Short Turns

Retreating Ice Reveals Mate of 1,300-Year-Old Ski

Seven years later, Norwegian archaeologists have a full pair

In 2014, archaeologists found a lone “pre-Viking” wood ski frozen deep in the Digervarden Ice Patch in southern Norway, where it had been entombed since the eighth century. The ski was remarkably well preserved and included remnants of a birch-and-leather heel-strap binding, according to scientists from Norway’s Glacier Archaeology Program (GAP), who led the discovery (see “Glaciers Yield Ancient Skis,” Skiing History, March-April 2019).

Photo above: Credit Espen Finstad, secretsoftheice.com

Since skis travel in pairs, the scientists have monitored the ice patch for seven years, hoping that summer thaws and glacial retreat would reveal the ski’s partner. In late September, scientists discovered the site of the ancient yard sale: They exhumed the second ski less than 20 feet from the original discovery.

Buried deeper in the ice than the first ski, the second ski is better preserved, reported Lars Pilø, an archaeologist with GAP, on the organization’s blog, SecretsoftheIce.com. The ski measures about six feet long (187 centimeters) and 6 inches wide (17 centimeters). The skis had been repaired repeatedly, indicating heavy use. They were not a matched set and were paired after each had been used previously, which didn’t surprise Pilø. “The skis are not identical, but we should not expect them to be. The skis are handmade, not mass-produced,” he blogged. “They have a long and individual history of wear and repair before an Iron Age skier used them together and they ended up in the ice 1,300 years ago.”

Pilø reports that the two skis now stand as the best-preserved ancient pair on record. In 1924 a pair was found in a bog in Kalvträsk, Sweden—along with a ski pole—later carbon-dated about 5,200 years old, but one of the skis is in fragments and no binding parts survived (see “The European Origin of Skiing,” by Maurice Woehrlé, Skiing History, July-August 2021).

Squaw Valley Is Now Palisades Tahoe

After decades of consideration across multiple regimes, the resort scrubs the slur from its name.

A year after announcing that it would change its name, Squaw Valley-Alpine Meadows made the move in September and is now officially Palisades Tahoe, a reference to the rugged granite walls and vertiginous terrain that earned the resort early fame as the birthplace of American extreme skiing.

The name Squaw Valley pre-existed the founding of the resort in 1949. The term “squaw” is now widely considered a sexist and racist slur against Indigenous women. The new name unifies the Olympic Valley and Alpine Meadows base areas under one banner.

Members of the local Washoe tribe had advocated for years to rename the resort. Former resort owners Nancy and Alex Cushing told reporters in the 1990s that a name change was under consideration.

“We were compelled to change the name because it’s the right thing to do, especially for the generations yet to come, who will grow up without having to use a slur to identify the place where they chase their dreams down the mountain,” said Ron Cohen, who launched the name-change process when he served as the resort’s president. “We spent more than a year making sure that we were doing right by the community,” said Cohen, who now runs California’s Mammoth Mountain.

Efforts to wash offensive names off the map are gaining traction. The Reconciliation in Place Names Act was recently re-introduced in Congress to update the names of more than a thousand locations in the U.S. that are considered derogatory. For instance, Denver skiers heading to the slopes can see the peak of Squaw Mountain. The governor of Colorado has established an advisory board to consider name changes throughout the state, with similar efforts underway in Utah and other places.

Squaw’s name change has led to other updates within the resort. The base area village on the Olympic Valley side is now called The Village at Palisades Tahoe. The process to rename Squaw One and Squaw Creek chairlifts is underway. Officials expect the process of updating physical name designations and corporatewide branding to be a multi-year project.

“Part of me is going to miss the old name,” Charles Carter told the California Globe news website. Carter worked as a parking attendant at the 1960 Olympics and has lived in the valley ever since. “If you ask anyone here, the name doesn’t matter so much as these mountains,” he said. 

SKI ART: Tycho Ödberg (1865-1943)

Many years ago, while searching a catalog for old skiing-related postcards, I came across this 1928 painting by Tycho Ödberg, a Stockholm illustrator and graphic artist who was respected for his landscapes. In 1888, like many Scandinavian artists of his era, he made the trek to study at the Académie Julian in Paris. Upon his return, he was a regular at the Academy of Fine Arts in the Swedish capital from 1891 to 1897.

I was charmed by its direct and simplistic appeal to the joys of skiing in the winter landscape. To my amazement, it was an illustration on the inside of an envelope—the first I had ever seen. It was specially designed for seasonal greetings: Gott nytt år (Happy New Year). This was an extraordinary find: Not only does Ödberg portray correctly all the technical elements of skiing, but the context seems just right; a civilian-military mix that was partially responsible for the way modern skiing has developed.

The catalog listed another Ödberg ski painting and it, too, was on the inside of an envelope. I acquired both items and used the skijoring painting as the cover for my book Culture and Sport of Skiing from Antiquity to World War I, the first time, I believe, it has been given any publicity.

Ödberg illustrated a number of books, including Viktor Balck’s Gymnastics in 1889, so he was no stranger to portraying sporting activities. This was impressive—Balck was Swedish sport’s “Trumpet of the Fatherland.” Ödberg also turned a number of his paintings into postcards, as many artists did in the 1920s and ’30s.

Ödberg works hang in the National Museum, Stockholm’s City Museum and City Hall, as well as in Uppsala and Gothenburg. For me, pride of place in my varied ski image collection are these two paintings on the insides of envelopes. —E. John B. Allen

Snapshots in Time

1956 Shrewd Planning
Sirs: I am returning the $3 two-year renewal form unsigned though I have always enjoyed reading your magazine. On Jan 22, I will be married to a girl with one year left on her subscription. — E.C.S., BUFFALO, NEW YORK, “HOME ECONOMICS” (LETTERS, SKI MAGAZINE, FEBRUARY 1956)

1969 Price Hike
An increase in price for lift tickets was announced yesterday for the state’s two ski areas, Cannon and Mt. Sunapee. The price for adult tickets at both areas on weekends was raised to $9. Weekday tickets were raised to $7. Season tickets were increased about 20 percent to $145. — “PRICES FOR SKI LIFTS RISE” (NEW YORK TIMES, SEPTEMBER 21, 1969)

1979 Fully Crazed
The gelande jumpers are a traveling gaggle of fully crazed ski addicts without a brain in their heads who party ’til sunrise and fly over the 50-yard-line on 223s without helmets or insurance. Oh, wait. They asked me not to write that. — DAN MCKAY, “LIKE A GOLF BALL” (POWDER MAGAZINE, OCTOBER 1979)

1988 Measuring Up
When in doubt, go shorter. One of the main advantages of today’s improved ski technology is that you can get the same smoothness and stability from a 203 that once was only possible on a 210. — JACKSON HOGEN, “THE RIGHT SKI LENGTH” (SNOW COUNTRY MAGAZINE, MARCH 1988)

2021 High Expectations
This is not science fiction. This is real Olympian life. Shiffrin is entering a World Cup alpine ski season that begins this weekend in Soelden, Austria. It will include her third Olympics, this one in February in Beijing. She is 26 and won gold at each of her previous Games—in the slalom as an 18-year-old in Sochi, Russia; and in the giant slalom four years later in PyeongChang, South Korea, where she added a silver in the alpine combined. Win three medals— a distinct possibility, if not an expectation—and she’ll match Janica Kostelic of Croatia and Anja Parson of Sweden with the most Olympic medals of any woman on the slopes. — BARRY SVRLUGA, “MIKAELA SHIFFRIN KNOWS PAIN AND LOSS. NOW SHE’S BACK ON TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN” (WASHINGTON POST, OCTOBER 21, 2021)

2021 Aging Well
When he set off down the mountain, he skied straight into a Guinness World Record. No one his age had ever done something like this. [Junior] Bounous was 95 years and 224 days old on April 5—230 days older than the existing heli-skiing record-holder, a Canadian named Gordon Precious, who checked in at 94 years 306 days when he made his run in 2019. It was an achievement for the ages, literally. — LEE BENSON, “PRESENTING THE WORLD’S OLDEST HELI-SKIER” (DESERET NEWS, JUNE 6, 2021)

Aspen Highlands’ bruising—and short-lived—no-rules race.

By Jay Cowan

Aspen Highlands founder Whip Jones had a knack for publicity stunts. His 1960s Bash for Cash, anything-goes citizen downhill also had a knack for mayhem and injuries. But the race did result in a popular poster of that era.

From its inception in a valley dominated by Aspen Skiing Corporation properties, Aspen Highlands always strived to stand out. Owner and founder Whipple Van Ness Jones, a maverick by nature, centered his area on pushing the boundaries on entertaining customers and garnering publicity.

After the area opened in 1958, Stein Eriksen, Highlands’ first ski school director, did flips—an audacious trick for that era—at the bottom of the mountain every day. A dozen years later, ski patrollers began jumping off the patrol shack roof, pulling toboggans. Eriksen’s eventual replacement, Fred Iselin, performed Reuel christies down the mountain while reading his own book. So it was probably inevitable that something as brash and fundamentally American as the Bash for Cash would be created here. The event featured racers charging en masse, like lemmings, down a cliffy run for a pot of money at the finish.

Jones blamed the event on the original head of the ski patrol. “There’s no question that Charlie Bolte was the biggest character I ever knew at Highlands,” Jones later explained. “On the job he had a fondness for explosives. And after work he was quite a prominent member of the customers at the bar. He also came up with the idea, maybe at the bar, for our famous race the Bash for Cash.”

Early versions of this madness—with a Le Mans-style–start, no gates and few rules—ran on Lower Stein, near the area’s base. In the early 1960s it was moved much nearer to the top of the mountain. It plunged down the Olympic run face and cut across to the Wall, a short, steep, punishing mogul field, with a run-out finish to the $100 cash prize. The winner was the first one down without falling.

“We started it each week by blowing up a case of dynamite. That was a hell of a charge,” recalled Jones. Indeed. And almost as insane as the fact that they ran the race every week.

Not surprisingly, it occasionally produced chaos like that in the mid-1960’s poster (see left), part of a sequence of three images taken right after the start on the Olympic face by the late Tony Gauba of Aspen. Highlands instructor and patrolman Paul Dudley is one of those in the photo, and one of the few who didn’t get hurt. 

“I’m the one still standing in the poster,” he laughs. “Then the s*** hit the fan and people started colliding.” He remembers, “Twenty or less of us lined up side-by-side at the start and right away the run narrowed to about five feet wide with powder on either side.”

He and his friend Doug Rowley had practiced for the event and decided Dudley would try to shoot that gap, and Rowley would follow a little behind everyone and hope to safely pick his way through in case Dudley didn’t make it.

“When the chaos started, I skied off to my left into the powder and stopped and then the screaming started. Everyone was hurt. Broken bones, concussions, cuts. Some of them skied down. They hauled others off, and they found one guy later halfway down the mountain just walking in a daze,” Dudley says.

A story in the Aspen Times about that particular race, published in the February 28, 1964, issue, led with this: “In the worst accident of the Aspen skiing season, two men were hospitalized following a collision during the Aspen Highlands first Bash for Cash race of the winter last Sunday, Feb. 23.”

Jones, who witnessed the carnage, said no one was sure what happened. “Two of them fell or collided,” the story quoted him as saying, then adding its own summary: “The other contestants either fell trying to avoid the first two or ran into them.”

Attending physicians at the Aspen Valley Hospital were Robert Oden and Robert Barnard. Racer Myron Leafblad of Wisconsin had “the worst spiral fracture I’ve ever seen,” Oden said. Highlands instructor Mike Riddell “had his upper jaw broken in two places and his upper front teeth torn away,” the Aspen Times reported.

An angry letter from the doctors to the newspaper was followed by an editorial that noted that “in the excitment of competition,” sports participants “must be protected from themselves,” and that Bash for Cash failed miserably on that front. “Racers and race organizers are lucky that more were not hurt, or that no one died,” the editorial read.

The Forest Service, which owns most of the Aspen Highlands property, along with the ski area’s insurance company, are said to have caused the event’s demise the following season. The Aspen Skiing Company purchased Highlands in 1993. But a faint whiff of mayhem and cordite still lingers over the mountain, the locals’ favorite among ASC’s properties. 

Les Arcs Named “One of the Most Significant Works of Postwar Architecture”

Les Arcs, in Savoie, France, is known for its avant-garde architecture, conspicuously different from the traditional Alpine designs prominent at many European resorts. The New York Times agrees on the resort’s distinction, naming Les Arcs No. 14 in “The 25 Most Significant Works of Postwar Architecture,” by Kurt Soller and Michael Snyder, published in August.

One of the first mega-resorts, Les Arcs consists of five interconnected base areas, each named for its elevation in meters. All but Arc 1950, the last of the areas constructed, were built in a modernistic style. The Times story notes the innovative work of French architect (and skier) Charlotte Perriand, a leading figure of 20th-century design. She took on the project in the late 1960s, at age 65.

“Perriand approached the construction of her ambitious Les Arcs resort as an opportunity to introduce the masses to what she described as the ‘possibility of self-transcendence’ offered by mountain landscapes,” the story reported. Perriand’s portion of the project consisted of “two clusters of hotels and apartments set into the mountain slope with views up to the pastures above.”

With a tight construction schedule, Perriand incorporated prefabrication techniques lifted from shipbuilding. “To assemble a structure that could accommodate 18,000 beds in the span of just seven months, she used mold-formed polyester to make easily reproducible kitchens and bathrooms. Carefully planned setbacks in the facade transformed the building itself into a slope, providing each of its long, narrow rooms with expansive views.”

The Cascade building (above), at Arc 1600, is noted as an example of her inspiration to have the hotel disappear into the mountain environment. “The ski chalet doesn’t rank that brilliantly in terms of sustainability or honorable usage of materials, particularly nowadays, but that modular approach to building—the way she integrated into the landscape and the woodiness of the prefabricated construction—is amazing, as are the furnishings inside,” the story reported. 

Eliasch to step back at Head, pledges to modernize race formats

Billionaire businessman Johan Eliasch was elected president of the International Ski Federation on June 4, pledging to re-energize competitive skiing with possible new race formats and more dynamic broadcasts.

Eliasch, the 25-year CEO of Head and an active environmentalist, was elected on the first ballot, with 65 of the 119 votes. In an online press conference, Eliasch told reporters “I think it shows the FIS family is ready for change. I always said, ‘If you want to keep things the way they are, I am not your candidate.’”

Each candidate made a 10-minute video presentation. Eliasch’s pitch included endorsements from Lindsey Vonn and Aksel Lund Svindal, both of whom raced on Head skis during their championship careers. Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry endorsed Eliasch’s candidacy, noting his position on the immediate need to address climate change.

Eliasch, 59, was born in Sweden but has lived in London since joining the private-equity firm Tufton in 1985. From 1999 to 2010 he held a variety of environmental-stewardship positions in the British Government, under both Labour and Conservative prime ministers. He acquired Head out of near-bankruptcy in 1995, at age 33, made it profitable within two years and took it public in 2000. Eliasch holds a master’s degree in engineering and put 3 percent of Head’s revenue into research and development. To back up his climate activism, in 2005 he established the Rainforest Trust and bought 400,000 acres (162,000 hectares) of Amazon forest, along with the company logging that land. He halted logging and replanted.

Eliasch runs Head out of its London office, but pledged during his campaign to leave his Head role if elected. “I will step down as chief executive of Head,” he said during the press conference. “And if there are any decisions which have potential conflict of interest, I will of course recuse myself.” He declined to say if he would divest his financial position in Head, according to Associated Press reports. “If we have phenomenal success for FIS, it will benefit all stakeholders,” he added.

Just the fifth FIS president in its 97-year history, Eliasch succeeds Gian Franco Kasper, who held the office since 1998 and leaves one year early. The next FIS election is scheduled next year after Eliasch oversees a majority of the medal events at the Beijing Winter Olympics in February 2022.

Rival candidates were former world downhill champion Urs Lehmann of Switzerland, former FIS secretary general Sarah Lewis of Britain (fired by Kasper last year) and FIS vice president Mats Årjes of Sweden, Kasper’s own choice. Lehmann and Årjes won elections for seats on the ruling FIS Council, which Eliasch will chair.

In his initial post-election news conference, Eliasch promised to give FIS’s 135 national associates more voice in decision-making and more opportunities to host events. He pledged to begin work “as soon as possible” on reviewing race formats. He also pledged to modernize FIS media policies by centralizing broadcast rights and expanding broadcasts across new media.

Halston on Netflix: How fashion came to the Olympics

The five-part Netflix series Halston, released in May, follows the American designer as he transforms his name into an international fashion empire. Not mentioned in the biopic is that Halston volunteered to create the U.S. Olympic Team uniforms for both the summer and winter games of Centennial Year 1976. That kicked televised Olympics into a fashion showcase: Levi Strauss signed up to do the uniforms in 1980 and 1984, and Ralph Lauren has done it every year since 2008—and will again for 2022 (in recent years Lauren has done suits for the opening and closing marches, while Nike has provided uniforms for medal ceremonies).

As the website Fashionista notes, the designers “imbued elements of national identity into their uniforms, projecting idealized American aesthetics intended to make an impact on the world stage at crucial moments in the nation’s history.”

It wasn’t always that way. The first international Olympic Games in 1896, in Athens, featured athletes wearing their own clothes or uniforms from their athletic clubs. At the first winter games, at Chamonix in 1924, American skaters wore white pants and sweaters with a stars-and-stripes shield on the chest. Thereafter the winter teams had uniforms composed variously of navy-blue warm-ups, white sweaters and pea coats.

Montgomery Ward produced Halston’s 1976 uniforms, without the official insignia, and sold the Olympic line in its catalog. Halston pocketed a percentage. The uniforms weren’t universally admired. “Opening Ceremony uniforms for the winter games included simple dark navy jackets with hoods worn with plain loose trousers, while podium outfits looked like simple leisure suits with turtleneck tops,” Fashionista reported. A letter in the New York Times called them a “disgrace to the team and affront to the nation.”

“Despite mixed reviews, Halston is definitely worth the binge,” Forbes reports. “It’s fun to travel back in time throughout the 1970s and ’80s.”

Photo above: Tracks across Sterling Pond show the way from Smuggs to Spruce. The reverse trip is all downhill. 

For Alpine skiers, “interconnect” is a route connecting two separate lift networks. The granddaddy of all interconnects, created in 1956, may be the trail between the top of Stowe’s Spruce Mountain and the summit of Sterling Mountain at Smugglers’ Notch. It’s still possible to ski both resorts the same day, although the experience is no longer encouraged by the two Vermont ski areas.

It’s not marked, nor patrolled, and skiers are advised against trekking alone. Still, this little-known half-mile link between resorts continues to delight intermediate to advanced skiers with a taste of easily accessible backcountry that harkens back to when skiing was a true adventure pursued on rudimentary equipment.

Home to Colorful Characters

Smugglers’ Notch derives its name from a history filled with shady characters.

From 1807 until the War of 1812, the U.S. Congress placed an embargo on all British imports, which was a hardship for American farmers and merchants who needed manufactured goods. So “importers” smuggled British merchandise from Canada, through what is today called Smugglers’ Notch Pass. State Route 108 now follows that trail.

More than 100 years later, the Notch was again used for smuggling when the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcohol. Bootleggers moved booze through Smugglers’ Notch Pass and from there south to central and southern New England. Caverns in the Notch were ideal for storing alcohol at close to room temperature, while the smugglers avoided revenue agents. Visitors today can still visit the caves.

Alpine skiing came to Stowe with construction of downhill trails by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1933. In 1935, the old 1919 Toll House was converted to a real base lodge. Sepp Ruschp supervised construction of lifts in 1937. Starting in 1949, Ruschp developed the sunny slopes of Spruce Peak, across the road from Mt. Mansfield, starting with a T-bar.

In 1954, Spruce constructed a double chair to access the Outlook Restaurant perched on the summit, with stunning views to the south.

Calling it a restaurant is being charitable: it had no running water, no electricity and no restrooms, according to Stowe ski area historian Brian Lindner, son of a forest ranger, whose bedroom was in the original base lodge.

Beginning in 1956, adventurous skiers who followed the Long Trail half a mile northward from the Spruce Peak patrol shack (elevation 3,250 feet, 991m) could cross frozen Sterling Pond (3,040 feet, 927m) and ski down the other side to the new Madonna Base Lodge at Smugglers’ Notch ski area. They could then ride a pair of Poma lifts back to the top of Sterling Mountain (3,080 feet, 939m) and reverse course back to Spruce.

Reciprocal Ticket Offered

In the 1990s, Stowe and Smuggs, as Smugglers’ Notch is still called by locals, offered a reciprocal ticket based on a multi-day ticket purchase, used to bolster non-holiday midweek vacations. It was an effective marketing novelty, but Smugglers’ Notch vice president of marketing Steve Clokey says, “They stopped promoting it due to the logistical headaches of grooming, patrolling, and the skill levels of those who were experiencing an intermediate-plus level experience.”

What’s more, when an accident occurred in the mid-1990s, Stowe and Smugglers’ executives became even less enamored with marketing off-piste skiing.

“A Stowe snowcat driver didn’t calculate the turn radius correctly and extended the cat too far onto the ice,” Clokey tells Skiing History.  “The cat broke into shallow water and was stuck on the side of the pond. It was pulled out that night and the incident was reported to the proper authorities.” 

SKI magazine writer Steve Cohen took his family across in 1998. In his story “Ski East: Going over the Top,” (Dec. 1998) he reports, “The two trails connecting Stowe and Smugglers’ are marked with green circles and require more in the way of conditioning than ski skills; parts of the traverse are so flat we needed to herringbone and skate. Still, the 15-minute jaunt has joined two very different worlds.”

Pretty Tame

Today, the Stowe-Smuggs Interconnect trail is only open when Sterling Pond is frozen—some seasons as early as the first week of December.

From Smuggs, it takes about 20 minutes to pole across Sterling Pond and then descend into a meandering narrow trail that rolls easily to the Sterling trail on Stowe’s Spruce Peak. Take that down. Then, from the base of Spruce, take the Sensation high-speed quad back up to the peak. Ski Snuffy’s trail to the peak of Sterling Mountain, then take Rumrunner to Smuggs base. You’re back where you started in less than an hour, roundtrip.

“The toughest part is having to trek the flat surface of Sterling Pond—a little work-out but then it’s all downhill to the base of Spruce,” says Clokey.

Adds Stowe resort historian Brian Lindner, “It’s a pretty tame trail, except for some drop-offs, and is as narrow as a one-lane road. It harkens back to the way skiing used to be when I started as a kid in the 1950s, but I certainly don’t miss that vintage ski equipment.

“During my first experience with the Stowe-Smuggs Interconnect, it was 1960 and I was around eight years old. The best gear available at the time was wooden skis and leather boots. I realize now skiing was much more dangerous back then. The improvement in gear has made skiing so much better and safer. “Don’t ever make me ski in beartraps again,” he jokes.

Apparently, that’s another kind of ski adventure entirely.

ISHA board member Jeff Blumenfeld, of Boulder, Colo., is president of the North American Snowsports Journalists Association (NASJA.org). He remembers skiing the interconnect as a kid in the 1960s. The trail seemed a whole lot scarier.

Snapshots in Time

1960 Ski Like a Girl

Pretty Penny Pitou is the likeliest American bet for an Olympic gold medal. But unlike the hapless U.S. men’s team, which lost all of its chances when Buddy Werner broke his leg, the women’s team could win with any of its six girls. —“Pretty girls of highly promising American Team get set for Winter Olympics,” which profiled Pitou, Renie Cox, Linda Meyers, Joan Hannah, Beverly Anderson and Betsy Snite before the 1960 Squaw Valley Games. (Life magazine, February 1960)

1969 Ski and Smell the Roses

“South Americans are like Europeans. It’s important to have fun and watch the scenery,” said Othmar Schneider, the former Olympic slalom champion who heads the 13-instructor ski school at Portillo, 55 miles northeast of Santiago. “Americans are more serious. They are too involved in skiing and don’t see the scenery.” —Enid Nemy, “Where Ski Buffs Migrate in Summer” (New York Times, August 31, 1969)

1971 Plowed into Oblivion?

Currently, the most widely taught method, The American System, can, in my opinion, be a woefully long process that starts the beginner in the venerable “snowplow” position and frequently leaves him there for life. —Stan Fischler, “The Ski’s the Limit” (New York magazine, November 1971.)

1985 Booting Up

By the time ski shops call it a season this year, they will for the first time have sold more rear-entry than traditional boots. Although this is no great surprise, it still represents a major shift in our boot-buying habits. Five years ago, rear-entry boots were still exotic footwear for skiers who wanted something different. This season, they’re commonplace. —John Henry Auran, “Rear Entry Redux” (Skiing magazine, Spring 1985)

1990 Fear Is My Copilot

Fear is a constant companion. The racers themselves admit freely that this is “the race of fear,” head and shoulders above any other test of concentration, skill and plain ordinary guts in the world. Dr. Sepp Sulzberger, who raced it long before it reached legendary status, reports that racers in his era would lose bladder and sometimes bowel control right at the start. —Serge Lang, “The World’s Toughest Race” on the Hahnenkamm downhill. (Snow Country magazine, January 1990)

2008 Skiing Real Estate Not Recession-Proof

After years of rising prices, ski-town real estate has cooled. Sales were down as much as 50 percent across all resort markets in the first half of 2008. “The resort market could not be sustained,” said James Chung, a New York real estate consultant for the ski industry. “People aren’t buying stupidly anymore.” —Paul Tolme, “Mountains of Real Estate” (SKI Magazine, October 2008)

2021 High-Class Aspen Caper

Thieves cut a hole in the storeroom wall of the Louis Vuitton store in downtown Aspen and stole as much as $500,000 worth of merchandise, police said. One man and one woman, along with two vehicles, were caught on surveillance video. The thieves entered an unlocked hallway at the back of the store and cut a hole in the drywall just large enough for one person to enter. —Jason Auslander, “Aspen’s Louis Vuitton store targeted in brazen $500k burglary” (Aspen Times, June 8, 2021)

Movies have had a special place in the history of skiing, of course. Because motion picture cameras were invented just about the time skiing emerged as a sport in the Alps, snippets of footage exist all the way back to the years before World War I. There's even newsreel footage of alpine troops training in France and Austria. 

But what is widely regarded as the very first commercial ski film was released 100 years ago, on December 23, 1920. Arnold Fanck’s “Das Wunder des Schneeschuhs” (The Wonder of Snowshoes) is a documentary following an expedition that climbs up to 4,200 metre (13,780 feet) high glacier slopes in the Swiss Alps. It then follows pioneering downhill skiers using the Arlberg System created by Hannes Schneider. Among other tricks and stunts skiers are shown leaping crevasses and even setting off small avalanches.

See Das Wunder Des Schneeshuhs.

The skills and bravery of the skiers filmed, the spectacular isolation of the high mountain winter landscape were beautifully portrayed in Fanck’s film and remain as visually stunning today as 100 years ago – even when viewed vias Youtube rather than on the big screen as intended.

Born in Germany in 1889, Fanck originally trained as a geologist.  His love of mountain scenery took him to remote locations creating movies that were tremendously popular with German audiences. They became known as the "mountain films" genre with more filmmakers, including American director Tay Garnett, starting to make films a similar style.

Fanck co-founded the Berg and Sportfilm company (Mountain Sport Films) to create the movies and had a run of popular successes including The Holy Mountain (1926), The White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929), Storm over Mont Blanc (1930) and The White Ecstasy (1931).

In the 1930s Fanck is reported to have run in to problems with the rise of the Nazi regime after he initially refused to join the party instead working on a film called The Eternal Dream which had a French hero in the lead, was filmed in the French Alps and had a Jewish producer – all politically unacceptable in Germany at the time. –Patrick Thorne

Photo above: Arnold Fanck in 1925. Matthias Fanck archive.

Backcountry boon: Bolton Valley skiers head off-piste during the pandemic

Capitalizing on its backcountry roots from the 1920s, Bolton Valley, Vermont, is enjoying a business bump during the pandemic, as skiers are looking to continue to ski, just with more personal space.

The snow was deep, the surrounding hillsides dappled in low-angled winter sunlight. As we caught our breath from the two-hour skin-up to Nebraska Notch, below the summit of Vermont’s Bolton Mountain, we looked down at a bowl of untracked powder. No one else was around, only a few of us with randonée gear and some backcountry smarts.

This year, Bolton Valley Resort, located 30 minutes east of Burlington, Vermont, began offering season-long leases on backcountry equipment: alpine touring gear for skiers, split boards for snowboarders. The leases are not cheap—about double the price of alpine equipment leases. But they sold out immediately. It was a bright sign for the small ski resort that was about to face an uncertain winter with the Covid-19 pandemic raging. It showed that people wanted to get outside on skis, but with more space around them.

Adam DesLauriers was not surprised. He’s director of Bolton’s backcountry program and part of the family that started Bolton in the 1960s, then rebought the area in 2017. That’s when the resort began offering backcountry lessons, tours, rentals, and tickets, and the program has sold well. “I think our timing was spot on, especially this year,” Adam said. “Our backcountry program has exposed Bolton to a whole new market share—at least half of the people hiring guides or taking clinics have never been here before.”

DesLauriers notes that “while the backcountry program isn’t a huge profit generator for the resort, there’s no question it’s a worthy value added.” Plus, “we love it—and that stoke reverberates.”

Backcountry is not new at Bolton. It’s how the ski area got its start almost 100 years ago. In 1922, Edward Bryant—a World War I veteran and the grandnephew of Frederick Law Olmstead, the landscape architect who designed New York City’s Central Park—purchased 4,400 acres in Bolton. A graduate of the Harvard School of Forestry, Bryant wanted to reestablish spruce stands in the area. He was also a skier, cruising the woods on seven-foot-long skis, dressed in heavy wool pants and a long wool coat. Off the flank of Ricker Mountain, he cut Heavenly Highway, North Slope, and Snow Hole—trails that still exist in Bolton’s backcountry. He also built Bryant Lodge (which is now called Bryant Cabin). In the 1920s and ’30s, skiers hiked almost five miles up a logging road from the Winooski Valley to ski Bryant’s trails.

After World War II, to keep up with the times, Bryant wanted to install a rope tow and build a new base lodge. But he was unable to obtain financing. In failing health, Bryant died in 1951, and the loggers returned.

Then in 1963, dairy farmer Roland DesLauriers sold farmland in South Burlington and used the proceeds to buy 8,000 acres of mountainside in Bolton Valley. Roland’s son, Ralph, had recently graduated from the University of Vermont and liked to ski. Father and son formed the Bolton Valley Corporation and began developing a modern alpine ski resort. It would include a nordic area for traditional kick-and-glide cross-country skiing. Alpine ski equipment at the time did not lend itself to easy backcountry access. Only intrepid telemark skiers ventured into Bolton’s backcountry or side-country.

The master plan called for 14 chairlifts, five base areas, 75 miles of trails stretching 3,100-vertical feet, from the top of Bolton Mountain to I-89 in the Winooski Valley below. Also planned: a gondola up from the valley, a golf course and a village.

The initial buildout was more modest: 968 vertical feet, three chairlifts, nine trails, a base lodge, and 24 hotel rooms. At 2,050 feet elevation the base lodge was—and still is—Vermont’s highest, and New England’s highest Zip Code. Work began on May 1, 1966 on the 4.6-mile access road, and Bolton Valley opened the day after Christmas 1966. Twenty years later, the Timberline lift and lodge expansion extended the vertical to 1,625 feet.

Over three decades, DesLauriers added more amenities and terrain, including glades cut by sons Rob and Eric, who would go on to extreme skiing fame. But the master plan was a far-off Shangri-La that remained out of reach. In financial trouble, DesLauriers began to sell off parts of the resort, including the village base area and much of the land. With foreclosure looming, he sold the rest in 1997. “It was,” said son Adam, “a relief.”

Over the next two decades, owners came and went, making few expansions. Then on April 14, 2017, Ralph DesLauriers, daughter Lindsay, son Evan, and a small group of investors bought Bolton back. The landscape, they realized, had changed. Many skiers and boarders were looking for an antidote to megaresorts. And slowly backcountry skiing was growing thanks mostly to modern equipment, which made it more accessible. Perhaps Bolton’s future could be found in the powder stashes in the area’s less populated backcountry, spread across Mt. Mansfield State Forest. State land abuts the alpine resort to the west, north and east.

Adam, who skied in California’s Sierra Nevada in his ’20s, looked at Bolton with 21st century eyes and saw backcountry access as one of the resort’s strongest assets. Among other attributes, the Catamount Trail—Vermont’s skiing version of the Long Trail—runs through Bolton’s nordic center and backcountry terrain. It takes skiers to Nebraska Notch and then over to Stowe’s Trapp Family Lodge. “We have a strong history of backcountry access,” Adam said. “The amount of terrain we have access to here is unique, and there’s already a strong contingent of backcountry skiers in the area.”

Over the past four years, the DesLauriers—with Ralph now chairman of the board, Lindsay as president, Evan as special projects director, and Adam running the backcountry and nordic programs—have brought Ed Bryant’s vision back to life. And it’s been popular. Skiers boot up in Bolton’s sports center and head out for their own exploration or sign up for a lesson or guided tour.

While Bolton’s alpine terrain may be small by modern standards, the 4,000 acres of mapped backcountry terrain is world class, with everything from mellow maple and birch glades to narrow gullies, cliff bands, and large rocks to launch off. “After 50 years, we’re about seven years into the master plan,” Ralph recently said in a vlog titled “Story Time With Ralph.”

Bolton’s original master plan never included backcountry skiing, but it should have. It really is Bolton’s ace in the hole. Even without a pandemic. 

This winter, Israel’s Ski Hermon (skihermon.co.il) centre celebrated 50 years since opening its first ski lift, on land captured from Syria during the 1967 war. Of course, this was a freaky winter. Covid-19 kept the resort closed for half the season. Then, Israel’s successful vaccination campaign coincided with a meter of new snow in mid-February, and the resort opened on February 21.  

Israel isn’t the only country in the Middle East to offer ski slopes, in fact, most of the region’s 17 nations now offer snow skiing of one sort or another, and for some, they have been doing so for over a century.

In 1913, after young engineer Ramez Ghazzoui returned to Lebanon from his studies in Switzerland, he introduced his friends to skiing on the slopes near Aley. By the 1930s a national ski club had been formed. 1953 saw lifts installed at the Cedars (facebook.com/teleskiscedarsslopes), one of half a dozen centres that now exist in the country. Proximity to the Mediterranean means you can ski in the morning and surf in the afternoon.

In Iran, German railway engineers introduced skiing around 1930, and grew popular especially among young men returning from studies in France and Switzerland. One such student even manufactured skis in Tehran beginning in in 1938. The first ski lifts were installed in 1951. With mountains rising over 14,000 feet, Iran has probably the most extensive lift-served skiing in the region.

Iraq’s Korek ski centre (thekorekmountain.com) owes its existence to the country’s ethnic battles. As they gained autonomy, the Kurds have sought to broaden their economic base beyond oil drilling. The Korek gondola may not draw international tourism yet.

Where there’s no natural snow (or mountains), indoor skiing is booming. Egypt, Qatar, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Kuwait have created snowdomes, so you can find lifts turning in 10 Middle Eastern nations. And for its part, Syria has announced plans for a resort on Mt. Hermon – if it can get the land back from Israel. –Patrick Thorne

Photo: Mt. Hermon by Noa.

Sundance Mountain Resort, the iconic ski resort that Robert Redford developed in Utah, has been sold. Redford announced the deal on December 11, 2020. Broadreach Capital Partners and Cedar Capital Partners were the buyers and the sale includes all assets of Sundance Mountain Resort, including the resort buildings, ski lifts, on-site dining venues, and event spaces. It did not include the Sundance Institute, Sundance Film Festival, Sundance Catalog, Sundance TV, or the Redford Center.

Redford purchased Timp Haven resort in 1968 and expanded it to become the Sundance Mountain Resort. In a statement, said “We knew that at the right time, and with the right people, we could make the transition. Broadreach and Cedar share our values and interest in maintaining the resort’s unique character, while honoring its history, community and natural beauty. This makes them well-suited to ensure that future generations can continue to find solace and inspiration here.” 

Sundance, which lies beneath 12,000 foot Mount Timpanogos, is like no other ski resort. It is the result of Robert Redford’s vision of environmental awareness: a 2,600 acre resort that includes 1,845 acres of conservation land. A pioneering environmental activist, Redford pulled off what was considered suspect, if not downright bad business, in resort operations during skiing’s boom years in the 1960s and 1970s: balancing limited development with a financially successful ski area. It took decades for the ski-resort industry to catch up.

Quietly well-heeled but not Hollywood flashy, Sundance has also managed to cater to locals from nearby Provo. It has offered night skiing since the 1940s, when it was called Timp Haven, offering a single rope tow and a $1 lift ticket. The ski area was an early innovator in school programs and season passes for students, concepts soon embraced by resorts nationwide.

Redford discovered the area that would become Sundance when he was riding his motorcycle from his home in California to college at the University of Colorado in the 1950s. He later met and married a girl from Provo, and bought two acres for $500 in 1961 from a sheep herding family named Stewart who owned Timp Haven. He built a cabin, and lived the mountain lifestyle with his young family between his early films.

But by the late 1960s, developers were circling. Redford scrambled, using some of his movie money and enlisting some friends, and bought another 3,000 acres in 1968, renaming the area Sundance after his role in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. In doing so, he halted a development of A-frames that would have forever changed the canyon.

Yet the irony was that for Sundance to be financially stable, it had to be self-sustaining, which meant some form of development. Redford started by improving the Timp Haven infrastructure, building the General Store and The Grill Room on the foundation of the former resort’s lodge. The Tree Room, with its signature massive pine tree dominating the interior, was constructed. So was the Owl Bar, centered on an Irish oak bar that had been commissioned by the real Butch Cassidy a century earlier. Redford unearthed it in a biker bar in Wyoming, where it was covered in Formica and shag carpeting before undergoing a restoration. He put the resort on the map when he used it as the backdrop for his film, Jeremiah Johnson, in the 1972.

Sundance suffered from low elevation and a short ski season. To make the resort financially viable, in the 1970s Redford created the Sundance Institute as a way to attract film producers, directors and actors. In 1985, the Sundance Institute took over operations of the United States Film Festival, and in 1989 changed its name to the Sundance Film Festival. In the late 1980s he built the first of the 95 cabins of what was now the fledgling Sundance Mountain Resort.

In time, his movie buddies and pals bought land and built their own houses. They included Jake Eberts, the producer of the Redford-directed A River Runs Through It, as well as Sydney Pollack, who directed Redford in Jeremiah Johnson, Three Days of the Condor and Out of Africa, among other films. Eventually, more than 200 private homes would be built, mostly out of sight and tastefully nestled in the trees.

What does the future look like? While Broadreach Capital Partners, based out of Palo Alto, California, and Cedar Capital Partners, out of London and New York, both have extensive international portfolios of luxury hotels and resorts, neither has a direct connection to the ski business. They have stated that they plan to build a high-speed lift, a day lodge and an inn.

The upgrades are planned to enhance, but not alter, Redford’s longtime mission at his resort. “As stewards of this unique place, it has always been my vision that the Sundance Mountain Resort would be a place where art, nature, and recreation come together to make the world a better place—now and in the future,” said Redford in a statement.  

In a fitting final act, the Sundance Kid entered into a partnership with Utah Open Lands to put over 300 acres of pristine wildlife habitat, streams, and wetlands into permanent protection at the base of Mt. Timpanogos. He named it the Redford Family Elk Meadows Preserve and anyone who’s been to Sundance knows that it’s the scenic heart of the resort—and now will remain that way. 

(Photo top of page by Milan Norling)

SKI ART

Edwin Hermann Richard Henel (1883-1953)

Carl Luther, the long-time editor of the German Ski Association’s Der Winter, employed Edwin Henel to scatter small drawings throughout his magazine, as well as regularly commissioning him for larger format drawings and paintings. Undoubtedly, Henel came to Luther’s notice before the start of World War I in 1914 because he had become a mainstay illustrator for the famous Munich firms of Loden-Frey and Sporthaus Schuster.

Henel had been born in Breslau, then within the German Empire (after the Nazi defeat in 1945, the city was transferred to Poland and called Wrocław). He studied for two years, 1908-1910, at the Breslau Academy taking architectural courses, among other art classes, before moving to Munich’s Fine Arts Academy. In his early years he was known for his aviation posters, some of which were turned into popular postcards. Once in Munich, he became enraptured with the growing sport of skiing and specialized in artistic country scenes while continuing to do advertisements.

He moved to Garmisch in 1934, where he produced watercolors of the mountainous countryside and became particularly well-known for his tourist posters. His graphic style set the era’s standard for depicting alpine tourism. This was something that appealed to the Nazis.

In 1936 he provided the cover of “Winter in Germany” for the Reich Committee for Tourist Travel. Against the Kreuzeck massif background, the featured skier resembled German ace Christl Cranz, alpine gold medalist at the Garmisch Olympics that year.

Henel was later commissioned to create a promotional poster for the 1940 Olympic Games, scheduled for Sapporo, Japan but cancelled due to the war. Henel lived in Garmisch until his death in 1953. —E. John B. Allen

Snapshots in Time

125 years ago 1896 Big year for books and bindings
In Austria, Mathias Zdarsky completed work on Alpine Lilienfelder Skilauf Technik, the first influential book of alpine ski instruction, and applied for a patent on a ski binding with a hinged and spring-loaded steel sole-plate. In Norway, Fritz Huitfeldt published Larebog I Skilobning (Skiing Textbook) and began selling the first nordic binding with steel ears to secure the boot toe.

100 years ago 1921 First national championship alpine race held by the British
On 5th January, 1921, fifteen competitors started together on the Lauberhorn . . . and raced down to a point some distance below the Scheidegg. Leonard Dobbs won by a comfortable margin from his brother Patrick, and on the combined competition finished ahead of a young Canadian, R.B. McConnell. Miss Olga Major was fifth in the Open Championship, and won the Ladies’ Competition with consummate ease. . . . It was not until 1929 that the Austrians, 1930 that the Swiss, and 1932 that the French, and 1933 that the Germans awarded national championships for Downhill racing. —Sir Arnold Lunn, The Story of Skiing (1952) pages 47-48.

75 years ago 1946 Aspen Skiing Corporation formed
AP reported: Aspen, Colo., is being developed into a year-round recreational site by a group of Denver men in cooperation with others from the middle west and east, George B. Berger Jr. said today . . . those backing the project had no intention of making the historic mining community . . . in[to] a Sun Valley type of recreational area. “What we want is a simple, attractive resort for year ‘round use. We expect to have accommodations for 350 to 400 people.” The Aspen company is headed by Walter P. Paepcke, Chicago industrialist, and a skiing corporation has been formed by . .Friedl Pfeiffer, former Sun Valley instructor.  —Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, May 12, 1946

50 years ago 1971 Ski instructors discover carving
Like wedeln a decade ago, carving is catching on – everyone is talking about the incredible control carving gives on ice and in heavy crud, the excitement and zap in it adds to skiing. . . . Actually, carving isn’t really new. The hotshots, the racers in particular, have been talking about carving for years. Some of the elements . . . were described four of five years ago in what was then called the round turn; and our better powder skiers have probably been carving for years without suspecting they were doing anything significant. —Sven Coomer and Doug Pfeiffer, “Carve that turn!” Skiing, February 1971

25 years ago 1996 First-ever FIS Snowboard World Championships
Ross Powers, who doesn’t turn 17 for another 2 ½ weeks, led a 1-2-3 American sweep Wednesday in halfpipe at the inaugural FIS World Snowboard Championships. U.S. women also collected the silver and bronze medals as the Yanks went 5 for 6 on Day One in Lienz [Austria]. —Paul Robbins, Rutland Daily Herald, January 24, 1996.

1921 was an important year in the history of ski racing. In 1920 the British ski racing pioneer Arnold Lunn, then age 32, became chairman of the Federal Council of British Ski Clubs and thus responsible for British ski racing. In January, 1921, at Mürren, Switzerland, he organized the first British Championships to be based on a “straight” or downhill race, with a slalom won on style points, not speed. Over the course of two days, slalom competitors were required to score points with telemark turns, stem turns, jump turns and stop-christies, in soft and difficult snow conditions. Winner of both the downhill and the combined trophy was 19-year-old Leonard Dobbs, who, as the son of Sir Henry Lunn’s local agent, had grown up skiing in Switzerland.

Lunn considered the judged slalom “a failure.” “The object of a turn is to get round a given obstacle losing as little speed as possible, therefore, a fast ugly turn is better than a slow pretty turn,” Lunn wrote in the British Ski Year Book. And so, over the course of 1921, he changed the rules. On January 1, 1922, on the grounds of Mürren’s Palace Hotel, Lunn organized the first-ever slalom race in which speed through gates was the sole criterion for victory. The winner: Johnson A. Joannides, a Great War veteran then resident in Mürren.

This was before the International Ski Federation (FIS) was founded (that came in 1924). FIS published its own rules for timed slalom in 1927 and the first race under those rules took place at Dartmouth College in 1928 (winner: Dartmouth freshman Bob Baumrucker). It would be 1931 before the FIS included a timed slalom in the first Alpine World Championships.  –Patrick Thorne

For six decades, West Mountain in upstate New York has been bringing skiers—and racers—into the sport. 

By Paul Post

Spencer and Sara Montgomery purchased West Mountain in 2013 and have given the family-oriented ski area a $17 million makeover.

Spencer and Sara Montgomery moved east to West Mountain, where they’re pursuing the adventure of a lifetime in his hometown of Queensbury, New York. They’ve given the Southern Adirondacks
resort a $17 million makeover since purchasing it in 2013, including three new chairlifts, 40,000 feet of snowmaking pipeline, 200 new snow guns, four groomers and a 500-foot lift for the tubing park. 

It’s quite a change for a couple who met on the Chicago trading floor and spent 10 years in Colorado, skiing at some of the world’s most famous resorts. 

West Mountain has been a family-oriented resort since the founding Brandt clan opened it on Christmas Day 1962. By installing lights for night skiing, they quickly attracted local curiosity seekers and developed a strong customer base throughout the region. The
Adirondack Northway (Interstate 87) opened in the early 1960s, providing a direct link from the Albany area, about an hour away. While small in size, with a 1,000-foot vertical drop, the center has made a big contribution to the sport.

“It’s a feeder mountain,” Spencer said. “I’m willing to bet that West Mountain has taught more people how to ski and is one of the top training mountains in the United States. We have 1,600 kids in after-school programs. That’s our history and our future.”

The site’s steep trails have hosted competitive racing since 1962, when the late Tom Jacobs, who founded the ski school, begain coaching young racers (see obituary). With on-mountain upgrades complete, the Montgomerys are now turning their attention to developing a full-time ski racing

academy. One of their first moves was to hire Steve Lathrop, a former five-year World Cup competitor on the U.S. “A” Ski Team, who previously worked at Stratton Mountain School in southern Vermont. Lathrop is starting his third year as West Mountain’s alpine race director. 

A New Hampshire native, Lathrop learned how to ski on a rope tow built by his father, who served with the 10th Mountain Division during World War II. At one point, Lathrop was ranked 16th in the world in slalom. If not for injury, he would have gone to the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan, so he knows what a good racing program needs and believes West Mountain has all the key elements.

In January 2020—prior to the COVID-19 shutdown—West Mountain hosted a four-day FIS event including two huge U-16 and U-19 races, with 225 racers each day from all over the East. A full slate of high school, masters and New York State Racing Association competition is on tap for the 2020–2021 season.

This fall, West Mountain also opened a brand-new ski racing academy that allows student-athletes to train full time. Those from outside the area, a half-dozen from western New York and New York City, take classes remotely through Queensbury High School or their own home school. Next year, plans call for having a full-fledged lodging component as well.

“The academy is for older kids who are able to live on their own and handle their studies and ski training,” Sara Montgomery says. “A lot of kids at that U-19 level drop out of ski racing because it becomes unaffordable for their families, with all of the travel and the high cost of equipment. This gives them the opportunity to continue racing at a competitive level at a more affordable rate.”

With good coaching and top-notch facilities, it might just be a matter of time before a West Mountain racer achieves international success. “I really believe this mountain has everything needed to develop world-class ski racers,” Lathrop says.

California Ski Library: Chip In!

Since 2004, ski historian and ISHA Award winner Ingrid Wicken has housed her California Ski Library in a 960-foot modular building behind her home in Norco, California. The library has grown steadily over the years and is now one of the most extensive collections of ski books, magazines, photographs and paper memorabilia in the United States. The photo archive, for example, includes images of U.S. skiing from the 1930s through the 2000s, covering Sun Valley, Aspen, Squaw Valley, Mammoth Mountain, Yosemite, Mount Hood, American ski jumping, and many California ski areas, large and small. Her book collection numbers 4,500 titles from around the globe. She also has located many rare and hard-to-find brochures, programs, research documents and correspondence from ski racers, writers and resort developers.

Now Ingrid needs our help! Freestyle pioneer Doug Pfeiffer—honored member of both the U.S. and Canadian Ski and Snowboard Halls of Fame—has recently donated 99 boxes of one-of-a-kind ski books and vintage magazines. The building is chock full, and Wicken has launched a Go Fund Me page to add another 480 square feet of display and storage space.

The California Ski Library is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so donations are tax-deductible. Chip in to the fundraising campaign online at: https://tinyurl.com/
CASkiLibrary. Learn more about Ingrid’s library at skilibrary.com.

COVID-19 Puts Historic Ski Train on Hold Again

The Winter Park Express ski train, which has hauled Denver skiers through the Moffat Tunnel on and off since 1940, will take another hiatus for the 2020–2021 winter season. According to a Winter Park press release, Amtrak has been reducing the number of seats sold on each train to enable social distancing during the pandemic. “After evaluating seating options on the Winter Park Express … it is not possible to operate the train successfully this season,” read the release, while noting a hopeful return for the popular rail service in 2022.

In March 2015, to celebrate its 75th anniversary, Winter Park revived the train as a one-weekend experiment with Amtrak. Tickets sold out fast, so Amtrak scheduled regular weekend trips—leaving from Denver’s Union Station for the 56-mile journey across the Continental Divide—beginning in January 2017. To learn more about the history of ski trains, go to: skiinghistory.org/history/ski-trains-history.

Lost Ski Areas of Japan

Japan’s skiing history is rich and varied. People had long used simple homemade skis to get around, but in the 1930s Hannes Schneider arrived from the Arlberg to introduce his downhill technique.

From then on, as in Europe and North America, skiing grew as a popular sport. Hundreds of ski areas opened. By the 1980s there might have been more ski areas in Japan than anywhere else—at least 700, some open 24 hours a day.

During the recession that followed the 1989 collapse of Japan’s real-estate bubble, skier visits dropped from more than 20 million to nearer five million. Hundreds of Japanese ski areas closed, many quickly overgrown by bamboo forests.

Now Andrew Lea, creator of Japan’s largest ski-oriented website SnowJapan.com, has launched http://SnowJapanHistory.com. The new site documents all of these lost Japanese ski areas. Lea is meticulously cataloguing the former areas, making personal visits, taking current pictures and adding aerial images. The work in progress so far has more than 150 former ski areas and almost 1,000 pictures.

Among the listings, for example, is Goshiki in Yamagata, which opened in 1911 when the Austrian Egon Edler von Kratzer skied there, and closed in 1998. Nanamaki, located less than 3km (2 miles) from Nozawa Onsen (home to the world-famous Japan Ski Museum) operated only 10 years, until 1982. Dedicated skiers walked a kilometer from the rail station, crossing a river on a cable-pulled ferry to reach the slopes. —Patrick Thorne

The Man Who Skied on Rocks

When snow is unavailable, skiers will glide on anything: grass, pine needles, sawdust, sand dunes, volcanic ash, carpet, plastic mat, soap flakes, powdered mica and soda crystals.

In 1958, German industrialist Dr Rudolf Alberti (1907–1974) patented the concept of skiing on gravel. Alberti owned a mine in the Harz Mountains (still going today) that produced barium sulphate—a bright white dye—and calcium fluoride. The ore contained barite, or heavy spar, a very dense mineral used today in X-ray shielding, rubber mudflaps and oil-drilling mud. American industry alone uses about 3.3 million tons of the stuff annually.

Alberti noticed that barite nodules have a very low friction co-efficient and is dust free. He built a 1,300-foot-long (400-meter) ski run and covered it with a mix of river gravel and barite, about six inches (15cm) deep.

Contemporary reports recorded the surface proved pretty good for skiing, but that skis disintegrated due to the heat generated. Alberti ordered up a stock of skis with steel bases, and with a concrete mixer coated the gravel with used engine oil. This reportedly “dramatically increased ski speed but producing some hair-raising results and near disastrous falls.” Alberti received patents in Germany and the United States.

The slope does not appear ever to have operated as a commercial venture. But to this day Alberti’s home town, St. Andreasberg, has a small ski area operated by Alberti-Lifts. —Patrick Thorne

Sarah Lewis Out at FIS

The FIS Council abruptly dismissed Sarah Lewis on October 9 from her post as secretary general, a job she held for 20 years. The FIS announced the decision in a terse one-sentence statement that said the move was “based on a complete loss of confidence,” without providing specifics. The statement was amended within days, and no longer includes that verbiage.

Lewis, 55, was a member of the British alpine national team from 1982 to 1988, and participated in the 1987 Ski World Championships and 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, before joining the FIS in 1994 as a Continental Cups coordinator.

Lewis had been considered a candidate to run for FIS president to succeed Gian-Franco Kasper, who last year announced plans to step down at the next International Ski Congress, according to European media reports. The election has been postponed several times due to the pandemic, and is now scheduled for June 2021.

The current Swiss ski federation president, the 1993 downhill world champion Urs Lehmann, has declared his candidacy to replace Kasper. Two other possible contenders are FIS vice president Mats Arjes and Johan Eliasch, the London-based billionaire CEO of the Head Sport group, who was nominated by the British national ski association (GB Snowsport). FIS has had only two presidents—both Swiss men—over the past 70 years. Marc Hodler held the top spot from 1951 to 1998, with Kasper taking over for him. —Greg Ditrinco

The Crown’s Royal Avalanche isn’t a Snow Job

Television isn’t known for accurately depicting historic events. Where’s the drama, and ratings, in that?

The popular Netflix series The Crown, which chronicles the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, gets mixed reviews on that score. Critics have applauded the show, which has 39 Emmy nominations, winning 10 times. The Telegraph, Britain’s daily broadsheet, calls it “TV’s best soap opera,” a format not known for its accuracy. While historians quibble, the BBC claims the show, now in its fourth season, generally follows the facts.

The fourth-season episode “Avalanche” opens on an incident during a ski holiday at Klosters, Switzerland. The episode begins with a spectacular dry-snow avalanche obliterating a couloir in the Alps. The next shot shows the Queen and Prince Philip in Buckingham Palace, as her private secretary Martin Charteris reports the involvement of four skiers, including Prince Charles, and that two of the group were swept away. No one can say yet whether Charles is safe, and the family contemplates the possibility that he has died.

ISHA members will remember this March 10, 1988 incident. While skiing on steep off-piste terrain on the Gotschnagrat, two of Charles’ friends were swept up in the avalanche, which just missed the prince and local guide Bruno Sprecher. Major Hugh Lindsay, 34, a former equerry to the Queen, was killed, and Patricia Palmer-Tomkinson broke both legs but survived. The royal party flew home to London on March 12, accompanying Lindsay’s body. 

Why's it called that?

Dead End? Not for Skiers

Touted as North America’s equivalent of the French Alps, the granite spires of the Bugaboos tower over glaciers in eastern British Columbia. First officially noted by a surveying expedition in the late 1800s, the range attracted Europeans to the region during a luckless mini-gold rush in 1895. Miners staked out claims, but the modest deposits turned out to be galena and pyrite (whose yellow metallic luster gave it the nickname of fool’s gold). Frustrated prospectors soon anointed the area “bugaboo,” their term for a dead end. Deeper etymological roots, probably Celtic in origin, date to the mid-18th century or so, with the meaning of “an object of fear or alarm.” Any way you look at it, the Bugaboo name was an intimidating, rather than inviting, moniker for the mountain range. The Bugaboo name stuck, but the miners did not. What gold seekers abandoned, mountaineers soon championed, and one after another the flinty spires were summited. Next to arrive were adventurous skiers, with the Bugaboos becoming the cradle of heliskiing in the mid-1960s.

SKI ART

Edwin Holgate (1892–1977)

Edwin Holgate was born in Allandale, Ontario in 1892 and died in Montreal in 1977. He painted “The Skier,” a portrait of his friend Jackrabbit Johannsen, circa 1935. Oil on canvas (66.5 by 56.6 cm). Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Arthur M. Terroux Bequest (Acquisition No. 1980.9). Photo for MMFA by Brian Merrett. Copyright: Jonathan Rittenhouse

Nobody had to be told who “The Skier” was! So it’s surprising that this painting of Canadian ski pioneer Hermann Smith-Johannsen, known to many as “The Chief” and to even more as “Jackrabbit,” is not better known.

Edwin Holgate, his artist friend, painted this portrait in a typically direct approach—both in the way that Johannsen lived his life and the way that Holgate portrayed his subjects. Jackrabbit was proud to bear the symbol of the Canadian Red Birds ski club on his chest, while the Norwegian patterned gloves symbolize his heritage. The Laurentian hills around St. Sauveur, or perhaps Mont Tremblant, provide the backdrop.

He studied at the Art Association of Montreal before leaving for Paris to attend the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in 1912. He was visiting Ukraine when the war broke out and had to make his way back to Canada via Siberia and Japan. He joined the 4th Canadian Division that saw action on the western front and, after the armistice, was stationed in Flanders.

Holgate joined the Beaver Group, a liberal organization that included about a dozen women artists in Montreal in 1920. He was married that year, and the couple moved to Paris, where he was influenced by young Russian emigré painters. Back in Montreal in 1922, he had his first exhibition at the Arts Club and was later an instructor in wood engraving at the École des Beaux Arts. He joined the famous Group of Seven prominent landscape painters—as the ninth member!—in 1929 and was elected to full membership in the Canadian Academy of Arts in 1935. In the 1920s and 1930s, Holgate became well known for his woodcuts, book illustrations, landscapes and murals—he created one for the Canadian Pavilion at the World’s Fair in New York in 1939—and for portraits, too: Around 1935 he painted his friend Jackrabbit, a perfect model for “The Skier.”

Holgate secured a position as a war artist in World War II in England, but there were “difficulties,” and once back in Montreal, found that the art scene had changed…so he moved to the Laurentians. He died in May 1977. The National Gallery of Canada held a retrospective of his work in 1975 and a second retrospective was mounted by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 2005. — E. John B. Allen