow (that honor belongs to Mohawk Mountain, which installed Wayne Pierce’s new snow gun in 1950). But the Concord was certainly the first ski area to blow pink and blue snow. Michael Strauss of the New York Times reported that the dye used to color Concord snow badly stained the pants and sweaters of beginners who fell in it.

By 1958, Conway wrote, the hotel was operating an Austrian-manufactured T-bar capable of transporting 460 skiers per hour. Vertical drop was 139 feet.

“At Grossinger’s, before snowmaking equipment was installed in 1952, it was a common practice to physically move as much snow as possible from the hotel’s extensive property to the ski area in order to accommodate the skiers,” Conway wrote. “It was not a foolproof plan, and only occasionally provided satisfactory results.” They also experimented with a surface of ground-up plastic collar buttons.

In the late 1950s, Holiday Mountain Ski Area in Bridgeville was fully operational and billed itself as the closest ski area of its kind to New York City.

“It will be no layout to captivate the imagination of experts accustomed to tearing down Stowe’s Nosedive or Mount Greylock’s Thunderbolt, but it will more than suffice for the run-of-the-mill sports lover who wants to test his legs as well as enjoy the sport with a minimum risk of injury,” predicted Michael Strauss in the New York Times on December 8, 1957.

According to Conway’s book, Remembering the Sullivan County Catskills (History Press, 2008), “Holiday Mountain continued to improve its operation over the next several years, and managed to survive the opening of the larger and better equipped Davos in Woodbridge in 1959, as well as the advent and expansion of other ski hills, including the nearby Columbia and the Pines, which, in 1965, became the first hotel to feature a chairlift.”

By 1960, Holiday Mountain was facing stiff competition. There were numerous Sullivan County hotels offering skiing, along with ice skating, tobogganing, endless games of Simon Sez, and the attraction of all-you-can-eat meals. Yet today, Holiday is the county’s only stand-alone ski area, helped in part by reinventing itself as a Ski and Fun Park.

Frozen in Time

Barry Levinson, 59, is a 40-year veteran of the ski industry who teaches part-time at Vail. He was born in Monticello, the county seat of Sullivan County, where he lived for 18 years—in fact, next door to me. We sledded and skied on the hill between our homes. Last summer he returned to the southern Catskills to document the lost ski areas of his youth.

His Catskill Skiing History page on Facebook documents the remains of dozens of Borscht Belt ski areas. One photo shows a solitary cableless bullwheel at the remains of Big Vanilla at Davos, where at its prime, a waiter in the base lodge would warm your hot toddys with a glowing poker. There are images of chairlifts rotting into the ground and a vintage snowcat stored in a shed with mechanic tools nearby. A YouTube video of Nevele Resort shows skis strewn in the base lodge. A sign offers $20 group
and $60 private lessons (see https://tinyurl.com/neveleruins).

In a recent call with Skiing History, Levinson likened abandoned Catskill ski hills to Chernobyl. “It’s totally frozen in time,” he said. “A post apocalyptic scene. It’s depressing as hell, but fascinating…I documented these lost ski areas out of a sense of nostalgia. Growing up in the Catskills when I was a kid was a nice place to be,” he says.

“While I thought Holiday Mountain was too small, I realized in the grand scheme of things we were lucky to have it. What else would we have done up there in the winter?”

Southern Catskill hotel skiing failed to prosper into the 21st century, with the exception of a small still-operating hill at the Italian-American Villa Roma Resort in Callicoon. Nonetheless, as Michael Strauss wrote in SKI, “there are tens of thousands of Americans skiing today on bigger, better mountains, thanks partly to the early chutzpah of Catskill hoteliers.”

ISHA vice president Jeff Blumenfeld is president of the North American Snow-sports Journalists Association (NASJA.org) and author of Travel With Purpose: A Field Guide to Voluntourism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019). Learn more at travelwithpurposebook.com.

Since 1977, the Holding family has transformed this historic Idaho resort while honoring its fabled past.

On a February morning in 1977, Sun Valley executive Wally Huffman was summoned to owner Bill Janss’ office. There he met a middle-aged couple, Earl and Carol Holding, and was told to show them around the resort. Two days later, Huffman responded to a disturbance in Upper 5, a dormitory above the Ram Restaurant. There he found the Holdings stuffing mattresses through the windows to fall two stories onto the kitchen loading dock. Huffman called Janss and asked, “What should I do?” Janss replied, “I think you should do whatever Mr. Holding tells you to do.” The Holdings had purchased Sun Valley.

Janss had bought the resort from Union Pacific about 13 years earlier. He was an accomplished skier and had revitalized the mountain, but he was not a hotelier. They were now in a severe drought with minimal snowmaking, few skiers, and little cash flow. A sale was imminent. Corporate giants Disney and Ralston-Purina passed. The Holdings had built up the Little America franchise and owned Sinclair Oil; they knew the hotel business and had working capital. They had driven through Sun Valley only once, that summer, and then Earl saw an article in the Wall Street Journal about Disney’s play on the property. Something clicked. He made some calls, visited the resort again, and within two weeks had a deal. Janss said, “His timing was perfect.” And the mattresses flew out the windows.

(Photo top of page: Sun Valley in 1937.)

The Holdings were not skiers and to the locals, according to Huffman, “a complete unknown.” Unemployment was running at 27.5 percent that dry winter, yet the first reported act by the Holdings was to fire 1,400 employees. Under Janss, anyone with a pulse could get a job that came with a season pass or limited access to the mountain. Poof! The jobs and perks were gone. Not a good start for the new owner of a legendary ski area. Locals were incensed. But in truth it was the Janss Corporation that had to fire the employees as the Holdings had purchased only the assets; many workers were hired right back. There was, however, a new mission and strategy. Carol Holding remembers, “Why would anyone who didn’t know how to ski buy a ski resort? That wasn’t why we bought it—to come here to ski. We bought it to run as a business.”

Earl Holding came from a poor Salt Lake City family and even at eight years old was mowing lawns and doing minor landscaping. He had an extraordinary work ethic and kept at it. He served in the Army Air Corps in WWII and then pursued a degree in civil engineering at the University of Utah. One night while studying in the library he was introduced to Carol Orme, an 18-year-old student from Idaho Falls, Idaho. “He was tall, had brown hair, and piercing blue eyes,” she remembers. They were soon inseparable. Earl had saved nearly $10,000 from his landscaping work, and Carol had $400. With that they purchased a fruit orchard at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon. It was the first of many diverse and profitable businesses that would eventually run Earl Holding’s net worth to over $3 billion. With a smile Carol says, “He got my $400 before we were married, but it turned out to be a good investment.”

From the orchard, to the Little America gas station/hotel in Wyoming (with its famous repetitive highway signage featuring a penguin), to Sinclair Oil, to more hotels, the Holdings were hands-on owner/operators. They learned to be self-sufficient and deal with chores and problems themselves. That was the work ethic they brought to Sun Valley and it was not initially well-received.

“It wasn’t easy when you see bumper stickers that said, ‘Earl is a Four-Letter Word,’” says Carol. “We weren’t very welcome to begin with, but Earl started to turn this into a profitable business, and more people came, and everything got better. I couldn’t ask for more wonderful people than the local people. They really supported us and if it hadn’t been for them, we wouldn’t have made it.”

Earl Holding’s love of growing things is traceable to his landscaping years, the orchard, and his Wyoming and Arizona hotels. He brought that with gusto to Sun Valley. In the first spring he directed the planting of over 7,000 aspens and conifers around the village and golf course. The people doing the work were the newly re-hired employees. They had to learn to break down corporate departments and chip in where required. The Holdings worked right alongside them. Huffman remembers making beds and cleaning rooms, others served food and bussed tables. Hours were long, the work strenuous, and not everyone cottoned to the Holding’s methods, but the new owners never asked anyone to do something they wouldn’t do themselves and eventually found people who supported their style.

The Holdings and their children, Kathleen, Ann, and Steven, all learned to ski. For Earl, it was not recreation; he needed to ski to attend to mountain operations. According to Carol, “His work and his play were one and the same.” Carol and the kids, however, enjoyed the fun and challenge of skiing. Carol set a goal to ski Exhibition, one of Sun Valley’s more intimidating runs, and she did. She also became a dedicated runner and eventually competed in a marathon. But Earl was all about work. His contributions to the resort have been an inspired mix of maintenance, modernization, and masterpieces.

Almost every roof in Sun Valley—previously heated by a steam plant to promote snow melting—had to be redone as a modern cold roof. The Lodge and Inn were remodeled, the golf course redesigned. On the mountain, quad lifts replaced single and double chairs. Three spectacular day lodges were built at the Warm Springs and River Run bases and high on Seattle Ridge. These grand log and rock structures have interior finishes that exceed most resorts and delight guests. Two other mountain lodges, the fabled Roundhouse and the Lookout Restaurant, have also been remodeled. Over the years, a huge automated snowmaking system has been dialed in and a quality snow surface is virtually guaranteed from Thanksgiving to Easter. Expanded skiing acreage came with the development of the Frenchmen’s Bend area, a sheltered bowl with adventurous runs just above Ketchum. Grooming, the ski school, and patrol are all top-notch. And in addition to all the Sun Valley improvements, Holding acquired Snow Basin in Ogden, Utah and was a key player in the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics.

Holding was relentlessly thorough in both his new projects and day to day management. According to Wally Huffman, he would discuss details and alternatives ad nauseum, far past the point when most felt a decision was nigh. “He had the vision…way beyond the standards of what any of us were used to.” Carol was always there as a sounding board and affirms he was tireless: “He set a very high bar for everyone and he didn’t want to waste any time.” He was driven: “He just always said…give it all you’ve got, and that’s what he’s done.”

Then tragedy struck. Perhaps it was due to his herculean workload or simply a natural life event, but just after Christmas in 2002, Earl suffered a stroke.

It was devastating for the family, staff, and locals whose respect and admiration he had earned. He was 76, and according to his doctors, this was the endgame. Carol recalls a remarkable moment in the ICU when a physician addressed the family: “’We can’t do any more. We suggest you call hospice.’ And Kathleen looked at the doctor and said, ‘You don’t know my Dad.’” And she was right.

Earl recovered, and in time, returned to work, though Carol stepped up and took on more responsibility. She was the driving force behind a new day lodge at Dollar Mountain because she wanted a better facility for children. She told Earl: “If you don’t build me a lodge over there, I’m going to put a tent up.” The lodge was completed in 37 weeks. They then forged ahead on other projects.

A gondola was built connecting River Run plaza to the Roundhouse, serving skiers by day and diners by night. They sculpted the White Cloud Nine golf course with tons and tons of topsoil graded onto a ridge above the valley. The landscaping and views are stunning. The luxurious Sun Valley Club restaurant was added nearby, and it took the golf and Nordic skiing experiences to new heights. They also created a marvelous amphitheater for outdoor events. With sweeping contours that echo the surrounding mountains, structural elements with bold flourishes, and the same elegant travertine marble that adorns the Getty Museum and St. Peters Basilica, the Sun Valley Pavilion is a work of art unto itself.

Earl Holding died in April 2013. Most people connected to the resort and local communities have only gratitude for his vision and contributions. The Holdings have now been stewards of the resort longer than Union Pacific and Bill Janss combined. Yet despite all the improvements, it remains much the same as it was during the formative years of the late 1930s. In addition to what they did, it’s what they didn’t do—radically change or over-develop Harriman’s storybook Austrian village. Today one can walk into Sun Valley feeling the same ambiance skiers experienced over 80 years ago. It’s like stepping into your grandmother’s snow globe.

The Lodge and Inn interiors were recently remodeled again. New service buildings and employee housing have been constructed. There’s a lift and more skiing acreage planned for Seattle Ridge. Additional development at the River Run base may be coming as well.

Sun Valley is one of the last great family owned resorts and Carol feels their children will carry the legacy on: “They all have the work ethic…I think they love Sun Valley like we do and want to keep it like it is…where people can walk the streets and feel like they’re in the country…the soul of Sun Valley, that’s what we want to keep.” 

David Butterfield is a filmmaker and writer who grew up in Sun Valley.

Stewards of Skiing History

The Holding family will be honored with a Stewardship Award for the preservation of Sun Valley’s skiing heritage at the 28th annual ISHA Awards banquet on December 10, 2020 in Sun Valley.

In a region of Norway rich with military history, skiers can ride a NATO train through a tunnel to the top of the mighty Gaustatoppen. BY JIMMY PETTERSON

A few odd ski areas exist in a time warp—living tributes to a bygone era of skiing, before the advent of snowguns to make the snow and fleets of snowcats to flatten it to perfection. These mountains are dedicated to freeriders, with few or no groomed pistes. La Grave in France was one of the first. Austria has the Krippenstein, and in the French Pyrenees, the cable car hauls freeriders up the Pic du Midi.

Norway has its own exclusive off-piste mountain—Gaustatoppen, near the village of Rjukan—with a lift that must rank among the strangest of all time. And the region has a fascinating backstory... 

Small vertical, big results: A 750-f00t-high ridge in Ontario has spawned many of Canada’s Olympic and World Cup champions. By Lori Knowles

Creative Canadian marketers call it the Blue Mountains but locals know it as the escarpment—a rim overlooking Georgian Bay, a geological landmark of Southern Ontario with a vertical drop of 750 feet and a 2.5-mile-long strip of steep ski runs that have produced some of the world’s greatest ski racers: 1980 Olympic bronze medalist Steve Podborski; four-time Olympian Brian Stemmle; three-time World Cup downhill winner Todd Brooker; and six-time World Cup ace Laurie Graham. An impressive number of Canada’s top competitors spent their formative winters along this ridge: riding tows, dancing through gates, schussing icy chutes.

It started in the early 20th century, as it always does, with an intrepid group of men and women wearing laced boots and gabardine suits. Recognizing the ski potential of a snowy escarpment 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of Toronto near Collingwood, the Toronto and Blue Mountain ski clubs made their mark. Through the 1920s and ’30s they built ski jumps and cut runs. History books say a fox-hunting trumpet called skiers to the slopes; horses hitched to sleighs carried them to the runs. With names like Wearie, Gib, Nipper and Hans, these pioneers persevered...

In this historic Swiss resort town, visitors are immersed in the wellspring of winter sports. By Everett Potter

A case can be made that the origins of modern winter sports lie in the Swiss resort and spa town of St. Moritz. In the late 1850s, Johannes Badrutt welcomed a steady stream of well-heeled British guests to his Kulm Hotel. They came in summer to hike and take the waters. But in winter he shut down for lack of visitors.

As the oft-told story goes, he wagered four of his best guests that they would love the winter in a town that claims 300 days of sunshine a year. He asked them to return with their families. If they didn’t have fun, he would pick up the tab. The Brits accepted the bet and ended up staying—and paying—until spring. They spread the word back home, at a time when first ascents of Alpine peaks were making headlines in London, and soon other sports-minded English families followed. Over time, more hotels opened and a host of activities were formalized, from skiing and ice skating to curling and taking death-defying descents on the Cresta run, the first skeleton course in the world. A winter sports capital was born...

Installed at a small New York ski area, the world’s original high-speed detachable quad had the right idea with the wrong execution. BY JEREMY DAVIS

The opening of the Doppelmayr Quicksilver SuperChair at Breckenridge, Colorado in 1981 is often cited as the first operation of a high-speed, detachable quad chairlift. While this lift is certainly the world’s first successful detachable four-seater chairlift, an earlier prototype operated approximately a decade earlier in the most unlikely of places—a community ski area in Utica, New York.

In the mid 1960s, the Val Bialas Ski Center at the Parkway was modest, with a few trails and slopes served by a T-bar and rope tow. In 1968—with the popularity of skiing on the rise nationwide—the city council voted to spend $100,000 on upgrades.

A local manufacturer, Mohawk International, bid $114,000 and was awarded a contract to build a four-person detachable chairlift with stationary loading. Skiers would be taken up the mountain sideways, at a speed of 600 feet per minute. A 2,500-per-hour capacity was planned, which would far exceed any other lift’s capacity at the time. Sue Baum, the local Parks and Recreation Commissioner, envisioned the lift running year-round, with summer rides to a summit observation and picnic area.

This project would be Mohawk’s first foray into the ski lift business...

A new coalition of volunteers, ski areas and landowners team up nationwide to restore historic ski trails—and launch a backcountry movement. By Jeremy Davis

The power of the people is gaining traction deep within the hardwood glades of New England, and spreading to the backcountry nationwide. Nonprofit groups, passionate skiers, landowners and ski areas are moving beyond traditional rivalries to band together to reopen historic trails.

New England is full of such remnants of its skiing past. More than 600 rope-tow and lift-served areas have closed in the past 80 years, along with downhill trails unserved by lifts. The Granite Backcountry Alliance (GBA), based in northern New Hampshire, is part of a new movement that’s looking to skiing’s past as a path to its future. The GBA, 400 members strong, recently resuscitated the long-lost Maple Villa Trail, in Intervale, N.H., on the outskirts of North Conway.

Though the unofficial hub of this trail reclamation phenomenon is anchored in the history rich—and therefore opportunity rich—mountains of New England, just about anywhere there are skiers, there are historic trails being rebooted—or at the very least, backcountry skiers banding together to preserve access to popular routes...