Museum reunites Don Amick family with 76-year-old trophy
The Washington State Ski and Snowboard Museum on Snoqualmie Pass in Washington State may be smaller than other ski museums but its mission and abilities to bring together and celebrate ski and snowboard history of the region are far reaching.
Recently, museum founder Dave Moffett was contacted by Darla Baldwin who was in possession of a large silver award platter from the legendary Silver Skis races on Mt. Rainier. Darla came from a non-skiing family in the Yakima Valley of Washington and had no idea how her family came in possession of the trophy which she wanted to donate to the museum.
Last-minute course change meant Amick never got his trophy, and it was never engraved with his name.
The 1947 silver platter bore no information on the awardee, only noting a third-place award for the open races. Museum volunteers went to work digging and it did not take long before the museum’s local ski historian Lowell Skoog found that Don Amick, who became a member of the 1948 U.S. Ski Team, was the third-place finisher. Further information was found in the archives of the Seattle Post Intelligencer, the newspaper that sponsored the races from its notorious beginnings in 1934.
The legendary Silver Skis races are well known to local ski enthusiasts as they involved a fast action down mountain kamikaze-like schuss dropping over 4,000 feet. From the 10,000-foot-elevation of Camp Muir on Mt. Rainier, brave racers hurtled down through few control gates over wide-ranging snow conditions, skirting treacherous rock outcroppings leading down toward Paradise Inn (see Skiing Heritage, September 2004).
The post-race account of the 1947 Silver Skis in the Seattle PI noted that Sun Valley instructor Willard South took first place followed by 10th Mountain Division vet Karl Stingl, just seconds behind, and Washington Ski Club skier Don Amick was awarded third place with a calculated time just 8 seconds behind winner South.
Curiously, the “calculated time” resulted from Amick missing the finish banner by following the traditional course and descending into Edith Creek Basin, losing valuable seconds. The newspaper recap noted that the finish gate was changed by officials at the last minute due to concern over slushy conditions in the lower basin. Further, Amick was not the only skier to miss the finish as the course was advertised, up to the day prior, to end in Edith Basin as it had in previous races. Finish judges and timers compensated for the "runner's errors" by "catching them at an angle across the finish” leading to Don being awarded the “calculated” third place finish.
Such confusion in ski racing is unlikely in today’s events, but races in those days did not benefit from electronic timing gates. Rather race officials appointed timers armed with stop watches to track each participant’s time. To determine the order of the finish the timers’ compared results. Misinterpretation or premature release of result tallies sometimes led to “recalculations”, and notably, this also occurred in the Junior Silver Skis races held the next day.
Armed with intrigue, museum volunteers contacted Russ Amick, the eldest member of the long-time Seattle skiing family. It didn’t take Russ long to recall the event, even though he was only seven at the time. He remembered he and his mother waiting for his dad to finish, noting the incident was bizarre and stills creates a strong memory for him. Russ figured his father never took possession of the trophy because of the mix up.
In corroborating the story further, a 1993 account of the Silver Skis races by John Garibaldi in a 1990s periodical titled “Free Snow”, included an interview with Amick where Don noted in that particular Silver Skis race, organizers failed to tell racers they had changed the course. After not seeing the finish banner he exclaimed - “My God-you’ve lost your marbles kid”. Don recounted that he tried hiking back up slope where officials asked him if he had been told of the change in finish, to which he immediately replied “no!”. At that point Don packed up his wife and kids and left, but organizers later than night showed up at his home with the silver platter. However, Don said “No, take it back” and what happened next to the silver platter was not clear and in 1993 Don had no idea where the trophy was.
With the mystery somewhat resolved, the close-knit Amick family was please to take possession of the wayward trophy and its saga. For Russ, he did not seem surprised about the mysterious disappearance, thinking of it as another intriguing story about the legacy of his sprightly father.
