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

Bota bags could be having a moment. These holdovers from skiing’s golden age laugh at today’s need for social distancing.

What will skiing, riding and cross-county look like in 2020-2021? Will gondolas be fully loaded? Will six-seat chairs be limited to a maximum of only two to three people from the same family? No one knows for certain, and policies vary between resorts. But one thing is sure: In a time of social distancing, skiers will be reluctant to pass around that pocket flask of
Jägermeister to ward off the chill.

The time is right to bring back the bota bag. 

Martini trees were a legendary and beloved feature of Taos Ski Valley dating back to the mid-1950s. What could be more memorable than coming across a hidden glass porrón buried in a tree well containing a perfectly-chilled gin martini?

Better yet, what if you could carry a martini around all day? And instead of breakable glass, carry it in a bota bag—a wineskin sling pouch traditionally made of leather, which presumably imparted some retsina-like flavor to the wine. Modern versions with plastic liners could carry martinis, wine or some other bracing refreshment that could be consumed while skiing or riding. What’s more, you could share some liquid courage with your friends and loved ones from a safe social distance of six feet—or farther—depending upon your aim.

The forerunner of the bota bag was the waterskin dating back some 5,000 years. Normally made of sheep or goat skin, it retained water naturally, perfect for desert crossings until the invention of the canteen. The first images of these bladders are from ancient Assyrians, who used them as floats in approximately 3000 B.C...

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 feet (400 metre) long ski run and covered it with a mix of river gravel and barite, about six inches (15cm) deep.

Contemporary reports record 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 Altberti’s home town St. Andreasberg has a small ski area operated by Alberti-Lifts. –Patrick Thorne

(photo: Architects Charlotte Perriand, Pierre Facheux and Jean Prouve at Les Arcs, fifty years ago.)

When Les Arcs closed down last spring, senior managers reflected on the very purpose of ski resorts.  “The current crisis . . . made us take more time to rethink our new projects,” said press officer Cecile Romualdo. “What actual purpose does a ski resort serve? What is its use for society?”

Managers revisited the rationale for building the four modern high-alpine villages. The first of these, Arc 1600, opened in 1968. According to Romualdo, “We re-read the documents left by those who created the resort from nothing, . . . building a resort on virgin land. We discovered that they asked themselves all the same questions.”

The original architectural team, led by Charlotte Perriand, was inspired by Le Corbusier’s city-planning philosophy, emphasizing human-scale but concentrated development in order to leave open space for recreation within walking distance. In the resort context, Romualdo said, “A holiday in the mountains should be an opportunity to leave behind one’s social habits and mingle with other circles. The mountain environment, outdoor activities and holiday atmosphere offer the context to facilitate this.”

Today the complex is served by 171 lifts and until the Covid19 shut-down hosted 2.3 million skier visits each winter. Going forward, social distancing dictates that the crowds not be forced indoors. Based on the original philosophy, Les Arcs now hopes to bring people together in the wide-open space of the mountains. --Patrick Thorne

The Lighter Side of Ski Movies

Hall of Famer Sverre Engen influenced many aspects of the sport. Perhaps none as enduring as lightening the load for ski movie production. 

By Mike Korologos

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, when ski movie-making was in its infancy, major outdoor filmmakers used “Hollywood methods” of production. Ski-movie shoots were built on the foundation of cumbersome 35-mm cameras affixed atop bulky tripods, with these setups hand-carried from ski lifts to scenic locations by camera crews that did not ski. Often these daylong efforts resulted in 10 to 15 seconds of usable footage.

Pioneering filmmaker Sverre Engen helped turned that laborious process on its head, forever changing how action sports films were made, according to his son, Scott Engen. “Dad may not have been the first to make ski movies, but he sure helped revolutionize the way they were produced,” Scott says.

Sverre honed his film-making skills in the early 1930s and early 1940s while hiking, hunting and working for the Utah Fish and Game Department as he produced and shot informational and educational movies as part of his job.

He also produced, while assigned to the 10th Mountain Division at Camp Hale, Colorado, morale-boosting broadcasts for the Free Norwegian expatriate members in the U.S. and Canada. “In those jobs, Dad came to fully appreciate the virtues of moving fast and traveling light when it came to carrying equipment in the mountains in the winter,” Scott says.

Unlike most ski-movie filmmakers at the time, Sverre was an accomplished skier, which greatly helped him with his movie projects. Traveling light and being nimble with his on-snow production methods provided cost- and time-saving efficiencies, which allowed him to travel into the wilderness to film spectacular scenic footage. Those scenic shots became the signature look of the dozen or so 90-minute ski movies he would later produce.

Born in Norway in 1911, Sverre learned to ski at 2 and moved to the United States at 18, soon settling in Utah. He was among the last of a colorful generation of Norwegian immigrants who were deeply involved in many aspects of the sport. Sverre gained fame as a jumping champion, resort operator, ski instructor, pioneer in the study of avalanche control and maker of ski movies. He served as Alta’s ski school director and as the cofounder and first manager of the new Rustler Lodge at Alta. The U.S. Forest Service named him as Alta’s first snow ranger in 1947 and he coached the University of Utah Ski Team to its first national collegiate championship that same year. He also found time to help build ski jumps at Ecker Hill, Becker Hill and Landes Hill, all in Utah.

Engen was inspired to make his own movies while appearing in several of Fox Movietone’s Ski Aces vignettes. These short films, shown on movie screens across the country as lead-ins to the day’s feature film, starred Sverre and his brothers Alf and Corey skiing down gorgeous powdery mountainsides or in zany ski scenes.

Sverre’s penchant for traveling light found him embracing the latest equipment that came on the civilian market at the end of World War II. This included the classic Bell and Howell 70-D series 16 mm camera. Sverre would have seen this camera used by John Jay when filming for the 10th Mountain Division. Driven by a hand-wound, clockwork spring motor, it didn’t require batteries, which annoyingly would fail in the wet or cold of the mountains or merely peter out during a shoot.

The camera’s downside, explains Scott, was the time and total darkness required to change rolls of film in the mountains. It had to be done only by feel and often by cold and numb fingers. He said his dad stashed a heavy, black canvas lightproof film-changing bag with arm sleeves in his rucksack. In a pinch, he would use his ski parka, folding over the neck and waist hems to improvise a film-changing bag, using the sleeves for access.

“Never wanting to miss a great action scene, Dad sometimes carried three fully loaded D-70 cameras,” Scott said. “Later he used a compact Bell and Howell 16 mm camera that used 50-foot long film magazines that could be instantly installed in the camera. The magazines were about the size of a small paperback book and designed for the gun cameras used in WWII fighter planes.” Sverre now had his “ideal film-making package,” Scott said. “He could ski anywhere with several small, lightweight, spring-driven cameras, each featuring instant magazine loading.”

He also was a natural promoter, helping to build brand awareness decades before that was a concept. The three Engen brothers barnstormed the country in the 1930s and 1940s, staging ski-jumping shows before tens of thousands of spectators. He touted that fame in his promotional posters and media interviews. And Sverre also had an influential friend: Lowell Thomas, the famous radio commentator, who skied with him several times a year at Alta.

In his book, Skiing a Way of Life, Saga of the Engen Brothers, Sverre describes golden advice from Thomas. “He suggested I talk more about the action. He said, ‘you know, Sverre, a good commentary is almost as important as the film itself . . . speak louder so people can hear and understand you.’ I worried about my Norwegian accent, but he assured me that it was okay and might add a little flavor.” Often when Sverre appeared on stage for his screenings, especially in New York or Los Angeles, Thomas either would introduce him personally or via recorded messages.

In addition to being a main character in Ski Aces (1944) and Margie of the Wasatch, Sverre’s feature length movies included Champs at Play, Dancing Skis (1956), The Snow Ranger, Skiing, Their Way of Life (1957), Skiing America, Ski Fever (1958), Ski Time USA (1959), Skiing Unlimited and Ski Spectacular (1962). He also produced numerous Fox Movietone episodes and short ski promotional vignettes.

Alta purchased most of Sverre’s original reels in the 1990s, says Alta general manager Michael Maughan. The film rolls have been digitized and stored for posterity.

Mike Korologos’ ski articles have appeared in newspapers and periodicals worldwide for more than 60 years. He was skiing editor for The Salt Lake Tribune for 25 years and a correspondent for SKIING Magazine for 30 years. He served as press chief for the organizing committees for the 2002 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City, his hometown.

photo courtesy Scott Engen

Arnold Lunn and Sandra Heath

With the passing of John Fry earlier this year, Sandra Heath was motivated to reach out to Skiing History to convey how John always appreciated, and supported, the telling of a good tale. Heath, who modeled for Bogner in the 1950s and 1960s, writes: “John Fry encouraged me to tell this story. In the winter of 1961, when I was being filmed in the Alps, the Fox-Movietone crew and I had the good fortune of visiting the Bellevue Hotel in Mürren, Switzerland. I was introduced to Sir Arnold Lunn, who asked me to join him watching the dangerous climbing activity on the Eiger. He was enchanting: a poet, philosopher and inspirational genius to the ski world. Some 30 years later, in England, I had a drink at the home of Elisabeth Hussey, with her sister Philippa. Elisabeth was Sir Arnold’s secretary and confidante. She sprang from her chair to retrieve something and said ‘This photo is such a mystery. Do you happen to know who this gal is?’ I was flabbergasted—it was me!”

ISHA VP Jeff Blumenfeld Wins Prestigious Exploration Award

Jeff Blumenfeld, ISHA vice president and a self-described “groupie for adventures and explorers,” was recently named the winner of the prestigious 2020 international Leif Erikson Exploration History Award.

Blumenfeld, the editor and publisher of the Boulder, Colorado-based Expedition News website, was recognized for his ongoing work to promote and preserve exploration history. Blumenfeld says that “receiving the award and recognition from the exploration community is quite rewarding. I am privileged to tell their stories.” But what keeps him on task is a bigger mission.

“Exploration is critically important,” he says. “It’s through exploration and field research that we’ll answer many of the questions, many of the mysteries of this planet and hopefully make the world a better place for our children.”

In addition to his work on his website, Blumenfeld is active in helping new explorers gain international exposure, peer recognition and, critically, funding for their research and expeditions.

“If I can foster their efforts, I’m totally rewarded by that,” he says.

The Leif Erikson Exploration awards, which include the History Award and the Young Explorer Award, were established by the Exploration Museum in 2015, and are presented for achievements in exploration and for media coverage and documentation of exploration history.

The museum, located in Húsavík, Iceland, 30 miles from the Arctic Circle, is dedicated to the history of human exploration, from early adventurers through space exploration. Blumenfeld received the award in August in a Zoom ceremony, as part of the annual Húsavík Explorers Festival.

Blumenfeld is an active member of the Explorers Club, and is president of the North American Snowsports Journalists Association. He has written several books to promote travel and exploration, including Get Sponsored: A Funding Guide for Explorers, Adventurers and Would-Be World Travelers and Travel With Purpose: A Field Guide to Voluntourism. 

SKI ART

Ewald Thiel (1855-before 1939)

For such a prolific social painter and illustrator, it’s surprising so little is known about German artist Ewald Thiel; we don’t even know when his death occurred. We do know he was born in Kamanten, in East Prussia (now Klimowka in Kaliningrad, Russia) on August 12, 1855. He studied at the Prussian Art Academy in Berlin and in 1878 at the Royal Academy of Art in Munich. He settled in the Halensee region of Berlin.

Thiel became an illustrator of many Berlin scenes, and his work appeared in popular weeklies. He illustrated books and created wood engravings; he drew scenes of lakes and drainage works, the lighting of bridges, exposition openings, and dancers, lawyers, workers, and politicians. Perhaps his most famous sketch (turned into a color portrait) was the drawing of Otto von Bismarck addressing the Reichstag on February 6, 1888 when he proclaimed: “Wir Deutsche fürchten Gott, aber sonst nichts auf der Welt!” (We Germans fear God, but nothing else in the world!).

He drew skiing scenes, too, including a hunter on skis, a skiing postman, and skiers on the Feldberg. He based the scene pictured here on a sketch by Ernst Hosang of the crowd enjoying the Spreewald, Berlin’s nature preserve. In 1866, a railway from the capital reached Lübbenau, a village at the center of the 200-square-mile area of heathland and pine woods crisscrossed by canals.

An enterprising teacher, Paul Fahlisch, had begun promoting tourism here in 1882. The Spreewald soon became the bourgeois’ place to enjoy summer and winter. Many of the skiers in the scene are locals; the women are wearing the traditional headgear of the Sorb community, Slavic immigrants who settled here in the 6th century. Thiel’s careful depiction of the skier with scarf tying down his cap and protecting his ears, one with a pipe, another carrying a sack, and a third putting on a ski, all attest to a well-grounded knowledge of the skiing world of 1899. The picture was published in Das Buch für Alle, a magazine that appealed to the middle class. — E. John B. Allen

Why's it called that?

Sneg, Schnee, Neige: Why do we have different words for snow?

Five or six thousand years ago, near the beginning of the bronze age, a tribe in what is now Ukraine domesticated horses and learned to ride. They quickly spread their culture, and language, in all directions.

No direct record of their language survives, but scholars call it Proto-Indo-European or PIE. By comparing words in Sanskrit, ancient Greek and Latin and modern languages, linguists have come up with a list of about 200 root words from PIE—white was albus, the root of our word Alps.

The PIE word for snow was sneygh. Cultures close to the PIE homeland kept that word: Slavic languages use some variant of sneg, and the tribes north of Central Asia’s Altai mountains, where bronze-age skiing survives to this day, say snig.

In Northern Europe, the word evolved to schnee (German), sneeuw (Dutch), snow (Friesian and English), snø, snö and snjorr (Norwegian, Swedish and Icelandic). In the Mediterranean, proto-Latin (Italic) turned sneygh into snix. Then the s dropped, becoming nix (Classical Latin), neige (French) and nieve or neve (Italian and Spanish). —Seth Masia

SNAPSHOTS IN TIME

1936 RACING ON KENYA’S GLACIERS
British ex-pats held a ski meet on the Lewis glacier on 17,057-foot Mount Kenya, in central Kenya about 90 miles northeast of Nairobi. The sole female contestant—the dashing Nancye Kennaway—won the women’s division and Bill Delap, who started organized skiing on the glacier starting in 1933, won the men’s downhill. The true ski pioneers of the region, however, were German geographer Hans Meyer and Austrian mountaineer Ludwig Purtscheller, who in 1889 became the first people to reach the 16,893-foot summit of Kibo — the highest of Kilimanjaro’s three cones, 200 miles to the south. —E. John B. Allen (Historical Dictionary of Skiing)

1944 CLOSED ON SUNDAYS
For the first several years after its opening in 1944, Timp Haven in Utah’s Provo Canyon was the only ski area in the country that closed on Sundays, due to the religious beliefs of its owner. Paul “Speed” Stewart, a sheep rancher, ran the resort with his brother Ray for more than 20 years. “We just don’t believe in working on Sunday,” Speed’s wife Hilda told the Deseret News in 1965. By that time, his busy resort offered skiing, skating and tubing — but Speed never did learn to ski. “Don’t have the time,” he said. Actor Robert Redford and other investors bought the resort in 1968 and renamed it Sundance. —Mike Korologos

1967 SHOVEL-RIDING GNOMES
While skiing down for our last run, we stopped in the lee of a big cedar tree to look at the view of endless Laurentian hills and frozen lakes stretching out below us. Suddenly, as we all stood there leaning on our ski poles, six little men who looked like tassel-capped gnomes came laughing by us—hell-bent and sliding straight down the mountain—sitting on big, wide snow shovels. Clutching the handle up between their legs, they were having the ride of their lives, speeding with merry abandon over the bumps, down the chutes and through the trees. Their shouts and laughter echoed up the slopes as they went at crazy speeds down the fall line. “Who are those crazy little men?” said Johnny. “Zee trail packers, Monsieur,” said Pierre. We shoved off and chased the “gnomes” to the base of the mountain, swinging through slalom glades, losing them, finding them and laughing all the way. We were in love with the day, the mountain, and the French-Canadian people.  —Frankie and Johnny O’Rear,
“Chateau Bon Vivant: The Hilariously True Misadventures of Two Vastly Unequipped Innkeepers Who Run a Ski Lodge in Winter in Old Quebec”

1978 STICK TO THE TRAILS
Don’t go blithely whipping off the trails at Vail, Colorado, this season. Under a new get-tough policy, the U.S. Forest Service is planning to prosecute people who ignore ski-area boundary and trail-closing markers. The penalties: six months in jail and a $500 fine. —SKI (October 1978)

PARKING THE MIND AT KEYSTONE
First the instructor asked us to think of a word that described our skiing. I chose “wobbly.” Mark, a Los Angeles advertising man, chose “strain.” Judy said “tense.” We each acted out our bad quality, exaggerating and clowning. We skied down a gentle intermediate run, clenching our teeth and holding our arms out like scarecrows. “Look at them,” said a voice on a chairlift. “Oh, they’re just doing Inner Skiing,” said its seatmate. —Abby Rand on the Inner Skier Week at Keystone, based on the best-
selling book Inner Skier (SKI, November 1978)

1989 UNITED NATIONS IN THE ALPINE LIFTLINES
Our State Department should analyze national deportment in liftlines across the Alps as an aid to understanding the character of Europeans. The Germans are the most aggressive. The French step all over everyone’s skis. An Englishman slammed into the line and knocked over my daughter. The Swedes make a wedge of six skiers and slowly surge through the line. The polite Japanese make block reservations on the cable cars. As for the Americans, they’re so afraid of making the wrong impression that they get squeezed to the back—the wimps of the European liftlines. —Peter Miller (Snow Country, August 1989)

The Winter Park Express ski train, which has hauled Denver skiers through the Moffat Tunnel on and off since 1940, takes another hiatus for the 2020-21 winter season.

According to a Winter Park press release dated September 30, " Amtrak has been reducing the number of seats sold on each train to enable distancing, a best-practice that will likely continue into the upcoming winter season. Amtrak and Winter Park Resort evaluated seating options on the Winter Park Express and agreed that with social distancing requirements, it was not possible to operate the train successfully this season. The resort and Amtrak thank our customers and look forward to welcoming them back again in the 2022 season."

For more, see Ski Trains: A History, and Amtrak revives Winter Park Ski Train.

Japan’s skiing history is rich and varied. People had long used simple homemade skis to get around, but then in the 1930s the great pioneer 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 may 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 over 20 million to nearer five million and 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 these lost Japanese ski areas.

Andrew is meticulously cataloguing the former ski areas, making personal visits, taking current pictures and adding aerial images. The work in progress so far has more than 110 former ski areas and almost 1,000 pictures.

Among the listings are 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 15 years, to 1982. Dedicated skiers walked a kilometer from the rail station, crossing a river on a cable-pulled ferry to reach the slopes. —Patrick Thorne

Photo: Goshiki Onsen (Hot Springs) today. From Wikimedia.

Maple Valley offered a variety of ski trails on its 1,000-foot vertical drop served by two chairlifts and a T-bar, as shown in this late 1980s trail map.

New Beginning for Maple Valley

Lost Vermont ski area starts over as a brewery…with a long-term plan to bring skiing back. By Jeremy Davis

Over the last few decades, many of Vermont’s former ski areas have reopened or found new life as backcountry slopes. Magic, Ascutney and the private High Pond are now lift-served again, while Dutch Hill, Hogback and Timber Ridge (with permission) are available for hike-to skiing. Maple Valley, a lost ski area in the southeast corner of the state, will soon begin its own renaissance.

Located on Sugar Mountain, Maple Valley was a classic family ski area. It was built by the Pirovane brothers, who owned the North Haven (CT) Construction Company, along with Terry Tyler. Opening in 1963, the first lifts included a beginner’s T-bar and chairlift. Five trails ran from the summit on a 1,000-foot vertical drop.

Maple Valley’s location off Route 30, fifteen minutes north of Brattleboro and I–91 and a gateway to other southern Vermont ski areas, made it easily accessible to skiers from western Massachusetts and Connecticut. Crowds became common, and in 1966, another chairlift was added to relieve lift lines. In the 1970s, snowmaking helped alleviate a lack of natural snow at this low-elevation ski area.

Peaking in popularity in the early 1970s, Maple Valley changed little into the 1980s, and in 1988 financial difficulties closed the ski area for a year and it was auctioned off. New owners reopened the area for the 1989–1990 season and made some modest improvements, including a halfpipe. More financial problems ensued, and the ski area closed in 1996.

Maple Valley was sold at a foreclosure auction the following year to Frank Mercede and Son Inc., owned by Nick Mercede. It reopened for one final season in 1999–2000 on a limited basis.

Over the next decade, Mercede made plans to rejuvenate the property. But it needed significant investment to compete with larger ski areas 45 minutes to the northwest, and his plans to add off-season activities like concerts and mountain biking did not receive local approval. Maple Valley remained dormant.

That’s all about to change. Sugar Mountain Holdings, an investment group led by Keane Aures, purchased the former ski area and base lodge on May 23, 2018 for $745,000. The group has initial plans to open a craft brewery and distillery made with Vermont products inside the former base lodge.

The lodge, while in need of renovations, is structurally sound. Its interior features plenty of natural wood with large windows overlooking the ski slopes. Existing tables will be reused for seating. The group also intends to make the entire building energy efficient. An iconic giant trail map on the exterior, visible to drivers on Route 30, will be cleaned up and remain on display.

The new owners are optimistic that the process of slowly reopening the ski area could begin in the next several years, depending on the success of the brewery. Dormant since 2000, the slopes are overgrown. The archaic diesel-powered chairlifts, although spun a few times for maintenance in the last two decades, are now most likely beyond the point of salvage. In addition, flash flooding caused damage to the lower slopes in the past year.

Although the brewery and distillery are the main priorities, some of the former ski trails may be cleared so backcountry skiers can earn their turns and hikers can ascend in warmer months. In five to ten years, the existing lifts could be removed and replaced with a single chairlift to the summit, along with new snowmaking. The aim is to eventually make Maple Valley an authentic throwback ski area — a unique alternative to the larger areas not far away. And while skiers may chuckle at the concept of a beer-fueled ski operation, it’s nothing new. Fred Pabst, heir to the famous Milwaukee brewing family, founded nearby Bromley and created the country’s first skiing conglomerate when he owned 16 small ski areas in the Midwest, East and Canada. Pabst, a member of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame who died in 1977, was a snowmaking pioneer and innovator with lifts.
Sugar Mountain Holdings is intent in building good relationships with the local community, where it already has obtained local permits. State approval is currently pending.

It will take a long time for Maple Valley to be a full-fledged ski area again. But by the end of 2020, Maple Valley hopes to welcome visitors, this time to enjoy a craft brew or drink in a classic Vermont setting. Readers can follow Sugar Mountain’s progress at sugarmountainvt.com, where details on the development will be posted.

So Long, Squaw Valley?

Squaw Valley Ski Resort in California may change its name to remove the word “squaw,” a derogatory term for Native American women. As coast-to-coast protests forced a national reckoning about racial inequality in America, resort president and CEO Ron Cohen said in mid-July that the company was taking inventory of the many places that the name appears — both on and off the property — and assessing how much it would cost and how to manage the switch. California tribes have requested this move many times over the years, but only now is the proposal gaining traction.

Derived from the Algonquin word for “woman,” over time the word evolved into a misogynist and racist epithet, said Vanessa Esquivido, a professor of American Indian Studies at California State University, Chico. “That word is an epithet and a slur. It’s been a slur for a very long time,” she told the Reno Gazette-Journal. She explained that when settlers first arrived in the 1850s, they saw Native American women working in a meadow near the Lake Tahoe resort, and that may be how the area got its name.

Cohen said it would be a long and expensive process to remove “squaw” from the resort name. It appears on hundreds of signs and is printed on everything from trail maps and marketing material to uniforms and vehicles. In a statement, he said that resort management is meeting with shareholders, homeowners and local business leaders, as well as local Washoe tribal leadership. He didn’t yet know when a decision on the potential name-change would be made.

Washoe chairman Serrell Smokey supports the name change and suggested “Olympic Valley” as a replacement. —Associated Press, Reno Gazette-Journal

Fernie: 9 Legends and One Myth

Fernie Skiing Heritage inducted its Class of 2020 on March 6, 2020. Established in 2012 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Fernie Alpine Resort in the southern Canadian Rockies, in British Columbia, the mini-museum maintains a permanent Ski Wall of Fame in the Cornerstone Lodge that includes photographs and displays honoring the region’s pioneers. More than 130 attendees showed up to celebrate the contributions of the evening’s honorees.

A highlight of the evening was the induction of Griz—a legendary man, myth and snow god of the southern Canadian Rockies. —Mike Delich (Founder, Fernie Skiing Heritage and Wall of Fame; FIS Technical Director Emeritus, former board member, Alpine Canada)

60 Years of Utah Factoids

In writing ski articles about Utah for 60 years, you encounter all sorts of quirky quotes and factoids. Some disappear like the mist; others become encamped in your brain. Here are a few from the latter category:

• In 1957 I asked Bob Barrett, Utah’s bulldozer operator-turned uranium mining multi-millionaire, why he invested a good portion of his newfound fortune in developing Solitude Ski Area. “It’s the only business I know where people stand in line in a blizzard to pay you money,” he said.

• To lure Japanese skiers to Snowbird in the 1970s, the fledgling resort launched a campaign that included trail signs, menus, trail maps and lodging brochures printed in Japanese. A major “whoops” occurred when translators could not match the name of a ski run derived from the name of resort developer Dick Bass. The word? “Bassackwards.” —Mike Korologos

Skiing History Underground

Researchers using ground-penetrating radar have found what may be a buried Viking Age longship in the town of Horten in Norway. Until the ship is excavated, examined and archaeologically dated, much remains unknown. But most of the burial mounds uncovered to date by scientists from the Midgard Viking Center are from the Viking Age (793–1066).

In addition to a ship, a burial mound almost always contained possessions. At Tune, there’s a burial mound of a man whose possessions indicate high status: In addition to his longship, the mound contains the remnants of horses, a sword, spearheads, chainmail, a saddle, and parts of a ski.

From the radar images, the Horten contents suggest that the man was expected to travel to the afterworld on skis or on horseback, and to do battle on his journey there.

Longship burial mounds are often located in marshes, where the acidic environment destroys wooden objects, like skis. So the best places to look for Viking-era skis are mountain ice fields that in prehistory may have been crossed by travelers or foraged by hunters. In 2014, a 1300-year-old ski was found in Norway in the Reinheimen ice field (“Home of the Reindeer”), evidence that hunters had been there on skis more than 13 centuries ago. The Reinheimen Ski is 172 centimeters long and 14.5 centimeters wide. Remarkably, that’s about the same dimensions as the laminated ash wood cores now made by Skibaumarkt of Germany (https://www.skibaumarkt.de/en/) for those who wish to build their own. —M. Michael Brady 

SNAPSHOTS IN TIME

1959: WHO SAYS THIS IS A NOVICE TRAIL?
In the days when the rope tow was the mainstay of ski areas, it was relatively easy and inexpensive to provide separate slopes for each class of skiers. But with the introduction of the chairlift, originally intended to serve only more experienced skiers, the situation changed. Operators found that the attractions of the chairlift tempted beginners to ski way over their heads. To alleviate the problem, they cut novice trails from the top of the mountain over lengthy but gentle routes. This solved one problem, but created others. These novice trails frequently merge with more-advanced trails, or worse, advanced trails branch off novice trails. The answer seems to be a radical increase in trail marking. —John Southworth (SKI, December 1959)

1968: TEENY-TINY SKI HOUSE
The “Nutshell” house is an 8-by-18-foot cubicle that comes completely furnished, with kitchen, bath and sleeping spaces for five people. The little house is like a ship’s cabin inside, with the addition of wall-to-wall carpeting and a fireplace that warms the space in 15 minutes. The price is $4,000—delivery and connection to sewage, power and water are extra. The buyer’s best bet is to lease a lot from Acorn for $180 a year at Killington (Vermont), Jackson (New Hampshire) or Sugarloaf (Maine). —SKI (February 1968)

1978: HERE WE ARE, BUT WHERE ARE WE?

You know the kind of skier who strives to prove they are “in” by using names that are officially “out?” They insist on calling Aspen Mountain “Ajax” or referring to Vail’s Tyrolean Inn and Garton’s as the Blue Cow and the Casino, so you’ll know they were here before the masses followed them. Well, snobbery is getting to be more difficult with a spate of new names for ski areas that are actually old names, revived. You can no longer get insider points by referring to the area on the back side of Stowe as Smuggler’s Notch instead of its second-generation name, Madonna Mountain. You’d now have to call it Madonna Mountain because management has given it its third-generation name: Smuggler’s Notch. And now comes Keystone’s purchase of A-Basin. Throughout the 70s, Rocky Mountain skiers have been proving their pioneerhood by using the area’s original name, Arapahoe Basin. Sorry. The Keystone folks have changed the name back to Arapahoe Basin, so the in-name is the one that was the out-name before last May.  —SKI (December 1978)

1989: MOVE TO PENTURBIA

Jack Lessigner, professor emeritus from the University of Seattle, and a land and urban development economist, predicts that by 2010, one-third to one-half of the American and Canadian middle class will live outside metropolitan and suburban areas. Many of these people will move to the mountains, where resorts will develop a four-season economy. He has identified “rural-urban counties” with small-town populations but big-city resources: ready access to university education, the lively arts, computer data banks and good communications via modems and fax machines. His “best bet” counties for growth include Grafton, New Hampshire (Cannon Mountain, Loon Mountain, Waterville Valley); Carroll, New Hampshire (Attitash, Cranmore); Green, New York (Hunter Mountain, Windham); Lamoille, Vermont (Stowe); Emmet, Michigan (Boyne), and Summit, Utah (Deer Valley, Park City). —MORTEN LUND (SNOW COUNTRY, FEBRUARY 1989)

1989: GOING UP IN SMOKE

Perhaps no other aspect of the total ski experience is as traditional as returning home after an invigorating day on the slopes to sit in front of a roaring fire. But the air-pollution problem linked to wood-burning fireplaces and stoves stems from the fact that many picturesque Western ski valleys are encircled by high mountains. This terrain, combined with common temperature inversions, creates a situation in which air pollution simply cannot escape. Thus, the atmospheric conditions that frequently contribute to terrible build-ups of air pollutants create similar conditions in many mountain resort towns, especially in the Rockies and High Sierra. —GEORGE RAU (SNOW COUNTRY, JUNE 1989)

World Pro Ski Tour draws star athletes but suffers short season due to COVID-19.

The World Pro Ski Tour never got to the meat of its season, which would have seen seven-time gold medalist Ted Ligety contending with silver-and-bronze Olympian Andrew Weibrecht for $150,000 in championship prize money.

Before the pro season was canceled, Ligety, at age 35, did break away from the World Cup season to compete in two Pro Tour races at Steamboat’s Howelsen Hill and Eldora. He had trouble learning to time the barn-door starting gates and his best finish was a fourth place at Steamboat—proving, he said, that the Tour was serious competition.

The Tour entered its third season with six events scheduled. A long list of sponsors, led by Tito’s Handmade Vodka, offered $300,000 in prize money. When COVID-19 canceled the final three events, Rob Cone of Killington and Middlebury College, a former NCAA champ and U.S. Ski Team Europa Cup racer, topped the field of 21 racers who finished in the money, winning $30,200 for the truncated season. Michael Ankeny, of Buck Hill and Dartmouth College, a veteran of eight years on the U.S. Ski Team, came second ($12,200). Garrett Driller of Squaw Valley and Montana State, an NCAA All American and U.S. Alpine Championship parallel slalom winner, finished third ($8,350).

The Tour Finals at Sunday River and the World Pro Championships at Taos were scheduled for April, after the close of the World Cup and national championships. Ligety and Weinbrecht were on the schedule to compete at those races. “To succeed, the tour needs those top athletes,” said tour chief Jon Franklin, who earned his chops managing top skiers for International Marketing Group. Because the Taos championship event would have awarded $150,000 in prize money, the participation of FIS superstars might have upended the full-season leaderboard. All the events were televised by CBS Sports Network (see season highlights at https://worldproskitour.com/multimedia/).

Franklin predicts a longer, richer tour for the 2020-2021 season. “We don’t have a schedule yet because it has to fit around the NorAm and World Cup schedules,” he points out. He hopes to open the season before the Beaver Creek World Cup in November.

Pro skiing has always depended on the star power of World Cup racers, beginning when Bob Beattie’s new World Pro Skiing circuit recruited the likes of Jean-Claude Killy and Billy Kidd. Fifty years ago, in 1970, Kidd won the FIS World Championship combined gold medal, promptly turned pro and then won the WPS championship the same season. He’s still the only skier to pull that one off. —Seth Masia

A Day for Jake

On March 13, snowboarders around the world took a ceremonial run to honor the late Jake Burton Carpenter —pioneer, innovator and entrepreneur—who died last November of testicular cancer. Though the global “Day for Jake” took some serious hits, most notably from the novel coronavirus and nasty weather, the event still came off at about a dozen resorts, from Avoriaz (France) to Boyne Mountain (Michigan), Big Sky (Montana) and Copper Mountain (Colorado).

Jake’s wife and business partner, Donna Carpenter, and his sons George, Taylor and Timi, attended the festivities at Stowe, Vermont. A gentle beginner’s trail, Lullaby Lane, was renamed “Jake’s Ride” and Jeff Boliba, Burton’s vice president of global resorts, read a Vermont General Assembly resolution honoring Jake for his role in pioneering and promoting the sport. Just a few days earlier, Boliba had dropped by the statehouse to meet Rep. Kathleen James, a first-term legislator and the editor of Skiing History. James sponsored the resolution, which received unanimous approval from all 180 of Vermont’s Representatives and Senators.

Burton Snowboards then quickly turned its attention to the COVID-19 response, delivering more than 200,000 KN-95 masks to hospitals across Vermont and to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, just across the border in New Hampshire. ISHA has launched a digital archive project to document how the ski industry is responding to the pandemic; see page 26.

Looking for Vintage Ski Books?

The word ski is derived from the Old Norse word skið, which means “snow-shoe” and “billet of cleft wood.” It first appeared in print English in 1755, in Volume 12 of The Monthly Review of London, an English periodical.

With such deep linguistic roots, it’s no surprise Norway is a key source of vintage ski history books. And one of the country’s top shops is Ruuds Antikvariat on Ullevålsveien, a busy north-south artery in Oslo. From the Latin antiquarius, also the root of the word “antique,” Antikvariat means “vintage bookseller” in Norwegian.

The shop was founded in 1972 by Jon Ruud and is now managed by his daughter, Vibeke Ruud. Its glass display cases and shelves include such ski-history classics as Farthest North by polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen (1861–1930), with its many drawings of skiing, then called “snow-shoeing” in English. Another hallmark is Voyage picturesque aux alpes norvégennes (Pictorial Journey Through the Norwegian Alps) of 1821 by Finnish-Swedish military officer and cartographer Wilhelm Maximilian Carpelan (1787–1831), among the first to survey and describe the interior of the country.

Bibliophilism is a cherished part of Scandinavian culture, reflected in the presence of no less than 72 antiquarian and used bookshops in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. They’re all interconnected in an online network, where you can search more than 1.5 million titles in English, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish (https://www.antikvariat.net/en/?currency=USD). To learn more, go to: https://ilab.org/booksellers/ruuds-antikvariat. —M. Michael Brady

Typo Makes Trump Into X-C Skier

As a leading journal of skiing’s historical record, we feel compelled to correct an error noticed by an eagle-eyed Skiing History correspondent.

Not known as a fitness buff in this COVID-19 time or any other era, U.S. President Donald Trump was recently described (incorrectly) as a Nordic destination skier. On May 9, 2020, Positively Scottish carried the headline “IVANKA TRUMP’S PERSONAL ASSISTANT TESTED POSITIVE FOR CORONAVIRUS, ACCORDING TO A CNN SOURCE.” Included in the text was the startling statement that, “The day after breaking his self-isolation of the White House for a cross-country skiing trip intended to report the country’s willingness to start again, Trump received the news one of his Oval Office waiters tested positive for the virus.” While the route may have been cross-country, ski gear was not involved. —Jonathan Wiesel

Mount Ascutney Adds T-Bar

Mount Ascutney, a former major ski resort in southern Vermont, operated from 1946 to 2011. Generations of skiers learned to ski at this family-friendly area and were sad to see it become a “lost” ski area. But it wasn’t lost for long.

Several years after it closed, the nonprofit group Ascutney Outdoors worked hard to reopen a few trails, served by a brand-new rope tow in 2016. This past season featured the opening of a refurbished T-bar, expanding the lift-served vertical to just over 400 feet and 10 trails. The upper slopes, under a conservation easement, are maintained as hike-to terrain for those who earn their turns. The lower slopes also host a tubing facility, and an Outdoor Center serves as a hub for skiers, hikers, mountain bikers and community events.

Purchased from Le Relais, a ski area just outside of Quebec City, the T-bar was donated by Glenn and Shelley Seward in 2017 in preparation for future installation. Over the next two years, a fundraising campaign collected enough money for the T-bar to be installed at the end of 2019 and fired up in February 2020.

Ascutney’s humble beginnings are similar to many Vermont resorts. It was founded in 1946 as a rope-tow area by investors Bob Bishop, Catharine “Kip” Cushman, Robert Hammond, Bob Ely, Dr. Peter Patch and Dick Springer. Over the next six decades, the area went through many ownership changes, experiencing financial setbacks but also expansions, including a large hotel in the mid 1980s and a high-speed quad to the summit in 2000. Mounting fiscal problems led to its closure in 2011, and the ski area assets were sold off bit by bit.

Mount Ascutney is now a shining example of a new paradigm for smaller ski areas throughout New England that had financial difficulties or closed. Strong volunteer support, generous donations, and operating as a nonprofit can help these areas to succeed where prior operating attempts have failed. Loyal skiers have refused to let their favorite mountains fall by the wayside and are doing whatever they can to save special places like Ascutney.

Just ask Glenn Seward: “Those of us who love Ascutney don’t give up easily.” For more information, go to www.ascutneyoutdoors.org. —Jeremy Davis

SKI ART

Rolf Winkler (1884–1942)

The solid shape of any silhouette is what gives the image its power. In the mid-18th century, Louis XV’s finance minister, Étienne de Silhouette, levied a wealth tax on the citizens of France. This brought ignominy upon him; he was mocked and associated with cheapness. In the art world, a quick outline became known as a drawing à la silhouette.

At the time, portraits were painted, and therefore only those who could afford to sit for an artist were portrayed. But some artists had the ability to cut the profile of a person: These “silhouettes” were both quick and cheap and therefore, before photography, increasingly popular with the middle classes. And the cutting was done extremely quickly—for example, if you were visiting a country fair and happened on an artist with scissors in hand. One of the most well-known of these artists used to advertise “three-minute sittings.”

With the development of photography in the mid- to late-19th century, the call for silhouettes declined. However, in the early 20th century, probably inspired by the Arts and Crafts Movement, silhouette artists became extremely popular as they seemed to portray, in a curiously old-fashioned and nostalgic way, a treasured past. Nowhere was this more obvious than during World War I, as displayed here: These troopers are emerging from the woods and heading for the village below, just as they would have done in peaceful years.

Rolf Winkler, born in Vienna in 1884, was a painter, illustrator and silhouette artist. He studied at the Landeskunstschule (State Art School) in Graz, Austria, and later he spent time in Dachau, Germany in a vibrant art colony under the leadership of Ludwig Dill and Adolf Hölzel, landscape painters who were embracing modern trends. Dill was a founding member of the Munich Secession. Winkler settled in Munich in 1905 and over the decades illustrated over 400 books, mostly for juveniles. He also worked for the satiric weekly, Fliegende Blätter (Flying Pages). The illustration here is entitled “Skipatrouille” and was published by Teubner in Leipzig. This extraordinary publishing house specialized in Greek and Roman texts, mathematics and the sciences, and yet here in 1915 is Winkler’s “Ski Patrol,” one of six silhouettes contained in a special folder. Maybe this was their way of supporting the war effort. —E. John B. Allen