Short Turns

Nederland, Colorado, takes on a challenge, and an opportunity.

If things go as planned, the town of Nederland, Colorado, will have purchased its neighborhood ski area, Eldora Mountain Resort, from Powdr Corp in early 2026. The town has floated a municipal revenue bond, backed by resort revenues on approximately 400,000 annual skier visits, to purchase the area for reportedly about $120 million. Local taxpayers will not be affected, but locals cross their fingers that Eldora revenues will bolster the town’s budget. Powdr will assist with management for two winters, after which the town will assume full responsibility and Eldora’s staff will be paid as town employees.

Photo top: Eldora's base elevation of 9,200 feet and 100 percent snowmaking coverage translate to a consistent snow surface. The ski area is only 21 miles from Boulder and 47 miles from Denver. Eldora photo.

Founded in 1963, Eldora long languished in the shadow of larger ski resorts to the west of the Continental Divide.
In 1991 a trio of new owners, Billy Killebrew, Chuck Lewis and Graham Anderson, brought savvy management and
capital improvements. As Interstate 70 clotted up with
weekend traffic, Eldora became an attractive alternative for Front Range skiers and business boomed. The trio sold the area to Powdr in 2016.

For Utah-based Powdr, the sale is part of an ongoing reorganization, apparently aimed at rebalancing holdings toward multi-season operations. The company sold Lee Canyon (near Las Vegas, Nevada) and Killington/Pico (Vermont) in 2024, then Silver Star (British Columbia) in November 2025. These transactions leave Powdr holding onto its largest properties—Copper Mountain, Snowbird and Mt. Bachelor—plus three smaller Woodward snow-park resorts at Boreal and Soda Springs (California) and Park City.

In the meantime, the company has been stocking up on multi-season properties such as the concessions at Death Valley’s Stovepipe Wells and Zion National Park, along with a river-rafting operation in Oregon and Utah’s Powderbird heliskiing service.

Skiers often prefer to see the local hill in the hands of local management, rather than being managed by a distant and relatively impersonal multi-resort corporation. Killington was sold in 2024 to a group of local investors, as was Ragged Mountain, New Hampshire, another sale announced in November.

There never was much chance that Eldora would wind up in either the Vail or Alterra empires, though it does belong to Alterra’s Ikon Pass consortium. Because Eldora lies in Boulder County, which has long opposed any on-site hotel and condo development, the big corporations can’t expect hospitality and real-estate revenue there so didn’t bid for the ski area. Eldora’s roughly 400,000 annual skier visits will continue to drive from the Greater Boulder metropolitan area; they all have to pass through Nederland’s commercial district, where merchants and motels won’t have to compete with Vail- or Alterra-owned shops and hotels.

Precedent for Government-Run Ski Areas

Nederland, population 1,500, becomes one of the smallest American municipalities to own a ski area. The biggest such entity, of course, is Winter Park, Colorado, just 11 air miles away over Corona Pass. Winter Park was created and owned by the City of Denver beginning in 1939. The city managed the resort until 2002, when it signed a management contract with Intrawest; that contract was assumed by Alterra in 2018.

By contrast, the Nederland/Eldora relationship looks like a tail-wagging-the-dog arrangement. While it occupies just 680 acres, Eldora has 10 lifts with a total uphill capacity of nearly 14,000 skiers per hour and a payroll of 700 employees.

The oldest such town/area marriage is Howelsen Hill in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, founded by the local ski club in 1915 and acquired by the city in 1937. (Howelsen is also the oldest continuously operating ski area in the United States.)

Elsewhere in Colorado, smaller ski areas are operated by the cities of Durango, Ouray (population 1,000), Gunnison and Silverton; each is served by a single surface lift and adult season passes sell for about $100 (except at Silverton’s Kendall Mountain, where the 250-foot vertical warrants a $216 season pass).

Duluth, Minnesota, operates Spirit Mountain, established by the state legislature in 1979 as a magnet for tourism; the city typically supports the four-season activity center with about $225,000 a year of tourism tax revenue.

The State of New York operates three full-size ski areas, originally run by the Department of Conservation and later (after the 1980 Olympics) by the Olympic Regional Development Authority. Belleayre opened in 1950; Whiteface in 1958 (the operation moved from windy Marble Mountain, established in 1949); and Gore Mountain in 1964 (preceded by North Creek, where ski trails were first cut in 1934).

In New Hampshire, county-owned Belknap Mountain (now Gunstock) launched in 1937; the following year, the state government opened Cannon Mountain.

The federal government played an important role in many of these developments, at least during the 1930s. During the Great Depression, the Roosevelt administration was eager to subsidize local economic-stimulus projects. Grants and matching funds were available from the Works Progress Administration to help cut trails and build lifts and lodges; the Civilian Conservation Corps cut dozens of ski trails on public lands across the country. Each project could employ hundreds of construction workers for a couple of years, then jump-start the local economy through privately owned lodges, restaurants and retail stores.

Government-owned resorts of any significant size face
political as well as financial challenges. Commercially owned ski areas inevitably object to competition from taxpayer-funded entities; to level the playing field, government-owned areas usually wind up adopting commercial-equivalent prices for tickets and lease their restaurant and retail space to local businesses.

In Nederland, the sentiment seems split between anxiety about the town’s competence to manage the resort’s finances, and hope that resort revenues—and associated skier business—will help rebuild a centrally located strip mall after a fire in October destroyed 20 local businesses.

For a brief history of Eldora from its founding in 1963,
see skiinghistory.org/history/eldora-mountain-colorado-history.

Snapshots in Time

For nearly 100 years, skiers have closed the season into the drink.

As the story goes, in spring 1928, Cliff White and Cyril Paris, Banff Ski Club pioneers and experienced Alpinists, chanced upon a large snow-melt pond far below them in Banff, Alberta’s backcountry. They challenged each other to see who could skim farthest across the meltwater on skis.There’s no record of who won, but, voilà—a soggy end-of-ski-season ritual was born.

(Photo top: Mt. Baker, Washington, held its Slush Cup beginning in the early 1950s. Mt Baker photo)

Taking advantage of this colorful origin story, Banff Sunshine resort will celebrate its “96-ish” Slush Cup in late May, on the final day of the season. The resort touts it as the oldest pond-skimming event in North America. Flexing its own bragging rights, Sugarbush, Vermont, claims to be the oldest official event in the U.S., though the resort can’t pin down an exact starting date. It also claims to offer participant sAmerica’s longest stretch of open water at 120 feet.

Perhaps the most influential of the original pond-skimming celebrationsinthe U.S. may be the Mt. Baker Slush Cup, started in the early 1950s in Washington State. An early adopter of the end-of-season format, Mt. Baker, however, credits its pond-skimming fame to movie maestro Warren Miller, who said he was invited to the resort in 1954 to film the new event. “Thecombination of high-altitude, hot July sun, high blood-alcohol content and wobbly legs offered some fantastic, never-before-seen crashes for my next year’s feature-length ski film audiences,” Miller recalled in a 2015 Tahoe Guide newspaper column. Pond-skimming antics became a staple of Miller’s oeuvre, with the filmmaker claiming his 1950s coverage ignited a movement.

Vail, Colorado, winks as it touts its event as the World Championships of Pond Skimming. Whitefish Mountain Resort in Montan aawards $1,500 in cash across a multitude of categories. In California, Palisade Tahoe’s Cushing Crossing, now in its 33rd year and one of the more iconic skims in the U.S., features a proper pond and has become so popular that it now limits the event to 50 participants.

Big Sky, Montana, annually held one of the more innovative pond skims in the country prior to Covid. Every year, the creative manmade ponds changed format, with sometimes two of them side by side or end to end, and with kickers and rails, drawing hundreds of rowdy fans and participants. After a few years off, pond skimming returnedt o Big Sky this spring to close the ski season.

Colorado’s Arapahoe Basin, always in tune to counter programming, offers its unofficial and weather-dependent pond skimming across “Lake Reveal,” typically in June. Melting snow and local topography unite, under the proper conditions, to create a natural small pond near the top of the resort. No official spectators. No entry fees. No prizes. The pond is available at any time, to anyone who is up to the challenge.

The unique and notorious Ski Splash at Snowmass, Colorado, began in 1970 and persisted until 1984 before the plug was pulled over insurance issues. The event had a kicker on the slope above whart was then the El Dorado Hotel's outdoor swimming pool. Instead of skimming across it, the often scantily-clad participants did their aerials and landed in the pool. Hopefully. But not always. Hence the cancellation.

Skiing's spring bacchanalia vibe is global, of course. Pond skimming translates to water sliding in Europe, with the attendant components, however, consistently similar. Participants costume up or strip down and strive to take skis, snowboards, ski-bikes, cardboard airplanes, patrol toboggans or, occasionally, a full-body Styrofoam Eiffel Tower costume or a wrap-around Titanic ship across a frequently purpose-built pond at the end of a slope. Expect to see sharks and pirates and beach-themed attire. Moses often parts the sea, and Jesus "walks" at a brisk pace. Think soap-box derby on snow. The event typically includes live music, rivers of beverages, sponsor banners, loaner life jackets, paramedics and hundreds, often thousands, of revelers.

Switzerland's Engelberg Titlis resort was once famous for its mineral water, so it takes water sliding seriously. The resort holds multiple rounds to determine the winner, with the pond's approach slope shortened after each round, gradually reducing water-planing speed.

In the annual Defi Foly contest at La Clusaz, France, skiers don't zip across a man-made slush hole -- they take on an actual lake, where the ice is usually only partially broken up by the second half of April. Helmets and life jackets are mandatory, and participants start on a steep hill above the lake, tuck all the way onto the water and try to glide across 525 feet. The half-dozen rescue boats stay busy all day. In 2011, Frenchman Philippe Troubat, a Freeride World Tour competitor, cleared 509 feet, which he claims as an unofficial world record. For pond-skimming purists, however, his achievement might require an asterisk in the record book: He rode a monoski.

Over the past quarter century, ski mountaineering has gained popularity—both as a recreational sport (known as Alpine touring or “uphilling”) and a competitive event. At February’s 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Games, skimo, as it’s commonly called, makes its Olympic debut. Or, some might argue, its Olympic return.

At the skimo World Cup and world championships, events include the individual, vertical, sprint and mixed-relay disciplines. The Olympics will feature only the sprint and team relay, with 18 racers per gender.

The history of ski mountaineering is the history of skiing itself. From the time our ancestors first fashioned skis from wood until ski lifts were invented, skiers have traversed great distances and scaled mountains, often using seal skins affixed to the ski bases to prevent them from sliding backwards. Even after the invention of lifts, Alpinists have continued to don skins (mohair or synthetic) on their skis to summit snowy peaks. Ski mountaineering also became a strategic option for the military, at first in Europe, then in the United States during World War II.

Mountaineering and Alpinism have actually been part of the Olympics since the first Olympic Congress in 1894. The newly formed International Olympic Committee planned to award a gold medal for Alpinism and mountaineering. But that medal was not awarded until the 1924 Winter Games in Chamonix, when the unsuccessful 1922 British Everest expedition was presented with the Prix Olympique d’Alpinisme.

At the same Olympiad, an event called military patrol was considered a ski-mountaineering competition; teams traveled 20 kilometers up and over mountains while carrying rifles. Biathlon is rooted in military patrol, but so is ski mountaineering, says USA Skimo’s head of sport Sarah Cookler. Some may say that Milano Cortina is a “return to the Olympic games for ski mountaineering,” she adds.

Ski-mountaineering events continued to be contested in the mid-20th century. In 1933, friends of Ottorino Mezzalama started the Mezzalama Trophy race in Italy’s Aosta Valley to honor the famed mountain guide. Soldiers and other guides participated in the Mezzalama, held annually until 1938. The race was resurrected for four runnings in the 1970s. The 1975 edition was dubbed the Ski Mountaineering World Championships, and Italy swept the podium in the three categories: civilians, soldiers and mountain guides.

In 1997, the Mezzalama Trophy became a biannual race with no separate categories for the military or mountain guides (although many European ski mountaineers work for the military). The Mezzalama Trophy is now considered part of La Grande Course, the six most important ski-mountaineering races on the calendar, including the Patrouille des Glaciers in Switzerland (started during World War II to test the abilities of soldiers; the course is still set by the Swiss military) and the Pierra Menta in France’s Savoie region (started in 1986). The Grande Course races are team events—two or three athletes per team stay together to travel over rugged, technical terrain.

Other ski-mountaineering races, also known as randonnée races (French for ski touring), became popular in Europe in the 1990s as well. From 1992 to 2009, the Comité International du Ski-Alpinisme de Compétition (CISAC)—founded by the skiing associations of France, Italy, Slovakia, Andorra and Switzerland—sanctioned the European Championship. In 1999, CISAC merged with the International Council for Ski Mountaineering Competitions (ISMC), which became the International Ski Mountaineering Federation (ISMF) in 2008.

The first ISMC-sanctioned skimo world championship was held in 2002 in Serre Chevalier, France, about two hours west of Turin, Italy, in the French Alps. The championship drew 230 racers from 22 countries and did not feature a category for the military. Skimo world championships have been held biennially since then, switching to odd years in 2011 (and sanctioned by ISMF since 2008). Two years later, ISMF proposed a World Cup tour. Skimo races were slower to catch on in the U.S. but momentum built in the 2010s, and popular local races now dot many resorts’ winter calendars.

At the World Cup and world championships, the individual event is a traditional mountaineering-type race, explains Cookler, with competitors going up and over multiple peaks. “It’s a longer-distance race and more of a classic ski-mountaineering event,” she says. The vertical race, meanwhile, is like a drag race from bottom to top, with no ski descent.

The sprint is a microcosm of ski mountaineering, with each heat taking about three minutes. Six skiers at a time charge off the starting line; each sprint uphill includes a section where athletes climb—or skin—on their skis, then another section of boot packing (or the “foot part,” as they say in Europe). The uphill also features a prescribed zigzag section called “diamonds” that racers skin up.

At the top of the sprint course, skiers rip off their skins in the transition zone and race down to the finish. The downhill section often resembles a ski-cross course, with gates, berms and a mandatory jump. Skiers tackle these technical downhills using lightweight skis that are only 150 centimeters long for women, 160 for men, and boots that more closely resemble cross-country than Alpine boots. Organized like a cross-country skiing sprint, the skimo version features a qualifier, then heats of six skiers to determine who makes the final.

The mixed relay features two competitors per team, one male and one female, who each complete two laps of an uphill and downhill course. Equipment is standardized across all disciplines, and competitors must have their boots, skis and bindings weighed to the gram after competitions.

Some racers and skimo fans are disappointed that the Olympics won’t feature the more classic ski mountaineering race: the individual. Counters Cookler, “There’s a positive way of looking at this, that it’s a gateway to showcasing the entire sport at future Olympics.”

France will host the 2030 Winter Olympics, and their athletes lead current ISMF standings, with Emily Harrop and Thibault Anselmet heavy favorites to win the 2026 Olympic sprints and mixed relay. Harrop and Anselmet are the reigning mixed-relay world champions. 

Snapshots in Time

1937 Not a Fad
A skier is better equipped than ever for the sport, he has more friends eager to try it, more snow trains are waiting and the resorts in the mountains of the East are pining for his visits. This Winter the skiers of New England and the Middle Atlantic States may number well over half a million, of varying skill. Last year there were half that figure. And the remarkable growth of the “king of Winter sports” in the East is duplicated in the West. Here, truly, is a phenomenon not idle, or passing or faddish. — Frederick Gruin, “Track! And the Daring Skier Comes A-flying.” (New York Times, January 31, 1937)

1956 No Wedeln Doubts
I am writing as a director of the Far West Ski Instructors’ Association, perhaps the most progressive organization of its kind in this country. I am sure there are many who doubt that wedeln turns can be taught to beginners. I have proven to my own satisfaction, and to that of many, many skiers, that it can. Experiments with such an approach applied to the method of teaching parallel skiing have produced most gratifying results, especially to youngsters. These findings are the subject of a book of mine scheduled for publication next year. Maybe after your next article, I should entitle it Wedeln Waltzing auf dem Schnee. What do you think? — Doug Pfeiffer, Co-Director, Summit Ski School, Big Bear Lake, California, “Wedeln” (Letters, SKI Magazine, November 1956)

1977 Still Good Advice, 48 Years Later
I think all the time how close I came to really eating it. What if we hadn’t any matches? How about a broken femur and the attendant shock? What if it had been 20 degrees colder and snowing? Or how about if I had been skiing alone? The answer to all of these questions is that O.B. skiing with nothing but the clothes on your back is probably the most dangerous thing you’ll ever do. — Lou Dawson, “Out of Bounds and Out of Luck.” (Powder Magazine, November 1977)

2023 Skiing’s Unsustainable Business Model
“On any given day, you can go down to Coors Field and you can buy a $15 ticket to sit in the bleachers. Or you can spend thousands of dollars to have a premium experience. And then there’s everything in between. We’re going to have to figure how to balance that. How do we create more optionality? And if we do that right, that should allow us to lower the price for people to enter the sport for the first time. Now, the people who come the most, we’re going to charge them the least. And the people who we’re trying to get to join for the first time, we’re going to charge them the most. That’s not a sustainable model, right?” — Alterra CEO Jared Smith (The Storm Skiing Journal, Stuart Winchester, Podcast #138, July 2023)

2025 Parking Your Money in a Resort Garage
High real estate prices typically refer to houses, not places to put your car. But in a few Colorado ski resort towns, parking spots are now a hot accessory real estate item. In Beaver Creek, a parking space in a garage sold for the list price of $250,000 in late 2024. The listing described the benefits of this investment: “So your property owners wanted ski-in ski-out but ended up buying outside the resort? Here is your solution. Buy this parking space that has a ski-in ski-out ski locker and parking space in Beaver Creek. Priced to sell at the same price as the last two sales.” — Mindy Sink, “Would you buy a Colorado ski-town parking spot for $415,000? (Denver Post, April 17, 2025)

The planned glamour resort in British Columbia appeared to have everything it needed to succeed—until it didn’t. 

Starting in the late 1950s, development of a new resort in British Columbia gained speed—and lots of media coverage, including (above, courtesy PWL Landscape Architecture) a rendering of its luxury layout. An $80 million bankruptcy followed in December 2023, closing the door on the project—for now.

The six-decade drama surrounding a proposed massive resort development on Brohm Ridge, near Squamish, British Columbia, is seemingly in limbo, despite a new owner emerging from bankruptcy in 2023. The Aquilini Investment Group, one-time partners in the project, gained solitary control after a stalking horse bid was accepted by the receiver to settle an $80 million bankruptcy on the property.

Since then, the Aquilini group has made little progress in meeting the environmental or site requirements set out in the Environmental Assessment Certificate awarded to the development in 2016. The British Columbia Environmental Assessment Office (EAO) overseeing the Garibaldi at Squamish venture has not yet granted an extension to the new owners and there's little evidence of any current on-site activity. If completed, the new complex would be the first true purpose-built destination resort developed in Canada since Blackcomb Mountain opened in December 1980. The hype started on December 27, 1958, with a front-page banner headline in the Vancouver Sun enthusiastically declaring, “Huge New Resort for Garibaldi, Plan Will Cost $5.5 Million.”

Just months after the paving of Highway 99 from Vancouver to Squamish, Adi F. Bauer, an Austrian mechanical engineer, proclaimed that European financing had been procured to build a sprawling ski resort, event center and luxury hotel on the flanks of Mount Garibaldi that would “host everything from major business conventions to the Winter Olympics.” Bauer anticipated that construction could “start in less than six weeks.”

Given such optimism, it’s hard to believe that another headline—dated May 8, 2024, on Vancouver’s Daily Hive website—would echo the same message: “New Garibaldi at Squamish Owners Have a Tight Deadline to Start Construction.”

Indeed, nothing, and everything, has happened in the ensuing 66 years since that first headline. In 1966, after numerous financing delays, Bauer finally completed the Royal Alpine Hotel, though it was never opened to the public. A few lift towers were encased in concrete, but the project stalled by 1969.

Eight years later, a B.C. government initiative investigated the economic viability not only of Brohm Ridge but of other regions in the province that could attract international investment and help diversify local economies away from logging, mining and ranching.

The 19 pages devoted to Brohm Ridge were a withering assessment of the resort’s potential; categorized as an “unacceptable site” due to “excessively steep grades and rocky faces and inadequate snowfall at the Village site.” Oddly, only four years later, the B.C. government would invite an LA–based, but Victoria, B.C.–born, entrepreneur to evaluate the site. Wolfgang Richter came to a very different conclusion, believing that Garibaldi Alpen (as the project was called) would be a splendid day-use area, one that would, instead of competing with the likes of Whistler-Blackcomb, draw skiers away from Cypress, Grouse and Seymour.

That first effort to build a day-use area was rejected, but Richter was encouraged to try again in 1996, when his new company, Garibaldi at Squamish (GAS), beat out two other candidates. Richter was charismatic and engaging, and apparently a damned good telemark skier. He wanted Canadian ownership and to work with local outdoors enthusiasts to increase access to the area.

In 2007, he got his wish when two of Vancouver’s most prominent developers got involved—the Aquilini family, owners of a portfolio of office buildings as well as the NHL’s Vancouver Canucks, and the Gaglardi family, owners of Grouse Mountain and Revelstoke Mountain Resort. The two families put aside previous business rivalries and agreed to work together to develop a four-season resort known as Garibaldi at Squamish, with Richter the vice chairman of the effort.

From 2001 to 2016, the Gaglardi/Aquilini team, working with several overlapping government agencies, the Squamish First Nation and the Squamish city council, set in motion an 8,000-acre plan that would be developed in three stages. In 2016, the province's EAO bestowed its first certificate for a four-season resort.

What the GAS proponents eventually received approval for was breathtaking. At build-out in 2040, Garibaldi at Squamish would have 1,635 acres of skiable terrain on 131 trails, 21 lifts, a 17,538 visitor capacity, 3,045 employees and close to 22,000 beds and 1,184 single-family dwellings.

The devil seemed to be in the details. Far from being a rubber stamp, more than 33 conditions were appended to the certificate that the developers had to meet before officially opening the resort. That’s when relations between the Aquilinis and the Gaglardis started to fray. Now that they had won the coveted certificate, they could not agree upon how to proceed, nor where the money might come from to even start the project.

The complexities of untangling what is happening at a proposed resort, where bank vaults of dollars have been spent on geotechnical planning, lawyers’ and consultants’ fees, bank loans and debt financing—with nary a lift built, a trail cut or a road improved—are challenging.

In December 2023, Garibaldi at Squamish declared bankruptcy and three weeks later, court documents show that a stalking horse bid by the Aquilini group priced the resort’s assets at approximately $80 million. GAS’s ownership structure involved numbered companies loaning funds for the project in a rather unseemly manner; the provincial government initiated an investigation into whether there was a conflict of interest between the company’s directors and how its debt was being managed.

Acting on behalf of the government, Ernst & Young managed the bankruptcy process. The $80 million price tag seemed to be a valuation based on the successful completion of the estimated $3.5 billion project. With a build-out timeline of more than 30 years, substantial investment would be required to recoup the costs. Eventually, years of shaky financing compounded by concerns over environmental impacts derailed the project—for now.

As of summer 2025, no crews are engaged in typical pre-construction tasks. It’s widely speculated that the Aquilinis, for whom $80 million is nearly a rounding error after two decades of investment, might leverage the debt to avoid paying taxes on other parts of their extensive real estate portfolio.

Boasting a major destination mountain resort or not, the Crown land is buzzing. Sea to Sky Highway locals with a sturdy truck, dirt bikes, an ATV or snowmobile enjoy a massive motorized-approved recreation zone. You’ll see Toyota Tacomas dragging trailers into the backcountry bearing out-of-province plates at all times of the year. 

Snapshots in Time

1936 Beginner Tips
Skis must be continually waxed with one of some 50 brands of wax. Experts make their own waxes by secret formulas. Far more important to the beginner than all this expertism is getting the rigid connection between shoe and ski. Bindings lash the toe to the ski, but the bindings must also be secure enough to keep the heel from sliding off the side of the ski. Otherwise, the skier, trying to turn his ski, only turns his foot, and falls down. — “Skiing Can Be Risky and Lonely” (Life, December 1936)

1969 New Hampshire Milestone
The Cranmore Mountain ski center is observing the 30th anniversary of the founding of its Hannes Schneider Ski School. It was in 1938 that the late Harvey Gibson spirited the renowned skimeister, Hannes Schneider, out of Austria, despite Hitler’s tight security measures, so that he could bring the Arlberg (old Austrian) technique of skiing to the United States. Mr. Schneider’s welcome here was impressive. As he left the train at the picturesque North Conway station of the Boston & Maine Railroad, local schoolchildren made an arch of ski poles through which he and his family walked. — “A Skiing Milestone in New Hampshire” (New York Times, January 19, 1969, )

1971 The Last Craftsman?
When I was young, If you were a racer, you had to have a pair of Moli’s to be tough: three years to break in, etc. Karl Molitor also handmade a climbing boot called the EIS boot. It was a technical ice-and rock-climbing boot. This boot, like his ski boots, was highly regarded around the world. The two shops in the country that carried the boot for a time (Yvon Chouinard being one of these) described the boot as “the best in the world.” From what I understand Karl has retired, with no one to continue making his boots, either ski or mountain. Raichle may have some of his patents, but Karl’s hands no longer make the boots (a significant difference). — Ken Gallard, Taos Ski Valley, New Mexico, “The Last Craftsman?” (Letters, Powder, December 1977)

1989 Garden State Skiing
The New Jersey ski industry is struggling for recognition, say the operators of the state’s six ski areas. “We have been too long in the shadow of the Catskills and Poconos,’” said Vernon Merritt, president of the New Jersey Ski Area Association. “We offer superior skiing here but have to work toward establishing a stronger identity in people’s minds between skiing and the Garden State.” Although a campaign to promote skiing in New Jersey, begun three years ago by the State Division of Travel and Tourism, increased skier traffic by 20 percent, the industry suffered a setback this season, after most of these funds were reallocated to Shore resorts. — Lyn Mautner, “Ski Resorts Seeking New Image” (New York Times, February 5, 1989, )

1998 Does Size Matter?
Fortunately, skiing goes beyond numbers to the realms of adrenaline, freedom and soul. The reason people continue to ski long boards, despite the current market trend to go shorter, is the simple fact that it feels damn good. Long skis are fleet and stable, and they glide through crud and powder like grandpa’s Caddy—and they impart a feeling of reward and transcendence to the skier capable of piloting them. Training wheels eased our entry into safe biking. But once we ride without teetering, we discarded this training aid. — David Peck, “Does Size Matter?” (Powder, Spring 1998)

2025 My Battle with PTSD
My therapist is the one who first brought up the idea of looking at things from the lens of PTSD. With me, I also think it’s possible that the crash I had at the beginning of 2024, and then Killington happening … that those two crashes maybe built on one another. My therapist let me know that past trauma can sometimes affect your reaction to new traumatic events. Maybe when I crashed and got that puncture wound, maybe that was kind of a perfect-storm situation for PTSD to take hold. — MIKAELA SHIFFRIN, “MY BATTLE WITH PTSD” (THE PLAYERS' TRIBUNE, May 30, 2025)

A history of early sportswashing.

As Italian ace Zeno Colo stood in the giant slalom starting gate at the 1950 FIS World Championship races in Aspen, he was smoking a cigarette right up until the countdown started, when he flicked it casually into the snow. No one thought much about it at the time. Today, when watching the film of the event, nearly every audience laughs and hoots.

Colo was a flamboyant and elite competitor (Olympic and World Championship gold medalist), and his Aspen starting-gate ritual was just one more sign of his nonchalant coolness, reinforced when he won the race. At that time in Western culture, smoking cigarettes was one of the most fashionable things you could do: sexy movie stars smoked (on and off-screen), models lit up and so did famous athletes. Smoking had become almost as much a staple of American life as drinking. In 1964, the peak year for smoking in the U.S., 42 percent of Americans smoked. Children even sucked on candy cigarettes to look as grownup as their parents.

So when full-page cigarette ads in prominent national publications began to feature skiing, it was a sign that the sport had gone mainstream. It also was a sign that tobacco manufacturers understood a match made in heaven: use skiing’s healthy, hip vibe to sell their products.

A 1943 Camel cigarette ad included photos of World War II ski troops as it touted cigarettes’ popularity in the various military services, where mini-packs were included in soldier’s K-rations. When the legendary American skier Dick Durrance appeared in a different Camel ad that ran in Colliers in the early 1940s, he was attired in military snow-camouflage gear (see illustrationi, top of page). Though Durrance helped train paratroopers, he never served in the 10th Mountain Division -- instead he worked as a test-flight photographer for Boeing's B-29 project.

If Mikaela Shiffrin started hawking Marlboros tomorrow, there would be a massive uproar, of course. Attitudes toward smoking started to shift in the mid-1950s, when several epidemiology studies, in both the U.S. and Great Britain, began to clarify the link between smoking and illnesses such as lung cancer. The landmark 1964 U.S. Surgeon General’s report, which showed a direct link between smoking and life-threatening diseases, sealed the deal.

Following the damning U.S. Surgeon General's report,
magazine cigarette ads continued to use skiing as a backdrop, both to convey smoking’s sexiness and as a subliminal smoke screen to obscure its health hazards. The ads were an early example of what is now called “sportswashing,” using athletics to improve public image by redirecting attention away from questionable ethics or behavior.

The term has been around since the mid-2010s, and Amnesty International has been attributed with adding it to the modern marketing lexicon. However, it wasn’t until recently, as countries and corporations financed major sports leagues and athletic events, attempting to improve their international reputations, that the word stuck. For example, in 2021, Saudi Arabia, known for violating human rights, underwrote LIV, a new professional world golf tour, to the tune of several billion dollars.

The practice is not new. Perhaps the most famous early example of sportswashing was when Nazi Germany hosted the 1936 Olympics—both the Winter and Summer Games. The international spotlight that’s focused on the Olympics is a natural fit for sportswashing, with recent examples that feature skiing arguably including Russia’s 2014 Sochi Winter Games and China’s 2022 Beijing Winter Games.

After the 1964 surgeon general’s report, skiing was still frequently featured in tobacco ads. Remarkably, that sportswashing trend increased over the next few decades. In 1971, tobacco ads were banned from broadcast media. After being removed from the airwaves, tobacco companies quickly pivoted huge advertising budgets to print, with skiing prominently featured in some of the ads.

The magazine advertising landscape shifted dramatically in 1998, when a legal agreement between tobacco companies and state attorneys general included a restriction on tobacco ads in magazines that had significant youth readership. Currently, no formal ban exists on all print tobacco ads, but by the mid-2000s, they had mostly disappeared from mainstream magazines.

Despite the concerns of many, others feel like the sportswashing label is really just virtue-signaling. It’s hard to criticize any athlete for taking the money, this argument goes. Blame the system, not the player, whether it’s golfer Jon Rahm going to LIV for north of $300 million; Tadej Pogačar getting more than 8 million Euros annually cycling for UAE Team Emirates; or Dick Durrance for whatever he got at a time when ski racers weren’t making much of anything. 

If Mikaela Shiffrin started hawking Marlboros tomorrow, there would be a massive uproar, of course.

Snapshots in Time

1956 The New Way to Ski

During the past year or more, a violent controversy has been raging in European ski circles—in the press, in ski schools, in organized skiing. The subject of this dispute is “Wedeln” (vay-duhn), a word which we will henceforth adopt into our SKI vocabulary without qualifying quotation marks. Wedeln is the new running style developed by racers and now almost universally practiced by them and other topnotch skiers. — Brooks Dodge, “Ski the New Way” (SKI Magazine, October 1956)

1963 Will the Skiing Boom Continue?
PARIS —Still another major aerial cable lift has opened in the Alps, this one at Chamonix two days ago. While skiers rub their hands with glee, the financiers worry whether this new lift (and so many others not much older) will catch on. Will the boom in skiing continue indefinitely? The new lift, called the Lognon, rises off Argentiere near Chamonix. It starts at 4,050 and climbs to 6,368 feet. — Robert Daley, “New Lift makes Some Think It Is Time to Stop” (New York Times, February 19, 1963)

1976 What Did He Prove?
To ski down Everest. The notion is at once magnificent and ridiculous, brave and silly. To spend $3 million, to muster an expedition of 850 men and 27 tons of equipment, to sacrifice six lives in order to photograph a man skiing down a mountain for four minutes . . . what a peculiar and wonderful thing we have here in the human ego. What did he prove? Not that he could ski down Everest, perhaps, but at least that he would try. Does his attempt place him in the history books next to Hillary, or Evel Knievel? We leave the film not knowing. Perhaps the title—“The Man Who Skied Down Everest”—provides a clue. No matter how long Miura lives, how far he travels, how many people he meets, he will always be an easy man to introduce at a party. — Roger Ebert “The Man Who Skied Down Everest” (Chicago Sun-Times, September 23, 1976)

1982 Are You a Gourmet or Gourmand Skier?
Among skiers, there are gourmets and there are gourmands. The gourmets select a resort as carefully as they would the wine for an important occasion. Once they’ve found a ski area to their liking, they return to it year after year, learning its ways and savoring its idiosyncrasies. The gourmands prefer to gobble up mountain after mountain, priding themselves on the number of slopes they can consume in a season. — Clifford May, “At Large on Skis in Colorado” (New York Times, March 21, 1982)

2002 Extreme Over-Xposure
Blame Scot Schmidt. Or the misguided corporate-American marketing machine. Or ourselves. But the world “extreme”—which once had something to do with danger—is now used to market everything from razors to Right Guard deodorant to really good ice cream sundaes. (Note to Madison Avenue marketing managers: Make “X” bigger than the other letters.) — “Extreme Influence” (Skiing, December 2002)

2025 Every Skier’s Dream
The precipitous decline catches up with everyone. Even with modern skis that make it so much easier. Even with attention to fitness being greater now than ever before. It doesn’t matter if you have good genes, a relentless conditioning regime, have avoided injuries that nag you as you age, or you’re just plain lucky—father time catches us all. — Lee Cohen, “Becoming an Old Geezer Should be Every Skier’s Dream.” (Powder Photo Annual, Summer 2025)

For nearly 100 years, skiers have closed the season into the farewell drink.

Photo top: Prescient in grasping pond-skimming's end-of-season appeal, Mt. Baker, Washington, started holding its Slush Cup in the early 1950s. Coverage in Warren Miller films helped make the spring ritual a popular closing act to the ski season.

As the story goes, in spring 1928, Cliff White and Cyril Paris, Banff Ski Club pioneers and experienced Alpinists, chanced upon a large snow-melt pond far below them in Banff, Alberta’s backcountry. They challenged each other to see who could skim farthest across the meltwater on skis. There’s no record of who won, but, violà—a soggy end-of-ski-season ritual was born.

Taking advantage of this colorful origin story, Banff Sunshine resort will celebrate its “96-ish” Slush Cup in late May, on the final day of the season. The resort touts it as the oldest pond-skimming event in North America. Flexing its own bragging rights, Sugarbush, Vermont, claims to be the oldest official event in the U.S., though the resort can’t pin down an exact starting date. It also claims to offer participants America’s longest stretch of open water at 120 feet.

Perhaps the most influential of the original pond-skimming celebrations in the U.S. may be the Mt. Baker Slush Cup, started in the early 1950s in Washington State. An early adopter of this spring ritual, Mt. Baker, however, credits its pond-skimming fame to movie maestro Warren Miller, who said he was invited to the resort in 1954 to film the new event. “The combination of high-altitude, hot July sun, high blood-alcohol content and wobbly legs offered some fantastic, never-before-seen crashes for my next year’s feature-length ski film audiences,” Miller recalled in a 2015 Tahoe Guide newspaper column. Pond-skimming antics became a staple of Miller’s oeuvre, and the filmmaker claims his 1950s Mt. Baker coverage ignited a movement.

Vail, Colorado, winks as it touts its event as the World Championships of Pond Skimming. Whitefish Mountain
Resort in Montana awards $1,500 in cash across a multitude of categories. In California, Palisade Tahoe’s Cushing Crossing, now in its 33rd year and one of the more iconic skims in the U.S., features a proper pond and has become so popular that it now limits the event to 50 participants.

Big Sky, Montana, annually held one of the more innovative pond skims in the country prior to Covid. Every year, the creative man-made ponds changed format, with sometimes two of them side by side or end to end, and with kickers and rails, drawing hundreds of rowdy fans and participants. After a few years off, pond skimming returned to Big Sky this spring to close the ski season.

Colorado’s Arapahoe Basin, always in tune to counter-programming, offers its unofficial and weather-dependent pond skimming across “Lake Reveal,” typically in June. Melting snow and local topography unite to create a natural pond alongside Dercum's Gulch trail, under the gaze of riders on the Lenawee lift. No official spectators. No entry fees. No prizes. The pond is available at any time, to anyone who is up to the challenge.

The unique and notorious Ski Splash at Snowmass, Colorado, began in 1970 and persisted until 1984 before the plug was pulled over insurance issues. The event had a kicker on the ski slope above the then-El Dorado Hotel’s outdoor swimming pool, and instead of skimming across it, the often scantily clad participants did their aerials and landed in the pool. Hopefully. But not always. Hence the cancellation.

Skiing’s spring bacchanalia vibe is global, of course. Pond skimming translates to water sliding in Europe, with the attendant components, however, consistently similar. Participants costume up or strip down and strive to take skis, snowboards, ski-bikes, cardboard airplanes, patrol toboggans or, occasionally, a full-body Styrofoam Eiffel Tower costume or a wraparound Titanic ship across a frequently purpose-built pond at the end of a slope. Expect to see sharks and pirates and beach-themed attire. Moses often parts the sea, and Jesus "walks" it, at a brisk pace. Think a soap-box derby on snow. The event typically includes live music, rivers of beverages, sponsor banners, loaner life jackets, paramedics and hundreds—often thousands—of revelers.

In Europe, Switzerland’s Engelberg Titlis resort was once famous for its mineral water, so it takes water sliding seriously. The resort holds multiple rounds to determine the winner, with the pond’s approach-slope shortened after each round, gradually reducing water-planing speed.

In the annual Défi Foly contest at La Clusaz, France, skiers don’t zip across a man-made slush hole; they take on an actual lake, where the ice is usually only partially broken up by the second half of April, when the event is staged. Helmets and life jackets are mandatory, and participants start on a steep hill above the lake, tuck all the way onto the water and try to glide across 525 feet. The half-dozen rescue boats stay busy all day. In 2011, Frenchman Philippe Troubat, a Freeride World Tour competitor, cleared 509 feet, which he claims as an unofficial world record. For pond-skimming purists, however, his achievement might require an asterisk in the record books:

He rode a monoski. 

Middle-schooler's 10th Mountain Division Project Wins National History Award.

For his entire life, Aesop Birkemeier heard stories about his late great-grandfather, who served in the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division. An indefatigable history fan even at an early age, the 13-year-old seventh grader from Nashville, Indiana, won a National History Day award for his project spotlighting the legendary ski troops of World War II.

The nonprofit competition was established in 1974 and currently engages more than a half million students every year in conducting original research on historical topics. Students present their research as a documentary, exhibit, paper, performance or website. Nearly 3,000 students from across the country, grades six to 12, presented 1,600 history projects, judged by 540 historians and education professionals in the 2024 competition. It’s history’s equivalent of a science fair.

Aesop’s theme for the competition was “Turning Points in History: The Legacy of the 10th Mountain Division.” He chronicled the 10th's success during the war and the role played by his grandmother’s father, Onas Glenn Inman (1917–1996) of Doans, Indiana. His display included an Eisenhower jacket, a field manual, Inman’s checkerboard and archival images. The centerpiece of his project was a historical play of sorts that he wrote and performed, based on stories he heard about his great-grandfather.

According to the Columbus, Indiana, Republic, Aesop competed against 100 students before winning first place in the junior division. He received a National Humanities Medal from the National Endowment for the Humanities and a $1,000 cash prize. In addition to winning top honors, Aesop was also chosen as one of nine students to perform his entry during a showcase at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

Inman, who died before Aesop was born, served in the 10th Mountain’s126th Mountain Engineering Battalion, Company B, in the division’s two campaigns: Kiska Island, Alaska, and Italy’s Apennine mountains, according to the Denver Public Library 10th Mountain Division archives (see Skiing History, January-February 2024).

“I’m never going to forget the moment I was in the stands and they called my name. It was the best feeling I ever had,” says Aesop, who doesn’t yet ski. He wants to learn in Colorado, where he can also visit the Denver Public Library archives, the Colorado Snowsports Museum’s 10th exhibit and the nearby Camp Hale–Continental Divide National Monument.

The Birkemeier family has a record of competing in numerous past National History Day events. Says Aesop’s mother, Torrie Birkemeier, “Aesop’s dad and I both believe that in order to look where we’re going, we have to understand where we’ve come from.” — Jeff Blumenfeld 

Snapshots in Time

1936 Europe Is Decades Ahead of America

America discovered skiing last winter in dead earnest and is getting set for the greatest skiing winter in its history. But Europe is 20 years ahead of the U.S. in making skiing luxurious and taking pictures of it. Skiing began because the nomadic Lapps and Mongols had to get across vast, open wastes of snow. Not until 1800 did a few Norwegians near Telemark discover it was also fun. It took another 30 years more for the rest of Europe, notably those nations with a piece of the Alps, to catch on. First and best advice for beginners is to fall down when they think they are going too fast. — “Skiing Is Fun and Makes Beautiful Pictures” (Life, December 7, 1936)

1959 The Only Unfortunate Part of Teaching Skiing

You may remind these people (Ski Illustrated) that they printed a long article about my ski style in 1938—quite 10 years before Emile Allais. The only unfortunate part of teaching a new and different technique in skiing is the controversy between the different schools and the disadvantage to the pupils of getting completely mixed up while changing from one school or resort to another. — Hans Georg, “Ski Style” (Letters, SKI Magazine, November 1949)

1978 Skiing the French Way

Ironically, with all the thought that has been lent to the French technique, it rarely has been associated with that which is most aesthetic and elusive in skiing—powder. Normally such concepts as avalement, rebound and jet turns are connected with mogul skiing, where energy is at a premium and efficiency foremost. In powder, motions must be more subtle and unhurried in order to maintain fluidity, balance, and control. The powder seeker knows that exaggerated movements are unnecessary and a hindrance, throwing off the rhythm that is so crucial. — Gordie Skoog, “The French Way” (Powder, November 1978)

1984 Forget the Hot Tub. Check out Those Ski Stunts

Since the other characters have names like Squirrel, Fergy and Kamikaze, Harkin is Hot Dog’s apparent hero. But its real heroes are the stunt skiers, since some of the sports footage is quite lively. Mike Marvin, who wrote the screenplay and who directed the second unit, obviously knows his ski feats. He knows less about character, though, and the nonskiing part of the script concerns itself mostly with cooking up pretexts for the ski bunnies in the cast (Tracy N. Smith and Shannon Tweed are the two female leads) to doff their clothing. A hot tub, a waterbed and a heart­shaped bathtub figure prominently in the film’s dramatic development, and so does the nowadays obligatory wet T-shirt event. — Janet Maslin, “Review: ‘Hot Dog,’ Skiers Competing and Playing” (New York Times, January 14, 1984)

2025 Jumping into a Scandal

GENEVA — Sign stealing in baseball. Match fixing in soccer. Doping allegations in swimming. Now ski jumping has its own scandal. Cheating by Norway team officials manipulating jumpers’ ski suits has shaken a national reputation for fair play and high-minded principles at their home Nordic world championships, where the host team dominated the medal table. Two Olympic gold medalists, Marius Lindvik and Johann André Forfang, had denied involvement since the allegations emerged over the weekend but were suspended Wednesday and put under formal suspicion in an investigation overseen by the International Ski and Snowboard Federation. — “Norwegian Ski Jumpers Suspended During Suit Tampering Inquiry” (Associated Press, March 12, 2025)