Short Turns

But no plans yet for a birthday party

The Fédération Internationale de Ski, or FIS, was formally founded on February 2, 1924, during the first Winter Olympics at Chamonix, by 14 national ski associations (see “1924: The First Winter Games” in the January-February 2024 issue). They wanted a stronger governing body for skiing to succeed the 10-nation International Skiing Commission, established in 1910 in Oslo. FIS now controls more than half of Winter Olympic competitions with its dozen different disciplines in skiing and snowboarding.

The original organization was meant to regulate competitions in the traditional Nordic disciplines (jumping, cross-country and Nordic combined) in an era when only Scandinavian populations conducted major events such as the Nordic Games (Stockholm, as of 1901), the Holmenkollen Ski Festival (Oslo, from 1892) and numerous annual—and popular—jumping meets in North America (beginning around 1887).

International competition required coordination of national ski associations (NSAs). The first of these, the
Bohemian Ski Association and Ski Club of Great Britain, were founded in 1903, followed by clubs in Switzerland (1904); Austria, Germany and the United States (1905); and the Scandinavian countries (1908).

The sport was expanding beyond Nordic into what would become the Alpine disciplines. In January 1905, Matthias Zdarsky invented the Torlauf, or “gate run,” an untimed descent around obstacles that is now regarded as a precedent for the timed slalom, which was created in 1922 by Arnold Lunn. According to the local newspaper Kitzbüheler Bote, the first real Alpine competition took place at Kitzbühel, where a series of open-field downhill competitions was held in January and April of 1906.

The winner of the main event on April 8, Sebastian Monitzer, needed more than eight minutes to descend 2,050 feet (625m) over two miles (3.2 km) of unprepared track at an average speed of 14 mph (22.5 kph), including his probable crashes. According to historian Michael Huber, president of the Kitzbühel Ski Club, that route later became the women’s downhill course once the Hahnenkamm races began in 1931.

Twenty-five years after its founding, FIS finally agreed to sanction Alpine racing. While the first recognized FIS Nordic World Championships took place in 1925 at Janské Lázně, Czechoslovakia, Lunn had to fight hard, with the support of Swiss skier Walter Amstutz, to convince FIS to recognize downhill and slalom (see “Alpine Revolution,” January-February 2021).

Finally, in 1931, the Swiss resort of Mürren, in the stunning Jungfrau region, hosted the first Alpine FIS Championships—and that event would only be retroactively declared a World Championships, in 1937, a year after an Alpine combined event was part of the fourth Winter Olympic Games at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.

TV Drives Growth

Each year, new NSAs were created and then joined FIS. The organization developed a wider and more modern vision after 1951, when Swiss lawyer and former ski coach Marc Hodler was elected president, after 26 years of management by Swedish and Norwegian army officers. Hodler remained at the helm until 1998.

Thanks to the rapid rise of television coverage in the
mid-1950s and the arrival of skiing legends like Toni Sailer, Stein Eriksen, Andrea Mead Lawrence, Anderl Molterer and Othmar Schneider, a handful of existing classic events started to attract huge crowds.

Under Hodler’s guidance, the 1967 FIS Congress at Beirut, Lebanon, adopted the idea of a World Cup series, conceived by Honoré Bonnet, Bob Beattie and Serge Lang. This revolutionized Alpine ski racing, which swiftly became a better-organized international sport.

In turn, racers who earned fame on the World Cup circuit drew more interest to skiing in the Olympics. ABC Sports paid $10 million for rights to telecast the 1968 Winter Games at Grenoble, but by 1988 the price rose to $309 million for Calgary.

FIS soon launched World Cup series for jumping, cross-country and freestyle/snowboard. World Cup circuits overseen by FIS came to dominate competition in all snowsports disciplines, pulling in powerful corporate sponsors to offset the expenses incurred by NSAs and local organizing committees.

Everything became more professional in the 1980s. NSAs, as well as FIS, had to hire more experienced people to run their programs and take better care of their commercial interests. By 1975 FIS made enough money from sponsorships to hire its first full-time manager, St. Moritz native Gianfranco Kasper, who efficiently ran day-to-day operations at FIS as its first director, and then as its fifth president, from 1998 to 2021. Early in 1990, FIS was able to move out of Hodler’s law office into its own beautiful headquarters at Oberhofen, Switzerland, near Thun Lake.

Step by step, FIS continued to grow at the end of the last century. Today it sanctions about 7,000 international competitions each year. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, more than 750 representatives from more than 100 NSAs attended annual FIS congresses. Around 60 people now work full time at Oberhofen, and dozens more on the slopes, coordinating the World Cup and Continental circuits. FIS runs its own in-house travel agency, helping teams to travel abroad and organizing international meetings.

FIS now generates several tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue. Most of the Olympic TV-rights money flows through FIS to the NSAs, for sending athletes to the Winter Games. Newly reelected FIS president Johan Eliasch is now working to extend that TV deal to World Cup competition. Since the early 1990s, individual NSAs have owned and negotiated their own TV rights with the help of various groups, such as Halva/Media Partners (now Infront) or Eurovision.

Eliasch is convinced that by centralizing the bargaining process, FIS can ramp up revenue earned and increase the pot available to NSAs worldwide. For the moment, a few leading NSAs such as Switzerland, Austria and Germany are not convinced by this strategy, preventing a smooth transition of power. They are looking for stronger guarantees from FIS to remain able to cover the high costs of their own organizations. In years past, the leading NSAs only needed to take care of a handful of snowsports, but now more than a dozen disciplines need their help in financial and structural matters. Some of those NSAs have dozens of employees and yearly turnover reaching more than $70 million.

Where’s the Party?

A relaxed celebration of FIS’s 100th anniversary might help to create a better and more positive atmosphere. Plans have been discussed at the highest level to find the best ways to arrange this. In a January interview, FIS Secretary General Michel Vion, Alpine combined World Champion in 1982 and past president of the French Ski Federation, explained some possible directions.

“To organize a big party with 1,500 guests from all over the world doesn’t make sense in our times, considering our concerns related to sustainability and ecological impact,” he explained. “We plan some presentations next spring during the FIS technical meetings at Portoroz in Slovenia in May and the FIS Congress at Reykjavik, Iceland, in early June. We also aim to publish stories in various media during this year and also wish to create attractive ways and communications to attract younger generations towards snowsports.”

A dedicated website, 100.fis-ski.com, was launched on January 1, presenting some of the highlights and top champions in the history of FIS and winter sports. A specific logo has also been used during the broadcasting of major competitions during the past World Cup season.

Unfortunately, this recent winter has also been marked by less cheerful moments. Many events were cancelled, first because of storms in Colorado in early December 2023 and then due to warm weather and snow drought in the Alps in January and February 2024. Nearly 15 races were called off or postponed in the first part of the season.

Then many scoring leaders were seriously injured, including World Cup champions or gold medalists such as Aleksander Kilde, Corinne Suter, Petra Vlhova, Sofia Goggia, Marco Schwartz and Valerie Grenier. Mikaela Shiffrin suffered a bad crash in the downhill at Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, where the 2026 Olympic women’s races are planned, and injured her left knee. The American star, winner of seven more races by then for a total of 95, was forced to rest for several weeks, while Lara Gut-Behrami overtook her in the overall World Cup standings. At least it brought some real competition in the final weeks of the 2023–24 season! 

European correspondent Patrick Lang wrote about the 2013 FIS Congress in the July-August 2023 issue.

Snapshots in Time

1949 Arnold Lunn Resigns from the FIS Council

The inclusion of a Russian on the FIS Council is the immediate reason for Arnold Lunn’s resignation as British representative to FIS. Lunn’s resignation reads, “The FIS Council received an application from the USSR Sport Federation Ski Section, coupled with the demand 1) that Russians should be given a seat on the council; 2) that Russian should be recognized as one of our official languages and 3) that the Spanish Ski Association should be expelled. This application was an insult to the FIS and never should have been submitted to the council.” “Lunn Quits FIS Seat. Protests Ski Politics” (SKI Magazine, November 1949)

1969 The Dawn of the Plastic Ski Boot

Don’t be misled—leather boots are not ready for the museum yet. Plastic is still new. Thus leather will continue to be a volume seller. Skiers who don’t want to experiment with new plastic designs and are prepared to pay the higher prices will continue to use leather boots. The prices of most leather boots are $30 to $60. If you’re prepared to pay something more, ski shops this year are offering plastic-leather laminated boots in which a layer of plastic bonded to the leather gives the boot some lateral rigidity. —Jeffrey Garlick, “Are Your Ski Boots Obsolete?” (Ski Magazine, September 1969)

1974 Reading the magazine not just for the articles

I read Skiing for two reasons: First, the articles are interesting; second, the photographs and ads picture some very nice-looking guys. I wonder if there is some sort of correlation between the sport and good looks? — Mary-Ellyn Golinson, Vernon, Conn., “Are Skiers Handsomer? (Skiing Magazine, Spring 1974)

1989 hotdogger advice

Among the things that would motivate us hotdoggers to take a ski vacation are: a mean mountain with plenty of steep, mogully terrain and a few cliff jumps, a resort that doesn’t frown upon jumping and one that doesn’t allow novices to clutter up the expert trails. — Ann Ingersoll, Berlin, N.H. “On behalf of hotdog skiers everywhere” (Letters, Snow Country magazine, February 1989)

2023 Denim Heaven

On December 9, 2023, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort set the record for the most people skiing or riding in jeans at one time. The final count was ٣,١١٤ denim-clad guests, shattering the previous record of ١٠٢ that was set at The Remarkables Ski Area in New Zealand earlier this year. To aid in setting the record, the resort offered $25 lift tickets, $25 rentals, and $100 off group lessons.­ — Brent Thomas, “Jackson Hole Mountain Resort Sets Record for Most Skiers and Riders Wearing Jeans” (SnowBrains, December 10, 2023)

2024 Just Another Swiftie

As Mikaela Shiffrin plans the next phase of her career as a skier, she is looking to the example of another female megastar who has experienced kindred highs and lows and highs in her career: Taylor Swift. They have both been teenage sensations lavished with praise and profit. While Swift, named Time magazine’s person of the year for 2023, might right now be the most famous human on the planet, Shiffrin, celebrated at home, has bona fide rock star status in Europe, where ski racing is the national sport of several countries. — Bill Pennington, “As Mikaela Shiffrin Considers How to Top Herself, She Studies Taylor Swift” (New York Times, January 2, 2024)

At the end of the run, does it really matter?

Photo top: Vallee Blanche/Mer de Glace above Chamonix. Chamonix-Mont Blanc photo

In this day of perpetual social media marketing hooks, “extremes” sell: hottest, tallest, biggest, fastest. Ski resorts are not immune. However, determining a superlative like the longest ski run on the planet is not as simple as it would seem.

This exercise is rife with caveats. Are we talking about vertical feet or length? Lift-served or not? Off-piste or maintained? Perhaps the most mainstream solution is to determine the longest runs by using both vertical and length—further sorted by some sort of lift service. Or perhaps just consider it a skier’s bucket list.

Guinness Book of World Records says that a run at Davos, Switzerland, from the Weissfluhjoch to Parsenn, is “the longest all-downhill ski run in the world” at 7.6 miles in 6,692 vertical feet (12.3 km and 2,034 m). Many may disagree, partly due to the ambiguous “all-downhill” criteria, designed to exclude anything with a hike or another lift ride in the middle. Or a bus ride at the end. And we won’t delve into Guinness’s definition of lift-served.

One of the best-known lift-served long runs in the world is Chamonix’s Vallée Blanche, which helps explain why we feel a little mystical about such endless terrain. Its most far-flung route is 13.67 miles (22 km), all of it off-piste and bedecked with chamois, blue-ice caverns, crevasses, lurching seracs and stupefying mountain views. Its full 9,200-foot vertical (2,797 m) goes all the way to the Chamonix valley floor, though
climate change has increasingly made that a rare reward.

Zermatt, Switzerland, features what is marketed as the longest red (intermediate) run in the world. The 13.6-mile (22 km) trail from the Klein Matterhorn to the Italy's Valtournenche measures 7,739 vertical feet (2,353 m) and delivers you to another country. It does require a lift ride in the middle, however.

Alpe d’Huez, France, describes its famous Sarenne route as “Europe’s longest black run.” The nearly 10-mile (6.2 km) descent in 5,872 vertical feet (1,785 m) can be done, according to the resort, “without having to take a lift.”

North America looks to Revelstoke, Canada, for bragging rights. Revelstoke claims the Last Spike as the longest maintained ski run in North America at 8.3 miles (13.4 km). As a plus, the run descends the resort’s full vertical, which at 5,620 feet (1,708 m), is tops on the continent.

Netflix Co-Founder Buys North America’s Resort-Acreage King

Powder Mountain, Utah, Tries Again to Be the Resort of the Future

Tech money has joined forces with the largest ski resort (by skiable acres) in North America, in what may have been an inevitable marriage. On September 6, 2023, with a $100 million investment, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings became the majority owner of Powder Mountain. Hastings had already acquired a minority stake in the Eden, Utah, resort, which covers over 8,464 acres—roughly 16 percent broader than Park City.

Hastings has only started his re-imagining of the resort in what he has termed “Powder Next.” To that end, he recently pulled all available residential lots at Powder off the market. “That’s a big step that you do when you have confidence that it’s going to be a lot more successful in a year,” Hastings told the Salt Lake Tribune. “So we kind of don’t want to sell those lots at current prices.” Hastings said he envisions the reworked resort as being a “premium place in the world for being and doing.”

Perhaps Powder Mountain will go full circle with that vision. It was purchased by a group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs out of foreclosure for $40 million in 2013. Their vision was to build a future-embracing, eco-friendly resort with 500 homes developed around a hub of education, research and alternative medical facilities. Various challenges ensued, and fewer than 10 percent of the homes were built. Hastings, who stepped down as CEO of Netflix last January and now serves as executive chairman of the company, already had a home at the resort before he bought in. —Greg Ditrinco 

Old Time Lift Safety

Snow King Mountain Resort, Wyoming, about a dozen miles and several thousand light years in attitude from Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, remembers the good ol’ days. The resort also wisely recognizes that hazy nostalgia might cloud some of the darker aspects of those good ol’ days. For instance, this image, dated June 8, 1965, posted on Snow King’s Instagram feed, is headlined “Safety Standards in the 1960s.” Snow King wisely notes that “We have upgraded a bit since these days!” A Skiing History editor recalls riding that chair. Its towers were made of telephone poles, bolted together into tripods. They creaked.

Snapshots in Time

1924 And So It Began
The Winter sports of the eighth Olympic Games were officially opened today with the customary Olympic ceremonies, presided over by Gaston Vidal, Under Secretary of State for Physical Education. M. Vidal received the oaths of amateurism by the athletes entered for the competition. The teams of all the nations represented, bearing their national flags and emblems, then paraded from the City Hall to the skating rink, where the actual competitions will begin tomorrow. On the arrival at the rink Under Secretary Vidal declared the official opening of the sports. His voice, caught up by enormous amplifiers on top of the grandstands, was sent reverberating up the sides of the high mountains which give the Chamonix Valley its magnificent setting. — “The Olympics in Winter” (New York Times, January 25, 1924)

1975 Free-Heel Revolution
If you’re a cross-country skier in the West, you may well consider yourself a pioneer. Just as the frontiersmen had to adapt to the mountains of the West, so also do cross-country skiers have to adapt their methods and equipment. And since touring is just beginning to boom in the West, the field is wide open for search and discovery. Here in Crested Butte, the telemark turn has turned the sport upside down. A group of skiers will ski to the top of a mountain with the sole purpose of linking a hundred or so telemarks together down a virgin bowl. — Rick Borkovec, “Trendsetters” (Powder, November 1978)

1989 A Turn for the Worst
“Collisions have become the number one cause of injury in skiing,” said Linda Meyers Tikalski, a U.S. Ski Team member and an Olympian at the Squaw Games. “Skiers think control means ‘not falling.’ The new skiers don’t think ‘turning.’ They think ‘cruising.’ Unless we can convince skiers that good skiing is good turning, we’re in trouble.” — Mort Lund, “No-Risk Skiing” (Snow Country, February 1989)

1990 Olympic Need
I have enjoyed reading your magazine through the years. There is only one suggestion I have for you. Let’s see more time and money spent on our U.S. Olympic ski team and on Olympic racing worldwide. Even though it is two years away, there are athletes preparing. I feel it would be interesting to see what is happening in the Olympic world. — Lori Bucher, Aurora, Indiana, Letters, “More on the Olympics” (Skiing Magazine, October 1990)

2001 Bye-Bye Ban; Hello Boarders
The Aspen Skiing Company is looking to youth to lead it out of the wilderness of complacency and sagging skier numbers into a more prosperous future. Thus it was on April Fools’ Day, of all days, last season that the resort’s notorious anti-snowboarding walls came tumbling down on Aspen Mountain to great fanfare, if not the actual trumpets of Jericho. Because it’s Aspen and therefore good news copy, on April 1 the town is jammed with more satellite uplinks than after Ivana Trump spied Donald’s girlfriend during a family ski vacation. — Jay Cowan, “The New Aspen” (SKI Magazine, September 2001)

2023 Shrinking Prominence
Mont Blanc’s peak has been measured at 4,805.59 m (15,766 ft 4 in), which is 2.22 m shorter than in 2021. The mountain, which straddles France, Italy and Switzerland, is measured every two years to try and track the impact of climate change on the Alps. French chief geometer Jean des Garets said the shrinking could have been caused by less rain this summer. “We’re gathering the data for future generations,” he said. “We’re not here to interpret them, we leave that up to the scientists.” — “France’s highest mountain Mont Blanc is shrinking.” (BBC.com, October 5, 2023)

Condensed history of a wild marriage.

Above: Swiss ski-bobbers in 1913. Courtesy ski-bike.org.

Skiing and cycling have a long history of a symbiotic fit for elite athletes and casual enthusiasts. The two sports sync easily with their alternating seasons and effective cross-training results, along with the same primal thrill of gravity-powered flight. It’s a natural relationship.

The origin story of the bicycle isn’t attributed to any single inventor. An early “wooden horse” could be seen in the 1790s tooling around the Palais Royal in Paris. In 1818, German baron Karl von Drais was awarded a patent on his two-wheel, steerable Velocipede, which has led to him being called the father of the bicycle.

That bicycle DNA took to the slopes in the U.S. in 1892, when the first patent was issued for a skibob. The Ice Velocipede was essentially a converted bicycle—with a steerable ski (or skate blade) in the front, a second ski under the pedals and a studded drive wheel at the rear. It appears, however, that the Ice Velocipede was never manufactured (an 1863 version was a converted penny-farthing high-wheeler).

The first produced versions of the U.S. skibobs were made of wood and included a front ski attached to a steerable bicycle-style handlebar. A second ski was positioned under the seat in a straight line behind the front ski. The rider was outfitted with mini-skis on each foot, equipped with metal claws on the undersides of the tails for braking. They were heavy, clunky and fast, with only the illusion of control once the rider really got moving.

Look and Time magazines wrote about them in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The skibobs also showed up in liquor ads around the same time. Californian William Cartwright tirelessly promoted them and formed the Skibob Club of Santa Rosa in 1965.

Skibobbing remained popular in Europe and had a cameo appearance in the Beatles 1964 movie A Hard Day’s Night. The sport did have its moments in America, including hosting its World Championships in 1971 at Mount Rose, Nevada. But despite endorsements from the likes of Vail co-founder Earl Eaton, interest in skibobbing stalled, with some resorts banning the devices outright. While the United States Skibob Federation dissolved in the mid-’70s, there is now a U.S. Skibob Association (skibobusa.com),and NASTAR has a skibob division.

Also in the 1970s, early versions of mountain bikes first appeared in Crested Butte, Colorado, and Mill Valley, California, and soon became a counter-seasonal diversion for skiers and ski resorts alike. Early adopters at ski resorts installed bike carriers on ski lifts and then learned that if you allow bikes to the summits, you need designated downhill trails to avoid dangerous congestion on cat tracks and service roads, and free-wheeling damage to ski terrain.

It didn’t take long for resorts to recognize a business opportunity, and ski areas worldwide began clearing single-track biking trails for summertime visitors. Vermont’s Mount Snow opened one of the early lift-accessed, purpose-built bike parks in 1986. Whistler Blackcomb was another early adopter, adding bike racks to lifts in the mid-’80s and opening a bike park in 1999. A subgenre of mountain bike emerged, the high-speed downhill bike, with a heavy-duty steering head and shock absorbers, cushy saddle and powerful brakes.

Spurred by resort lobbying and support from major ski states, the U.S. Congress passed the Ski Area Recreational Opportunity Enhancement Act in 2011. Co-sponsored by Colorado U.S. Senators Mark Udall and Michael Bennet, the legislation expanded approved use of Forest Service land to include ziplining, rope courses and bike trails with associated facilities, among other non-winter activities.

Ever-evolving cycling technology now includes fat bikes, with their low-pressure, four-inch-wide tires allowing manageable use on snow. Exhibiting its own upgrades, skibob technology has greatly benefited adaptive skiing in the U.S. The wide range of durable, lightweight sit-skis and outrigger options has greatly expanded the sport.

In January 2018, Austrian cyclist Max Stöckl hit 64 mph on the Hahnenkamm’s Streif course, just prior to race weekend. He used a downhill bike equipped with studded tires. Perhaps showing the natural synergy between biking and skiing, Stöckl, who grew up near Kitzbühel, said he had to “really battle to clear the gates” and felt pressure to avoid crashing just days before the World Cup downhill.

“I wanted to offer the necessary respect by not ruining the work put in by the ski club by knocking out huge sections of fencing,” he said after the ride.

Shiffrin Wins Best Female Athlete Award

Adding to her record-setting year, Mikaela Shiffrin was named best athlete, women’s sports this summer at the 2023 ESPY awards gala.

The honor caps an extraordinary year for Shiffrin. With her 87th World Cup win in March, Shiffrin broke Ingemar Stenmark’s revered 86-win record that stood for 34 years. Not done yet, Shiffrin went on to add her 88th victory on the final day of the 2022–23 season. She also was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People for 2023.

As she has done throughout her career, Shiffrin deflected attention from herself at the awards ceremony and—again— noted that records aren’t her priority. “Through failure and through success, it’s been a long journey, and it’s not over yet,” Shiffrin said from the stage.

“This season was absolutely incredible, and there was a lot of talk about records," she continued. "It got me thinking, ‘Why is a record actually important?’ And I just feel like it’s not important to break records or reset records. It’s important to set the tone for the next generation to inspire them.”

Shiffrin is only the second skier to win the best athlete ESPY award. Lindsey Vonn won back-to-back honors in 2010 and 2011. On the way to breaking Stenmark’s record, Shiffrin first eclipsed Vonn’s women’s World Cup mark of 82 wins.

Professional sports’ version of the Oscars, the made-for-television annual ESPY awards ceremony features glamorous red-carpet entrances, a packed celebrity audience and viral videos of acceptance speeches.

Stenmark has predicted that Shiffrin, 28, will reach 100 wins. She begins the defense of her overall 2023 World Cup crown in October at the traditional start of the race season in Sölden, Austria. —Greg Ditrinco 

Snapshots in Time

1970 Hide Those Bumps and Bulges
The attention-getting power of tight pants paired with big, clunky ski boots has faded. The new head-turners fit sleekly over hips and thighs, but from there down, the line stovepipes or flares. Fewer bumps and bulges—now they can be hidden. It’s the year of the peacock for everyone, men included. The skier who stepped out of a mold is gone, we hope, forever. — Cathie Judge, “Kicky New Pants” (Skiing Magazine, January 1970)

1988 Speed Trap?
What has brought joy to users has become a mixed blessing to resort owners. The new high-speed quads cost two or three times more than the old lifts and their complex machinery makes them costlier to maintain. And when a quad replaces a conventional double chairlift, it dumps twice as many people onto the same amount of terrain. — John Fry, “Life in the Fast Chair” (Snow Country, October 1988.)

1990 Terrain Hogs: Expert or Beginner?
Who needs the most terrain on a mountain—the beginner or expert skier? Expert and beginner skiers pay the same for a lift ticket, but an expert gets more runs and uses more terrain. An average beginner manages 2,000 to 4,000 vertical feet in a day, compared to 10,000 to 12,000 feet for an intermediate and 20,000 to 30,000 for an expert. According to Sno.engineering, one acre of steep expert terrain will take care of three skiers at one time, but a one-acre beginner slope can accommodate as many as 20 skiers trying to master the sport. — Robin Dawson, “How Much?” (Snow Country, November 1990)

1993 More Aspen than Aspen
For the past several years, all the media hype about Telluride has made me avoid it entirely. There were horror stories of Oprah Winfrey’s $3 million “log cabin” and Sly Stallone’s custom-made Range Rover; reports of Donald and Marla’s slopeside trysts and a new spa as big and gaudy as a Las Vegas casino. There was a sea of condominiums, I’d heard, and a whole new population more gentrified than Aspen. — Pam Houston, “Saving Graces” (Skiing Magazine, December 1993)

2015 The Sound of Downhill Success
In an Alpine downhill race, there is no more lonely and solitary position than standing over a pair of skis hurtling down the mountain at 80 miles an hour.

The racer’s only companion is noise. In the merciless and nervy world of the downhill—the original extreme winter sport—sometimes the louder things get, the better. During a fast and sleek descent, the wind whistles around the body and through the small breaches in a skier’s helmet, creating an unmistakably shrill whistle that is one of several welcomed audio responses every competitor uses as feedback. — Bill Pennington, “In Delicate Dance with Gravity, Downhill Racers Are Soothed by Cacophony” (New York Times, February 5, 2015)

2023 $300 Day-Ticket Barrier Breached
Over the weekend, walk-up lift ticket rates at Arizona’s Snowbowl came in at $309 a pop. That’s not for a season pass. It’s for one day of skiing on the resort’s 55 runs. So, what gives? Dynamic pricing is what. Long a staple of the airline industry, dynamic pricing lets sellers jack up the rates when demand is high, penalizing people who didn’t plan ahead. — Sam Berman, “The Ski Area That Broke the $300/Day Lift Ticket Barrier Is Not One You’d Expect” (Skimag.com, January 23, 2023)

 FIS Games, improved TV access affirmed by 2028. 

The 2024 calendar is highlighted by neither Winter Olympic Games nor FIS World Championships, but it will celebrate the centennial of the first-ever Winter Olympics at Chamonix, France, where FIS was founded on February 2, 1924.

For most of that century, FIS was a sleeping beauty in matters of marketing, good at coordinating within the sport but weak on communicating through nonskiing media. The election in 2021 of new president Johan Eliasch shook FIS up. The Swedish-born Eliasch is a successful British businessman who ran on a platform of modernization and outreach. From 1995 to 2021, Eliasch was CEO of Head Group, the sporting goods company. He remains Head’s chairman.

The May 25 FIS Congress, held online, followed a meeting of the FIS Council (a form of board of directors), which confirmed plans to launch a new major event, the FIS Games, possibly in 2028. It will include all the FIS disciplines. More than 80 competitions in 10 different categories, including para-snowsports, will take place over two weeks, possibly in the same region. Most disciplines would display all their specialties--for instance, eleven in Alpine skiing, as is the case during FIS World Championships. A few potential host cities in Europe and North America have already shown interest, and the FIS Council plans to announce a choice in June 2024, during the next on-site FIS Congress, in Iceland.

FIS plans to take over all TV rights. This is a break from the past 36 years, during which national ski associations (NSAs) and organizing committees negotiated directly with broadcasting companies. This is a controversial point, because organizing committees and NSAs have depended on broadcast revenue, along with corporate branding sponsorships, to pay their bills. Eliasch considers that funding model inefficient and outdated. By centralizing broadcast rights, FIS management expects to cut out a lot of middlemen and maximize pass-through funding to NSAs and prize money for athletes. FIS also expects to find improved broadcasting solutions in countries with inadequate TV coverage, notably in the United States, where ski racing fans have found it increasingly frustrating to follow World Cup tours in a fractured pay-per-view market. FIS management is moving swiftly to take over broadcast rights from NSAs when all such contracts expire after the 2026 season.

FIS also confirmed an Alpine World Cup calendar including nearly 90 competitions for women and men. It includes a total of six events in North America—in November/December 2023 at Lake Louise and Beaver Creek (speed events for men); at Killington and Mount Tremblant (four technical events for women); and in February/March 2024 at Palisades Tahoe and Aspen (total of four tech races for men).

The Alpine World Cup season will also introduce a new team-combined event, at Kitzbühel, a day before the Hahnenkamm downhill. Each two-man team will consist of a downhill specialist and a slalom expert, with a maximum of four teams per nation. Top-finishing duos will receive World Cup points valid for the specialties and the overall standings.

The World Cup Finals at Saalbach will be scheduled over two weekends, instead of five consecutive days in the same week. This should help draw larger audiences and bring in more sponsorship money to cover the costs of a very expensive event.

Saalbach is also the site of the next FIS Alpine World Championships, in February 2025. Crans-Montana is lined up for 2027, and the site for 2029 will be announced this coming spring. Candidates are Val Gardena, Italy; Narvik, Norway; and Soldeu/El Tarter, Andorra.

Snowsports have been strongly impacted by climate change. The retreat of glaciers in the Alps often obliges teams to travel to South America or New Zealand for proper summer on-snow-training. Lack of fresh snow also forced organizers to cancel many races at the start of the past season. Meanwhile, the Tahoe region was buried by snow this past winter. FIS operates more than 6,000 competitions each year, creating a huge carbon footprint as racers, coaches and officials travel to events.

FIS has taken some flak from environmental organizations, notably Protect Our Winters (POW) and Greenpeace. Accordingly, in May, FIS hired a new sustainability director, Susanna Sieff, an environmental sociologist with more than 20 years experience in the field. Most recently she was head of sustainability at Fondazione Milano-Cortina 2026, the organizing committee for the next Winter Olympics and Paralympics.

At the same time, steps have been taken to reduce the travel burden for FIS and NSA officials attending international meetings. FIS Congresses organized in uneven years are now conducted as video conferences. Starting in 2024, each NSA can send a maximum of three delegates to on-site congresses (Reykjavik in 2024 and Belgrade in 2026), which will last only three days in future.

USSA currently has no elected representatives on the FIS Council. Delegates are elected by the FIS Congress, not by their NSAs, and American Dexter Paine, then council vice-president, was ousted in May 2022 in an election distorted by the walkout of a large number of delegates opposed to the voting procedure, which didn’t include possible negative votes from the delegates.

In Iceland, USSA may have a chance to propose a new member to the congress. The board of USSA surely is already reflecting about a candidate for this prestigious position.

American Hannah Kearney has been a voting member of the council since 2018, representing athletes rather than her NSA. She was a former freestyle champion with 46 World Cup wins and a gold medalist in moguls at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.

World Cup correspondent Patrick Lang wrote about Mikaela Shiffrin’s career in the May-June 2023 issue. 

Snapshots in Time

1970 Fall and Die
Once again, Sylvain Saudan is alive and well. He has just skied down the almost vertical face of Chamonix’s Aiguille de Bionnassay, and by the time you read this article Saudan probably will have added the fearful west face of Switzerland’s Eiger to his collection of first descents. He will have skied down or he will be dead, because if Saudan falls once he is a dead man—and he knows it. — Harvey Edwards, “Daredevil of the Alps: He Skis the Steepest” (SKI Magazine, Spring 1970)

1982 Knee Highs
Last year’s “knee-high” boots have made a lasting mark on the industry as this year’s models reflect a move towards a compromise mid-calf height that will probably be with us for quite a while. For those of you who still want the super highs, Dolomite, Tecnica, Raichle and Trappeur will happily accommodate you. The advantages, of course, are increased leverage of boot over ski and more comfort because stress loads and pressure points can be distributed over a larger contact area — “Equipment Expose” (Powder Magazine, Fall 1982)

1990 In Praise of the (Lifesaving) Skid Turn
I was disappointed with the analysis of the “Why Most People Ski Badly” because it repeats the long-standing concept that there’s a “right” way to ski. Stenmark’s technique may only be practical for top athletes. Yet one of the best aspects of skiing is that it can be enjoyed by a wide spectrum of abilities and equipment types. Do you really want to recommend “death to the pivot-skid turn”? Had I tried to ski The Grand Teton without it, I would be dead today. — William Briggs, Jackson, Wyoming, Letters, “Skiing Better in the ’90s” (Snow Country, June-July 1990)

2010 The Power of Average
Skiing asked a great question in the December issue: Do
average skiers care about the Freeride World Tour? Well, this average skier doesn’t. You know what would have been great? To see average skiers doing average things in your photo annual. And “How to Jump” in the same issue? Not many average skiers even think about that. A good day for me is when my skis remain on the snow. — Bob Griffin, Westfield, Massachusetts, Letters, “Average Skiers Unite” (Skiing Magazine, February-March 2010)

2021 Winning’s Price
Skiing almost broke me. And I’m far from the only athlete with a story like this. Elite competitors are starting to speak up about a reality that some coaches, doctors and sports associations have ignored or even covered up: World-class competitive sports can push children and young adults to the breaking point and sometimes beyond. It’s not just a few bad apples; it’s a culture focused upon winning at all costs. — Zoë Ruhl, “Our Culture of Winning at All Costs Is Broken. It Almost Broke Me.” (New York Times, August 6, 2021)

2023 Still Grieving
Beloved as he was, the Old Man was a pile of rocks—until May 3, 2003, when the slabs collapsed, victims of the same forces that had sculpted the human likeness in the first place. So why, 20 years later, is the stone face still mourned in New Hampshire like a fallen president? “I think it was a timeless and reassuring symbol, and people thought it was never going to fall,” said Brian Fowler, who helps run the Old Man of the Mountain Legacy Fund, created after the collapse. — Jenna Russell, “Why the Fuss Over a Rock Formation That Fell? Don’t Tell New Hampshire That.” (New York Times, May 5, 2023)

 The 2022-23 season buried historic snowfall records.

From the Sierra Nevada range of California to the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, the winter of 2022–23 brought massive snowfall. It turns out, to no one’s surprise, that it really is possible to have too much of a good thing. (photo top courtesy Palisades Tahoe)

Palisades Tahoe closed for days on end while crews shoveled out lifts buried under 50 feet of snow. Passholders were not happy. The resort generated no revenue. No real estate was sold when properties were inaccessible.

At Alta and Snowbird, the “Interlodge” experience confines skiers to their hotels until avalanche danger passes and the mountain reopens. It can be great for guests when they finally are released and get to be the first ones to the untracked bounty. But this year Alta topped its snowiest winter ever, by more than eight feet (2.4 m) in early April, and Interlodge lasted from Monday, April 3, to Friday, April 7, with a brief respite on Thursday. Families lost a week of holiday, and the resort a week of on-mountain sales. In hopes of recouping, Alta extended its season to April 23 and closed with a total of 75 feet (22.8 m) of snow. Snowbird announced a closing date of June 15.

Most of the Sierra Nevada resorts stretched their closing from mid-April into at least early May; Kirkwood closed May 1, reporting 59 feet (18 m). Palisades Tahoe had similar numbers but plans skiing for July 4. Mammoth, with a record 60 feet (18.2 m) at the base lodge and 74 feet (22.4 m) at the summit, doesn’t specify a closing date but promises to go past the end of July. 

The University of California, Berkeley’s Central Sierra Snow Lab, on Donner Pass near Lake Tahoe, has tracked snowfall numbers since 1878. On March 1 the lab reported 531 inches (44.25 ft/13.5 m), with 141.9 inches (11.8 ft/3.6 m) in a single week. By April 29 they had 738 inches (61.5 ft/18.7 m), 205 percent of the 20-year median and eclipsing the 50-year record of 572.4 inches (47.7 ft/14.5 m).

A post on Facebook by Sierra-at-Tahoe staff outlined some of the problems. “Lift shacks and ski patrol stations are completely buried. Chairs in West Bowl have been covered.” Fire officials announced that “unrelenting winter storms have damaged dozens of homes and businesses in the Greater South Lake Tahoe area.” They responded to roof collapses and an “alarming” increase in gas leaks and carbon monoxide emergencies.

The blame fell on “atmospheric rivers,” storms defined as a corridor of super-saturated air greater than 2,000 km long (1,240 miles), less than 1,000 km wide (620 miles) and capable of carrying as much water as the Mississippi River. Locals call this a Pineapple Express, and such storms typically provide 50 percent of California’s annual moisture. In 1996–97 a New Year’s class 5 storm over the Central California coast lasted more than 100 hours and caused more than $100 billion in damage. This winter, California received 12 atmospheric rivers.

On April 20, state agencies reported that California’s reservoirs were at 105 percent capacity and estimated that the snowpack held more than 30 million acre-feet of future meltwater—twice the springtime average. With more heavy wet storms always possible at higher elevations, the prospect loomed for disastrous runoff scenarios. 

Colorado’s Oldest Ski Lift to Call it Quits Next Season

From Aspen’s slopes to Sunlight Mountain, the veteran double chair has tales to tell.

First hauling pioneering skiers on Aspen Mountain in 1954, Colorado’s oldest ski lift migrated to neighboring Sunlight Mountain in 1973. The double chair will come down in April 2024, after 70 years of service.

Terry Ross, Sunlight’s assistant general manager, noted that older does not necessarily mean obsolete. “It’s a very safe machine, I just think it’s time that it gets retired,” he told the Denver Post. “A lot of that is public perception. They get on this old stuff, some people don’t like it. They don’t feel as secure on it. And no matter how good you maintain a machine, it’s not going to run forever. I’d rather replace it before it retires itself.”

The double chair ran on Aspen Mountain from 1954 until 1969, when it was replaced and later sold to Sunlight. The lift was named Segundo because it was Sunlight’s second lift. The resort, located outside of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, opened in 1966 with one lift, known as Primo.

According to a history of Sunlight Mountain by Paul Hauk, Segundo formerly served as Aspen’s Lift 3. “I’m sure there were some famous people who rode that lift,” said Tom Jankovsky, Sunlight’s general manager from 1985 to 2018.

Segundo, a fixed-grip double, is a vestige of ski history, engineered by pioneering Colorado lift designer Robert Heron. Safety is not a concern with Segundo. Colorado ski lifts are regulated by the state’s Passenger Tramway Safety Board. Like all lifts, Segundo is inspected and sanctioned by the tramway board twice a year.

Ross marvels at how well Segundo has held up over the years and notes that the lift speaks to old-school manufacturing practices. “Back in the day, they really overbuilt some of this stuff,” Ross said. “If you look at the drive equipment and the drive terminals, the machinery is big. It’s overbuilt, over-engineered, and that’s one of the reasons it’s lasted as long as it has. You look at the lattice-work structures on the towers, that’s trademark Bob Heron, that’s how he built stuff. It’s big and massive. If you look at the loadings on those towers, there’s no tower that’s loaded more than 4,000 pounds, and those towers would easily hold 10 times that. He really was a pioneer in the lift industry.”

Heron began his career designing tramways for mining operations in 1937. During World War II he designed portable tramways that were tested by 10th Mountain Division soldiers at Camp Hale before being used in the assault of Riva Ridge in Italy. After the war he established the Heron Engineering Company and was involved in the design of more than 120 chairlifts, according to the Denver Post.

After a long and successful life, Segundo has earned its retirement, Ross said.

“The lift is the same age I am,” Ross told the Post. “It’s old enough to collect Social Security.”  —Greg Ditrinco

Snapshots in Time

1949 Arnold Lunn Takes a Stand The inclusion of a Russian on the FIS council is the immediate reason for Arnold Lunn’s resignation as the British representative to FIS. Lunn has been the leading English ski personality for well over 20 years. “No club committee would waste five minutes on a candidate who coupled his application for membership with a demand that he should be given a seat on the committee … This application was an insult to the FIS and should never have been submitted to the council,” Lunn wrote in his resignation report. — “Lunn Quits FIS Seat, Protests Ski Politics,” (SKI Magazine, November 1949)

1966 The Superior Strato Every once in a while you meet with an experience that really sets you up a notch or two. Like a ride on a roller coaster. A few fast corners in a Porsche. Even your first true, but crude, parallel christie. You get charged with excitement. The Mitchell-Rossignol Strato Slalom can do that to you. Skiing on them was a new, switching-on experience. — “Ski Test 6. The Rossignol Strato” (SKI Magazine, November 1966)

1978 Ignore the Extremists The ski publications have been devoting way too much time to the extremists. If they’re not covering the upside-down artists and freedog noodles, they’re doing a piece on the joys of organic euphoria on x-c skis. Little attention has been paid to the bulk of the participants; we the people. And horror of horrors, the entire family enjoys it. — Allen Titensor, Irvine California, Letters, “Alpine Advocate” (Powder MAGAZINE, November 1978)

1979 Myth Busters If you’re absolutely, positively, 100 percent convinced that all you want to do in life is ski with your feet welded together, you probably won’t want to read this. You’re a hardcore “paralleler.” I understand. I was one too. Just go right on pretending you have one leg instead of two. But if the suspicion lurks that you might be missing something, read on. Learning to be a two-legged skier can open up a whole new world. — Stu Campbell, “The Feet-Together Myth” (SKI Magazine, December 1979)

1990 Inevitable “Destruction” of Ski Towns Futurist August St. John, a professor of future studies at Long Island University, has developed a theory on the life and death of tourist towns, which he says go through five stages: Welcome, Development, Resentment, Confrontation and, finally, Destruction. By “destruction,” St. John doesn’t mean a physical catastrophe, but the ruin or disappearance, as growth overwhelms a resort area, of the things that were the original attractions: neighborliness and sense of community, a rural landscape, small-town atmosphere, friendliness, low traffic and low taxes. — Andrew Nemethy, “Resorts Go Up … And Down” (Snow Country, November 1990)

2023 Death Watch on Your Wrist As of September, these devices [Apple watches] have come equipped with technology meant to detect car crashes and alert 911 dispatchers. It is a more sensitive upgrade to software on Apple devices that can detect when a user falls and then dial for help. But the latest innovation appears to send the device into overdrive: It keeps mistaking skiers, and some other fitness enthusiasts, for car-wreck victims. Lately, emergency call centers in some ski regions have been inundated with inadvertent, automated calls, dozens or more a week. — Matt Ritchel, “My Watch Thinks I’m Dead” (New York Times, February 3, 2023)

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In 2019, long-distance runner and ski mountaineer Kilian Jornet—with the goal of just testing “how his body will perform”—completed 51 laps on Tusten ski area in Molde, Norway, in 24 hours. He climbed 78,274 feet, crushing previous 24-hour records by a ridiculous margin. To be clear, Molde is at sea level. Jornet climbed 1,535 feet, 51 times, on roughly a one-mile piste. That works out to skinning up at about 2.25 mph for 25 minutes and resting a couple of minutes during a 36-mph schuss. Fifty-one times.

Photo above: Kilian Jornet has been rewriting the record books for ski mountaineering and high-altitude running for more than a decade, sometimes merely as a result of his training regimen. Right: An early ski-endurance competition, the 24 Hours of Aspen attracted elite athletes, television audiences and sponsorship dollars in the 1980s-1990s. YouTube photo

That’s nothing for the Catalan Jornet, who grew up in Chamonix. For more than 15 years he’s been methodically assaulting the records for high-altitude marathons and ski mountaineering. In his recent five-year “Summits of My Life” project, he set the fastest known times (or FKT) for the ascent and ski descent of major mountains including Kilimanjaro, Denali, Aconcagua, the Matterhorn and Mont Blanc, at times shaving hours off previous records. Some of his records have since been broken by Ecuadorian mountain guide Karl Egloff.

Climbing and skiing massive verticals has become a passion with today’s endurance athletes, who are repeatedly blowing by many of the world's best times. Which begs the question, when did vertical-feet-skied become a thing?

Before smart watches and phone apps made vertical-feet scorekeeping easy, it was possible to estimate your numbers from the number of runs completed. Heliski operators charged by the vertical foot, and kept accurate count. You could keep track of your bragging rights whether for 24 hours, a week, a season or a lifetime. Heliski operations certified guest accomplishments with pins and special million-foot prizes, like Mike Wiegele’s silver belt buckles and limited-edition powder suits at Canadian Mountain Holidays.

One of the first vertical-foot-based competitions was the late 24 Hours of Aspen. After 13 events in 16 years, declining television ratings scuttled the show in 2003. But it left behind a slew of records. Chris Kent of Canada did 83 laps for 271,161 feet for the men’s mark in 1991. That’s 216 miles of skiing at an average 66 mph. Kate McBride and Anda Rojs set the women’s vertical record of 261,360 feet in 1997.

Once the genie was out of the bottle, lift- and rotor-assisted records started to topple. In 1994, Canadian speed skier and Chamonix resident Mark Jones logged 212,000 vertical feet in just 12 hours at Les Grands Montets. Next, Dr. Mark Bennett racked up 294,380 feet in 14 hours in the Yukon in 1997 for a new “daylight” world record. Fourteen months later, former U.S. Ski Team racer Rusty Squires chartered a specialized high-altitude helicopter and recorded 331,160 vertical feet in 10 hours and 15 minutes at Big Sky, Montana.

In the meantime, the guides at Wiegele’s were determined to set a record based on the normal constraints of commercial heli-skiing, with a full group of skiers and a single machine. In 1998, Swiss extreme skier Dominique Perret, Chris Kent and Austrian guide Robert Reindl, with Edi Podivinsky and Luke Sauder of the Canadian Alpine Team, logged 353,600 vertical feet in 14½ hours.

By this point recognition was growing that assisted vertical-foot records were as much about money as skill and endurance. As ski mountaineering boomed (it’ll be a full medal event at the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics) interest focused on self-powered athletes. In 2009, Austrian Eckhard Dorschlag set a 24-hour world record of 60,350 feet. Ultra-marathoner Mike Foote broke that in 2018 with 68,697 feet. A few months later Norwegian Lars Erik Eriksen took it to 68,697 feet. Then Jornet obliterated that.

Born in 1987, Jornet has captured more Skyrunner World Series and Skimo (ski mountaineering) World Championship medals than we have room to list. He still holds the mark for the Innominata ski traverse on Mont Blanc linking Chamonix and Courmayeur (8 hours 42 minutes), as well as the fastest ascent/descent of Mont Blanc from Chamonix (4:57) and of the Matterhorn from Breuil-Cervinia (2:52).

As for why all the fuss over vertical speed records advancing every season, Nick Heil, writing in Outside, quoted Foote: “How many push-ups can I do in a minute? How long can I hold my breath? How far can I ski in a day? In the end, it’s all arbitrary and contrived, but it gets people to ask, what am I capable of?” 

Snapshots in Time

1958 Be Careful What You Wish For
A penetrating statistical study of the ski industry in Colorado and New Mexico has been published by the University of Colorado. Pointing out that a great many more tourists visit Colorado and New Mexico in June, July and August than in the other months of the year, the authors ask if it is not possible to develop the winter tourist industry so that tourist facilities can be used all year. — “Skiers Under Scrutiny in Colorado and New Mexico” (SKI Magazine, October 1958)

1970 The Continuing Death of the Ski Bum
Once upon a time, the ski bum was the ultimate ski insider. As neither an entrenched member of the ski-area management nor a local profiteer, he enjoyed a free-swinging life with lots of time to ski and unlimited access to the inner circles of the ski establishment. It is, therefore, ironic that as the need for ski workers grows, the reputation of the ski bum diminishes. Ski bums, industry management will tell you, are bad news; the title is now synonymous with “hippie.” Many employers won’t consider hiring ski bums, even for temporary jobs. As a result, there are fewer of the old-time ski-bum types than ever before. — Janet Nelson, “But They’re Employed” (SKI Magazine, January 1970)

1978 Risk v. Reward
I have been skiing o.b. for many years. Skiing out of bounds is extremely dangerous. Inevitably some crazy powder addicts (myself included) will continue to leave the “safe” confines of patrolled areas. After reading Lou Dawson’s account and subtle hints (“... how far can you crawl with a spinal fracture?”), I realized certain steps must be taken to ensure the safety or at least the survival of o.b. skiers. Education is what is needed on this topic. — Steven Harrison, Central Valley, New York, “Whistling in the Dark" (Letters, Powder Magazine, Spring 1978)

1981 Crowds and Crashes
The rapidly increasing skiing population has led to an alarming increase in inconsiderate and out-of-control skiers who are a serious menace. Last season, an out-of-control skier crashed into me. He never so much as asked if I needed help. I’ll have a scar I’ll carry for the rest of my life. For too long ski areas have allowed Bonzai Bombers to endanger others on the slope without adequate punishment. It’s time something was done to protect the rest of us from these slope-side criminals. —Thomas F. Warda, Rochester, N.Y., "Slope menaces" (Letters, Skiing Magazine, October 1981)

2007 Bode Rules
Call them the Bode Rules. This year every athlete on the U.S. Ski Team is required to stay in official team housing. Every racer on the team is also prohibited from having a celebratory drink with the coaches after a big win, because it’s a slippery slope from that to, say, being photographed carousing with Miss March 2002 draped on your arm during the Olympics. U.S. Ski Team chief Bill Marolt implemented the stricter guidelines after the strongest American squad in decades limped away from the 2006 Torino Games with only two medals—neither of them won by the phenomenally gifted Bode Miller. —Nathaniel Vinton, “Ski Fast but Party Slow”(SKI Magazine, February 2007)

2021 A Woman’s Place Is On Patrol
“When there are women on a team like this, it lends an important voice and perspective to the job. I can say that having women on patrol keeps everyone connected. Men muscle their way through the job and women do it with finesse,” said Addy McCord, 64, one of the longest-standing professional patrollers in the industry. — Shauna Farnell, “A Surge of Women in Ski Patrols, Once Nearly All Men” (New York Times, February 11, 2021)

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