News and Events

Beijing Olympic Courses Still a Mystery

What to Expect When You're Inspecting By Edith Thys Morgan When Alpine skiing athletes head to the Beijing Olympics, they will do so with an unprecedented lack of knowledge about the venue. While...

Dynamic Reinvents the Slalom Ski

By Seth Masia  The VR17, engineered for French ski racers, was imitated by ski factories around the world. The Dynamic VR17 remains legendary, and for good reason. With its hickory core, fiberglass...

The Nelson Camps: Birth of the Canadian Ski Team

In 1964, the Kokanee Glacier gave birth to Canada’s national ski team. Canadians fared poorly at the 1964 Olympics in Innsbruck. Only Nancy Greene had a top-10 finish (seventh in downhill). In May...

Resorts: Baroness Mimi and Mont d'Arbois

Megève celebrates 100 years as the first purpose-built ski resort in France. Megève, the posh ski resort just off the main road between Geneva and Chamonix, has been managed by the Rothschild banking...

Walter Kofler Invents the Polyethylene Ski Base

Before P-tex, there was Kofix. It drove a revolution in ski racing. When Alpine skis had wooden bases, it was common to waterproof them with celluloid lacquer, made by dissolving celluloid in ether,...

Heavy Lifting: Aspen Under Construction

 Meet the folks who built Aspen’s first chairlifts, 75 years ago. Aspen Mountain celebrates its 75th anniversary of lift-served slopes this winter, but the area’s skiing history started well before...

Northland Skis: Fire and Feud in St. Paul

By Greg Fangel and Paul Hooge How Christian Lund mopped up rivals while making the world’s best-known hickory skis. Illustration above: Henry Hall (1893-1986), of Ishpeming, Michigan, was just one of...

Catching up with Kari Traa

By Aimee Berg The Norwegian mogul champ is back home in Voss, raising kids and running a $70 million company. But she still flies through the air.  At 14, Kari Traa started skiing moguls in oversized...

Sunshine on my Shoulders: A history of ski music and song

By Charlie Sanders Photo by Robert Doisneau/Getty Images As a professor of entertainment law at New York University, I’ve taught courses on the relationship of music to history. I’ve also been skiing...

The European Origin of Skiing

By Maurice Woehrlé Archaeology and DNA evidence support the theory that skiing arose east of the Baltic, at the end of the last Ice Age. Translated by Seth Masia Where and when was skiing invented?...