1930s

Leonetto Cappiello has been called “the father of modern advertising” because he broke the norms of poster art. Early advertising tended to look like a painting, too cluttered sometimes. Cappiello often depicted individual figures in motion. In this ski travel poster, he was not afraid to leave the white slope open. It intensified the illusion of speed.

Cappiello was born in Italy but mainly lived and worked in Paris. With no formal art training, he had his first exhibition in 1892. Today, some of his paintings are displayed in the Museo Civio Giovanni Fatori in Livorno. He then worked as a caricaturist for the most popular humor magazines in France, Le Rire, Le Sourire, L’Assiette au Beurre and Femina. In 1896 his first collection of caricatures was published.

From 1900 on, he painted posters that came to revolutionize advertising. This was the era when Paris walls were plastered with posters advertising just about everything. Cappiello realized that he had to distinguish his work from the others. Speed was one of the ingredients of modernization; wasn’t Citius—Fastest—the first of the three goals of the modern Olympics? Altius and Fortius, highest and strongest, came second and third.

This 1929 illustration promotes Superbagnères-Luchon in the French Pyrenees. It has that art deco look in which speed is symbolized by the flying scarf and the swirl of the ski tracks on those vast open snowfields. And how to reach Superbagnères? Look at the top to see the Chemins de Fer du Midi, the railway line that will get you to the palatial hotel.

For those interested in the mechanics of the poster business, look at the bottom left, and you will see the word Devambez. Monsieur Devambez was what can be best described as an agent for poster artists. He would contact clients with whom he would put artists like Cappiello in touch. Cappiello was favored by such big-name businesses as Campari, Pirelli tires, Mistinguett at the Casino de Paris and others. It was a successful arrangement.

And Cappiello’s 1929 ski poster was influential enough to be followed in 1932 by a similar design for the same resort. This time there was one figure, not three. It was by the lesser-known artist R. Sonderer. 

Edgar Wittmark's bold, color-blast style hit the sweet spot for mass-entertainment pulp magazines.

This American artist grew up during the period when magazines published thrilling entertainment, including fiction and tales of high-action sports, for an increasingly literate population. Many stories, as this cover shows, were geared to youth. In 1910, 72 percent of American kids attended school. By 1930, all 48 states required students to complete elementary school. The newly educated readers bought these magazines with their bold illustrations and content varying from serious literature and reportage to pulp fiction.

Wittmark, born in New York City in 1895, spent three summers working on a farm in Montana, then served in France during World War I. He later studied at New York’s Art Students League and in 1925 returned to France to enroll in the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. This school allowed students to experiment rather than follow the academic rules for painting enforced at the more famous École des Beaux-Arts. It was at the Grande Chaumière that he began to develop what critics later called his “retro-futuristic” style that promised “potential reality.”

When Wittmark returned to New York, his bold and colorful action paintings, usually in oil, became staple covers for the well-known American Boy, Collier’s, Outdoor Life, Saturday Evening Post and Scientific American magazines. He also did covers for pulp magazines like Adventure, Frontier Stories and West, probably echoing his farm life in Montana as a young man.

The 1937 cover illustrated here portrays a youthful, healthy, sporting male America getting out of the Depression, the “potential reality” of what was possible. Those with available wealth had a choice of two of the most physical and exciting sports then captivating a steadily recovering United States. 

After 86 years, the magazine slashes its print run and hopes to persevere online.

After more than a decade of battling losses in subscribers and newsstand sales, SKI recently announced it will publish only one print issue a year. The magazine will continue to publish an annual print winter gear guide, but it will be a “unified” effort with its sister brands, which includes Outside and Backpacker.

In a May email to contributors, SKI editor Sierra Shafer explained that Outside Inc., owner of SKI, “made the difficult decision to reduce print by 80 percent across the company.” SKI will publish an annual print issue “for the foreseeable future,” Shafer writes. “SKI is still producing a traditional issue, our Destination Guide. Beyond that, our print plan for 2023 is still developing.”

After Skiing magazine shuttered just shy of its 70th birthday in 2017, and Powder scuttled in 2020 after nearly 50 years in print, SKI was the sport’s sole surviving mass-market publication. Before its advent, skiers read news of the sport in a variety of regional and club newsletters. The sole national publication was the American Ski Annual, published by the National Ski Association. In 1935 Seattle native Al Nydin had the idea for a national commercial magazine. The first issue of SKI appeared in January 1936, with four issues (November-February) pledged for the following season. SKI was later rebranded as Ski Illustrated and moved to New York City when World War II broke out; it was resuscitated in 1948 in Hanover, New Hampshire, by publisher William Eldred, who combined Ski Illustrated, Western Skiing and Ski News under the present title SKI. In 1962, under New York publisher Arnie Abrahamson, SKI incorporated Ski Life.

At its peak in the 1980s and 1990s, SKI published eight issues annually, including a summer issue for several years. For the 1988–89 season, a full-time editorial staff of 15 published 1,696 pages of national content, plus regional editions in the East, Midwest and West. The decline began in the mid-1990s, when readers discovered they could find more timely information, for free, on websites—including skinet.com, published by SKI and Skiing magazines, by then under the same corporate umbrella, AOL-Time Warner. Advertising revenue soon followed the audience. Like most surviving legacy media brands, SKI gradually transitioned largely to web publishing. “With a renewed focus on our digital content, we are still actively assigning and publishing work for the web,” Shafer wrote.

A long line of corporate owners fought a rear-guard battle to maintain the viability of the print edition. Most recently, Pocket Outdoor Media went on a buying spree in 2021 and acquired a handful of active lifestyle brands, including SKI, Outside and Backpacker. Pocket rebranded itself as Outside Inc. and refocused its business model with “Outside +” memberships, which provide access to content from the company’s 30-plus brands online. The monthly membership cost has recently been cut from $5 a month to $2.99 a month for the first year. Along with the decision to drastically reduce print runs companywide, Outside Inc. also announced it was laying off approximately 15 percent of its staff across all brands.

Is the party over for SKI and other print magazines? The advertising model for print seems irretrievable. The continued health of Skiing History proves that a small but devoted reading audience remains, perhaps filling the role of the original nonprofit American Ski Annual. Similarly, the quarterlies Ski Journal and Adventure Journal, along with the twice-a-year Mountain Gazette, make entertaining reading. But all charge subscription rates that allow survival without advertising support.

Aspen’s Birthplace of Skiing Preserved

Landowner deal balances development rights with protection for the Highland Bavarian Lodge

An often-forgotten slice of Aspen’s skiing history will be preserved in a deal that gives a landowner additional development rights as a tradeoff to protect the historic site.

The Pitkin County commissioners in June approved an agreement that will preserve the Highland Bavarian Lodge and bunkhouse, the true cradle of skiing in the Aspen area. The structure will receive historic designation and be remodeled to restore its historical significance.

Property owners Meredith Loring and Sami Inkinen funded creation of a documentary film recounting the significance of the site in the development of Aspen skiing, according to coverage in the Aspen Times. The documentary will be donated to the Aspen Historical Society. A brochure on the history also will be created and a road plaque will be installed.

The Highland Bavarian Lodge was built at Ashcroft in late 1936 and opened in time to host Christmas guests. It was part of a grand vision for a ski area in the upper Castle Creek Valley (see “What Might Have Been,” March-April 2021). Ski trails were cut along the valley floor and hardier guests could ascend on climbing skins to Richmond Ridge. The owners’ grandiose plans lost momentum during World War II. After the war, development of Aspen Mountain eclipsed the Ashcroft project.

The Highland Bavarian Ranch covers 82 acres up valley from the confluence of Castle and Conundrum creeks. The property spills over to the east side of Castle Creek Road, but the owners have pledged to place a conservation easement on that section, and on 49 acres in total, the Aspen Times reported. The owners could have torn down the lodge because Pitkin County’s historic preservation program is voluntary.

As a tradeoff to the preservation of the lodge and bunkhouse, the county will grant 7,500 square feet of additional floor area for a home on the property. A home of up to 13,250 square feet can now be constructed. In addition, a density bonus was awarded for a second home of 5,750 square feet on the main ranch parcel. 

Snapshots in Time

 

 

1957 More (Not) the Merrier
To handle the army of skiing Americans that was passing last year’s record 3.5 million, slope operators were constructing luxurious lodges and higher capacity lifts, were scientifically grooming trails and putting snow on usually bare slopes. Old-line ski addicts who once welcomed the boom in the sport are now finding it a nuisance with the crowds at the slopes and inns they once had to themselves. — “NEW SLIGHTS ON SLOPES” (LIFE MAGAZINE, FEBRUARY 1957)

1968 PHONING IT IN
A new 24-hour telephone service for the latest ski reports is in operation. By dialing LY4-7500, skiers can obtain information on snow conditions in the East. The 24-hour service is supported by the New York–New Jersey American Motors Dealers Association. — “24-Hour Phone Service Offers Latest Ski Reports” (NEW YORK TIMES, DECEMBER 24, 1968)

1970 POWER PER POUND

Women racers are women, first and foremost. Very often I meet people who remark that they thought I would be much bigger. I suppose they expect us to be Amazons. Actually, the average female ski racer is the same size as the average girl. What is important is the strength per pound. This does not mean bunched muscles, either, because suppleness, gracefulness and balance are extremely important. — NANCY GREENE, “THE WOMAN RACER AS A WOMAN” (SKI MAGAZINE, JANUARY 1970)

1981 STEIN'S ADVICE
I don’t care what people say about nightlife and drinking. If you want to be on top of your skis, your mind has to be absolutely crystal clear, and you have to be in top physical condition. — STEIN ERIKSEN, INTERVIEW (POWDER MAGAZINE, JANUARY 1981)

1990 PLEASE STICK TO SKIING
The January issue of your magazine devoted six pages to snowboards and snowboarding. With all due respect to the interests of others, if I wanted a magazine about snowboards, then I would subscribe to Snowboarding Magazine, if it existed. Please stick to skiing. — DAVID R. SEGAL, REDONDO BEACH, CALIFORNIA, “NO MORE SNOWBOARDS,” LETTERS (SKIING MAGAZINE, MARCH 1990)

2003 WHERE'S THE DISCOUNT?
I’m glad you recognize that there are people over 70 who still like to ski. How about an article called “The Top Resorts for Seniors?” With the current trend of not offering free lift tickets to seniors, I would like to know which resorts still value us. After all, what we don’t spend on hefty lift ticket prices, we make up for in food, beverages and a lifetime of dedication to the industry. — JIM MORGAN, MIDLAND, MICHIGAN, “SENIORS SKI,” LETTERS (SKI MAGAZINE, MARCH-APRIL 2003)

 

Patrician attitudes initially dominated 20th-century sports.

In the late 1800s, professional sports attracted high-stakes gambling. The potential for bribery and extortion led to a general sense that paid athletes were corruptible and competitions untrustworthy. While betting on amateur events was common, a deep divide emerged between “pure” amateurs, who were said to compete for the love of the sport, and professionals, who competed for money in the form of cash prizes or other remuneration. The distinction often boiled down to so-called gentleman-athletes, who had private fortunes, versus working-class athletes, who had to earn money to live and train. Sport governing bodies consisted almost exclusively of gentlemen, who often preferred not to compete with working people.

Photo, top of page: Ski jumping became a spectator sport, drawing huge crowds. Ski clubs sold tickets, and athletes wanted appearance money. Thus was born, in 1929, a professional ski jumping circuit. Photo courtesy Washington State Dept of Transportation.

 

 

When Baron Pierre de Coubertin revived the ancient institution of Olympic competition in the 1894 Paris Congress, two governing subcommittees were created: the Olympic committee and the Amateurism committee. The word amateur was defined very loosely; nonetheless, de Coubertin gave it a strong ideological tie to the Olympics that proved very difficult to strip away.

Any participant who accepted financial benefit for any performance was considered professional, and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) acted quickly to disqualify athletes found to have done so. Olympic sport thus claimed to be untainted by the culture of cheating and scandal that was presumed endemic to professionalism. Avery Brundage, the IOC president from 1952–1972 and a staunch supporter of amateurism, said in 1955: “We can only rely on the support of those who believe in the principles of fair play and sportsmanship embodied in the amateur code in our efforts to prevent the games from being used by individuals, organizations or nations for ulterior motives.” This amounted to pure hypocrisy: Brundage himself, when he was president of the U.S. Olympic Committee, was complicit in the Nazi use of Olympic sport for political purposes.

Participation in the first modern Olympics in Athens, in 1896, was limited to gentlemen and military officers (who were granted automatic “gentleman” status). Professionals and the working class were excluded. The tradition continued when the Winter Games began in 1924. It became a flash point because skiing originated as a working-class sport, pursued by hunters, farmers, herders and common warriors from prehistoric times.

Especially in North America, the strictures on working-class participation in sport couldn’t stand. But the rules still favored those wealthy enough not to have to make a living from sport. Amateur athletes could not teach or coach sports for money, receive remuneration for participating in sport nor use their victories and reputations to promote any product.

Conflicts over Amateurism in Skiing

Harold “Cork” Anson, in Jumping Through Time: A History of Ski Jumping in the United States and Southwest Canada, described how skiing developed in North America as Scandinavian immigrants brought ski jumping to Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin. It became the “thrill sport of winter,” he wrote. Jumps were built on hills with enough vertical to provide good landings. By the end of the 1890s, Michigan had more than 30 ski clubs centered around jumping.

A trend developed during this period that was inconsistent with the Norwegian principle of idraet, the philosophy that an individual develops strength and manliness through exercise. In theory, a person jumps because of the love of the sport, not for reward. But for ski clubs, jumping was a spectator sport. To draw paying crowds, some clubs worked to attract top athletes who could provide the longest, most thrilling jumps. Clubs gave cash prizes to winning jumpers (based on both distance and style points) and for the longest jumps (regardless of style). The size of jumping hills was increased to set new distance records, “compromising the grace and beauty of well controlled flight,” and clubs offered top jumpers local employment as a recruiting tool.

In 1905, the National Ski Association (NSA) was formed in Ishpeming, Michigan, to promote skiing, standardize competition rules and ski jump design, and to establish standards of amateurism. In 1906, on the principle that money corrupted idraet, NSA decided there should be no cash prizes in competitions. It took 10 years for those prizes to disappear, however. Some ski clubs paid the expenses of outstanding jumpers to participate in their tournaments. Professionals found they could demand, and receive, appearance money. Separate distance records were kept for amateur and professional ski jumpers.

In 1927, at the annual meeting of the NSA in Red Wing, Minnesota, 30 “leading riders of America gave the group an ultimatum,” according to the Seattle Times (February 4, 1927). Either they be allowed to receive cash awards or they would establish their own association. The paper reported that “Crockery, silver-ware, medals, cash and professionalism were more animated subjects of discussion ... than the outcome of the various championship events.”

 

 

Thus, in 1929, a number of Norwegian ski jumpers broke away from NSA and formed the Western American Winter Sports Association. WAWSA organized a professional ski jumping tour to compete around the United States in tournaments and exhibitions. Its members used tournament prize money to pay for travel. The group included Alf Engen, his brother Sverre, Sigurd Ulland, Lars Haugen, Einar Friedbo and others. Some of the country’s best jumpers did not join the tour, including Roy Mikkelsen and George Kotlarek, to preserve their amateur status so they could compete at the Olympics.

In 1932, the Cle Elum Ski Club in Washington asked Engen about appearing in its tournament. Engen replied that if “satisfactory terms” could be made, he would attend the event. “I am a professional and have arranged to jump in several tournaments this winter which offer some very attractive monetary rewards but, should you, however, make an offer which will make it worth my while to come to your city, I shall be very glad to jump upon your hill.” It appears the right offer was not made, as Engen was not one of the contestants in 1932.

Engen set a new world professional distance record in 1931 by jumping 247 feet at Ecker Hill near Salt Lake City. Over the next several years he repeatedly raised his own record. Engen won five National Professional Ski Jumping Championships from 1931 through 1935 and set three world professional jumping records.

Open Tournaments Permitted Ski Instructors to Compete

As Alpine skiing grew in popularity in the 1930s, and ski schools hired paid instructors, new issues relating to amateurism arose. In Europe, the International Ski Federation (FIS) ruled that ski instructors were amateurs and eligible to compete in FIS races. This did not fly with the International Olympic Committee. Olympic Alpine events were scheduled for the first time at the 1936 Winter Games in Garmisch, but the Nazi-run German team had a problem: their men had been shut out of the medals at the FIS World Championships in 1935. The IOC responded to pressure from Germany and excluded from the Garmisch Alpine events all the Swiss and Austrian men, on the grounds that they had worked as ski instructors. This opened a path for German skiers to win medals at the Olympics, while the Swiss and Austrians dominated the FIS Alpine Championships, held concurrently in Innsbruck with no Germans present.

In the United States, NSA considered paid instructors to be “FIS amateurs” who could not compete in amateur tournaments. When Sun Valley opened in December 1936, Averell Harriman set out to make his new resort an international destination and the country’s center of ski racing. He sponsored ski tournaments that attracted the best skiers in the world, and publicist Steve Hannagan made sure newspapers provided extensive coverage of the events. In his autobiography, Dick Durrance said Harriman “was determined that Sun Valley would match anything Europe had to offer.”

Harriman hired some of the best ski racers from Europe to teach in the Sun Valley Ski School, although as ski instructors, they were not eligible to compete in amateur ski races in this country. Harriman decided to host “open” ski tournaments, welcoming both amateurs and professionals, so his ski instructors could show off their skills.

In spring 1937, Sun Valley hosted its first International Open tournament, which would become known later as the Harriman Cup tournament. “The ski instructors are generally considered superior to the average American amateur” and were not permitted to race against true amateurs, according to coverage in the Seattle Times. The Sun Valley International Open was “the No. 1 tournament of the year, because it numbered all the skiing greats in its entry list.” Two championships would be awarded, for open and amateur, and ski instructors were eligible only for the open title, while amateurs were eligible for both. Separate prizes were awarded to the winner of each category. Forty-four of the best European and American skiers entered: eight ski instructors who were eligible for the open championships and 36 amateurs in “the greatest field of foreign and resident skiers ever assembled in North America.”

Seattle’s Peter Garrett, one of the Northwest’s best racers, later lamented that amateur skiers had to compete with better-trained professionals, “who ski seven days out of the week and make skiing their living.” He called for a new system in which pure amateurs and pros would race in their own divisions.

 

 

Skiers Faced Discipline Over Amateur Issue

 

 

Engen immigrated to the U.S. from Norway in 1929 and became a U.S. citizen in 1935. Hoping to represent the U.S. in the 1936 Winter Olympics, he applied to be reinstated as an amateur. NSA ruled that an athlete could regain amateur status by proving he (or she) had not taken a sport-related payment for a full year. Engen did so, then out-jumped the competition at the Olympic trials and was named to the Olympic Team. However, Brundage, then president of the U.S. Olympic Committee, threw Engen off the team because his picture had appeared on Wheaties boxes (the “breakfast of champions”), along with those of basketball star Bob Kessler, hockey player Mike Karakas and speed skater Kit Klein. This made him a professional athlete, according to Brundage.

In late 1941, NSA revoked amateur status for Dick Durrance, Gretchen Fraser and Engen (again). Durrance was head of the Alta Ski School; in addition, both he and Engen endorsed Groswold skis. The NSA said that endorsing skis was allowed but that “use of a title and a record” made Engen a professional. The ski association said that Engen might be reinstated for open competition if changes were made to the advertisement, but it depended on whether the title and his record were used with his permission.

 

 

Fraser had been paid to double for Sonja Henie in skiing sequences in the 1940 movie Thin Ice and in Sun Valley Serenade in 1941. NSA ruled that she “will be a professional, eligible only as a F.I.S. amateur.” To address this issue, Northwest delegates to the NSA meeting were instructed to propose that all U.S. tournaments be open events under FIS rules.

In December 1941, NSA cleared Durrance of violating its rules. A skier could continue to be an amateur even if certified as a ski teacher, so long as he did not teach for money. Open-class competitors could endorse ski equipment “so long as titles were not thereby exploited.” In February 1942, Fraser and Engen each had their amateur status reinstated. The ski association determined that Engen endorsed Groswold skis but had not authorized the use of his record in any advertisement.

 

 

In 1936, both the winter and summer 1940 Olympics were awarded to Tokyo, Japan (to the surprise of many), making it the first non-Western city to win an Olympic bid. After the second Sino-Japanese War broke out in July 1937, doubts were raised about whether Japan should host the Olympics. Japan formally forfeited the Games on July 16, 1938, and the IOC awarded the Summer Games to Helsinki, Finland, which had been runner-up in the original selection process. St. Moritz, Switzerland, was named as the new host of the 1940 Winter Games.

St. Moritz’s willingness to host the Winter Olympics was threatened when a dispute arose over the eligibility of paid ski instructors to participate in the Games. While FIS insisted that instructors were amateurs, the IOC ruled that they were professionals and ineligible. As a result of this conflict, the IOC eliminated skiing as a regular event from the 1940 Olympics, making it an exhibition sport.

Switzerland refused to host the Games at St. Moritz unless skiing were changed back to a regular event. The IOC refused to do so, and the Winter Games were transferred to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, the host of the 1936 Olympics. Of course, both the 1940 and 1944 Games were eventually cancelled due to World War II.

 

 

After the war, the Winter Olympics resumed at St. Moritz in 1948, where Fraser competed as an amateur and won gold and silver, the first American to win an Olympic medal in Alpine skiing. Engen served as co-coach of the U.S. team with Walter Prager. Prager, a two-time World Alpine champion, Lauberhorn and Hahnenkamm victor and Swiss Nordic champion, was one of the Swiss ski instructors who had been barred from the 1936 Olympics. So he departed that year for America, to the benefit of Dartmouth College and the 10th Mountain Division.

As IOC chairman, Avery Brundage would campaign to exclude so-called professionals from “amateur” sports until his death in 1975. In his most notorious confrontation, he threw Karl Schranz out of the 1972 Olympics for signing endorsement contracts. In 1984, World Cup champions Ingemar Stenmark and Hanni Wenzel were banned from the Sarajevo Olympics for taking sponsorship money directly, rather than through their national teams. The IOC finally dropped the amateurs-only rule in 1986, permitting all athletes to deal openly with sponsors. 

John Lundin has won four ISHA Skade Awards for books on the history of Pacific Northwest skiing and Sun Valley. He wrote about Sun Valley’s Ruud Mountain in the March-April 2022 issue of Skiing History.

 

 

 

 

The Forgotten Era of Ski Jumping

Sun Valley opened in December 1936, and the next spring it hosted America’s first international Alpine competition, the combined event that became known as the Harriman Cup. Dartmouth’s Dick Durrance made national headlines by beating the top European racers.

Photo top of page: From left, Olav Ulland, Gustav Raaum, Alf Engen and Kjell Stordalen in formation at Ruud Mountain, 1948. Ulland and Engen were at the end of their jumping careers; Raaum and Stordalen, Norwegian exchange students, were newcomers.  National Nordic Museum photo

Alpine skiing was a fledgling sport. For most Americans of the era, ski competition meant jumping. Norwegian immigrants had made ski jumping into a popular spectator sport, with a successful professional circuit. The best-respected racers were Skimeisters—men who could compete in four-way events featuring jumping, cross-country, downhill and slalom. Sun Valley founder Averell Harriman knew that to make Sun Valley the country’s center of skiing, he needed a ski jumping hill.

Two famous Norwegian ski jumpers competed in the first Harriman Cup: Sigmund Ruud (1928 Olympic silver medalist) and Alf Engen (Professional Ski Jumping Champion 1931­–1935 and holder of five world professional distance records). Harriman asked Engen (whom he later hired as a sports consultant) and Ruud to locate a ski jumping hill on Sun Valley property. They selected a site between Dollar and Proctor mountains, with an elevation of 6,600 feet and a 600-foot vertical drop. Taking advantage of the hill’s natural slope, they helped design a 40-meter jump, intended for distances of up to 131 feet, For major jumping competitions, an 80- or 90-meter jump would have been necessary, but the 40-meter hill offered “splendid competition for all classes of competitors” and was particularly suited for four-way competitions. Named for Sigmund, Ruud Mountain became the resort’s center for jumping and slalom events and was used for freeskiing. Sun Valley was the country’s only ski area eligible to host FIS-sanctioned four-way competitions.

The term J-bar didn’t yet exist, but Sun Valley had one built in 1936, called a drag lift, to take skiers over level ground from near the Sun Valley Lodge to the Proctor Mountain chair. This was converted into a rudimentary chairlift for Ruud Mountain, without so much as a backrest or a place to rest one’s skis. This gave Sun Valley one of the first lift-serviced slalom courses on the continent.

Ruud Mountain was inaugurated during Christmas 1937 at Sun Valley’s first intercollegiate ski tournament, between Dartmouth (Eastern champions) and the University of Washington (West Coast champions). During a jumping exhibition, Walter Prager (Dartmouth’s coach), Alf Engen and Otto Lang (Washington’s coach) each jumped more than 40 meters, exceeding the hill’s design limit. Prager said the hill offered “one of the finest and toughest slalom courses he had ever seen.” Engen said Sun Valley’s jump “for its size comes nearer to perfection than any yet developed.” And Lang said the jump was “impeccably engineered and groomed... virtually fall-proof… the neatest layout I had ever seen” (The Valley Sun, January 11, 1938) .

In 1938, women were invited to compete in the Harriman Cup for the first time. Grace Carter Lindley from Seattle, a 1936 Olympian, won the women’s Harriman Cup. She said “Ruud Mountain is the perfect slalom hill. Having the tow available for unlimited rides, one can become thoroughly familiar with the contours of the hill, the general layout of the slalom, and most important, one can gauge the conservative speed one can hold without tiring...”

The 1938 Open Jumping Tournament attracted some of the best jumpers in the world, including the famous Ruud brothers from Kongsberg, Norway: Birger (the 1932 and 1936 Olympic gold medalist) and Sigmund. The hill, with its lift, delighted the competitors, “who had been climbing for their skiing all season or jumping off rickety scaffolds on artificial snow” (American Ski Annual, 1938–39).

Before the event kicked off, Engen jumped 50.5 meters. It didn’t count for the competition but stood as the official hill record. Birger Ruud jumped 48 meters to win, and seven jumpers exceeded 40 meters. Norway’s Nils Eie (world intercollegiate champion) placed second “in beautiful form,” Sigurd Ulland (1938 National Ski Jumping Champion) was third, and Alpine ace Dick Durrance finished fourth.

In 1939, Sun Valley hosted the nation’s first National Four-Way Open Tournament. Based on his downhill and slalom results, local ski instructor Peter Radacher won both the Harriman Cup and the Four-Way Open. Engen won the jumping event and finished fourth in the open.

In 1940, an invitational meet attracted 18 jumpers from 10 clubs. Engen made two flawless leaps to win. He turned aside the “keen challenge” of 21-year-old Gordie Wren of Steamboat Springs, who would go on to be a star of the 1948 U.S. Olympic jumping team and become the 1950 National Nordic Combined Champion. “Following the regular competition, the spectators were thrilled by double jumps, particularly the pair leap by Engen and Wren. ... The tournament was unlike others, where the contestants must make laborious climbs uphill to the scaffold, the chair-lift eliminating such strenuous going” (Sun Valley Ski Club Annual, 1939). In 1941, Engen beat Wren again in the third National Four-Way Open Tournament. Engen “displayed his supremacy in the air overwhelmingly” and “demonstrated his all-around skiing proficiency today by soaring to first place in jumping and winning the national four-event combined championship for the second consecutive year” (Sun Valley Ski Club Annual, 1941).

Alf Engen’s Legendary Battles with Torger Tokle

Torger Tokle emigrated from Norway in 1939. Before World War II he won 42 out of 48 tournaments and set three American distance records. Tokle was a power jumper. According to Harold Anson in Jumping Through Time, “his powerful, and precisely timed takeoffs provided him with a sufficient distance point to capture victories over more stylish jumpers.”

Engen won the 1940 National Ski Jumping Championships, while Tokle finished fourth. At the 1940 National Four-Way Championships at the Milwaukee Ski Bowl, east of Seattle, Engen competed in all four disciplines, while Tokle competed only in jumping, where he made the longest distance. Engen won the jumping event on form points and the four-way title.

In 1941, at Iron Mountain, Michigan, Engen jumped 267 feet to break the North American distance record. Two hours later, at Leavenworth, Washington, Tokle set a new record of 273 feet. At the 1941 National Jumping Championships at Milwaukee Ski Bowl, Tokle jumped 288 feet to set his second North American distance record in less than a month. Engen was second. In 1942, Tokle bumped the record up to 289 feet at Iron Mountain.

The 1942 Harriman Cup/International Downhill and Slalom Tournament was won by Barney McLean “after a stiff battle with Alf Engen.” They tied at 268 points, but under Harriman Cup rules, the winner in case of a tie was the downhill victor. Dick Durrance was third, and Tokle did not enter.

Sun Valley’s jumping event that spring showed the skills of Tokle, Engen and a rising new star, Art Devlin of Lake Placid, New York. Devlin went on to become one of the country’s elite jumpers as a member of three U.S. Olympic teams (1948, 1952 and 1956) and the 1946 National Ski Jumping Champion.

Ruud Mountain’s jumping hill was designed for 131-foot jumps, but in 1942 the takeoff was moved back 25 feet to allow for longer distances. Tokle’s “prodigious drive” set a new hill record of 188 feet, leaving “far behind the mark of 164 feet set by Engen, who reeled off a 175-foot jump.” Tokle “is a most powerful jumper and is constantly improving. Undoubtedly he has not yet reached his ultimate peak. ...” Afterwards, the competitors jumped in group formations, from two to eight in the air at one time. The Sun Valley Ski Club Annual, 1942, contained pictures of Engen, Tokle and Devlin demonstrating their skills.

On May 3, 1945, Sgt. Torger Tokle of the 10th Mountain Division was killed in Italy by an artillery shell.

Ruud Mountain after WWII

During WWII, Sun Valley served as a Naval Rehabilitation Hospital, where 6,578 Navy, Marine and Coast Guard patients were treated. The resort reopened in December 1946. Ruud Mountain saw less ski jumping, although it continued to be Sun Valley’s primary site for slalom events until 1961, often featuring side-by-side slalom courses for men and women.

In 1947, final tryouts for the 1948 U.S. Olympic Alpine teams for the St. Moritz Games were held at Sun Valley. Friedl Pfeifer’s slalom course on Ruud Mountain was “a championship course, typical of those in European competition.” Walter Prager and Engen were named co- coaches of the 1948 U.S. Olympic Ski Team. A ski jumping exhibition featured visiting Norwegian skiers Arnholdt Kongsgaard (1947 National Ski Jumping Champion), Fagnar Raklid, Harold Hauge and Gustav Raaum (an exchange student at the University of Washington), as well as established stars Engen, Durrance and Wren. The U.S. Olympic Jumping Team was selected at the Milwaukee Ski Bowl. The team then went to Sun Valley for two weeks of intensive training on Ruud Mountain.

The following year the jumping hill hosted intercollegiate meets and regional interstate meets, plus a junior championship and a Christmas jumping exhibition.

After the 1950 FIS World Alpine Championships at Aspen, racers came to Sun Valley for the National Downhill and Slalom Championships. Otto Lang set two side-by-side slalom courses on Ruud Mountain. A crowd of 400 turned out for a jumping exhibition, featuring University of Washington exchange students Raaum, Gunnar Sunde and Jan Kaier.

In 1951, Sun Valley hosted the final tryouts for the U.S. Olympic Alpine team for the 1952 Winter Games in Oslo, Norway. Side-by-side courses for the slalom events on Ruud Mountain had 32 gates for women and 40 for men. Chris Mohn and Sunde each jumped more than 150 feet in another exhibition of exchange student talent.

By this time, jumping had faded as a spectator draw, and the Ruud Mountain jump was used only for the annual American Legion Junior Three-Way Championships. The last jumping competition there came in 1956.

The 1961 Harriman Cup slalom race was the last held on Ruud Mountain, and it had special significance. Seventeen-year-old Billy Kidd won the slalom when Buddy Werner, winner of the downhill, fell but scrambled up to finish. Jimmie Heuga, also 17, won the Harriman Cup, with Kidd second and Werner third. Dick Dorworth said the 1961 Harriman Cup “will go down in history as the tournament in which youth manifested its right to compete on even terms with the elite of ski racing, as young American racers dominated the events.”

Ski Jumping at Ruud Mountain Ends with a Movie

In 1965, "Ski Party" was filmed at Sun Valley. A lightweight musical-comedy knock-off of beach party films, it starred Frankie Avalon and Dwayne Hickman, with an appearance by Annette Funicello, and musical appearances by Leslie Gore and James Brown. The absurd plot included Frankie Avalon going off the Ruud Mountain jump wearing an inflated clown suit and soaring like a helium balloon. This was the last recorded use of the ski jump. Maintenance records show the Ruud Mountain chairlift was last serviced in 1965, likely for the movie. 

John W. Lundin has won four ISHA Skade Awards for books on the history of Pacific Northwest skiing and Sun Valley.

 

 

In 1907, brothers Max and Leopold Hirsch, with their partner Harry Weis, manufactured tents and workmen’s clothing in Portland, Oregon. Harold Hirsch, son of Max, grew up climbing and skiing in the Cascades. He attended Dartmouth College (Class of ’29) and raced on the ski team. When he returned home in 1930, he took over a corner of the factory to make skiwear under the brand name White Stag—a translation of weisser Hirsch. In 1939, he designed the first rust-colored National Ski Patrol parka. By 1956 White Stag was the largest manufacturer of sportswear in the United States, and Hirsch took the company public. White Stag was purchased by Warnaco in 1966 and moved out of Portland. Hirsch was inducted into the U.S. National Ski Hall of Fame in 1990, the year of his death. The White Stag brand name is now owned by Walmart, but it’s not used on skiwear. This ad ran in the November 1960 issue of SKI Magazine. In-the-boot stretch pants, lace-up leather boots and cable bindings went extinct by 1968. The dramatic colorblocking his and her sweaters, however, do have an après-ski vibe still popular 60 years later. –Seth Masia

Coming Up in Future Issues

Spider’s Gift

Beyond the tabloid headlines, Spider Sabich changed American racing. Edie Thys Morgan investigates the misunderstood legacy of an American racing icon.

Skiers in Flight

John Lundin explores the roots of ski jumping in Sun Valley and the history of Ruud Mountain.

What to Read and Watch in the New Year

Your history homework starts with the winners of the annual ISHA Awards, listed next issue.

PLUS

• Everett Potter provides a peek into Swann Galleries’ vintage ski-poster auction.
• Where Are They Now: Marco Tonazzi.
• Ski academies at 50; Does the racer development system work?

VISIT THE ISHA WEBSITE: www.skiinghistory.org

Join our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/skiinghistory

A teenager came to America, embodying the greatest ski jumping tradition of all.

North American skiing owes a lot to Kongsberg, Norway. This silver-mining town, 55 miles southwest of Oslo, dominated ski jumping in the first half of the 20th century. Between 1928 and 1948, of the 12 Olympic medals awarded in ski jumping, Norwegians won 10 (all gold and silver), and six went to Kongsberg boys. Often, three members of a four-man ski jumping team representing Norway were from Kongsberg.

(Photo top: Ragnar Ulland's leap at Mr. Norquay, Alberta, around 1955, appears to clear Mt. Rundle and the town of Banff. Courtesy Ragnar Ulland).

The guys with the red sweaters and white K’s on their chest included Birger, Sigmund and Asbjorn Ruud; Roy and Strand Mikkelsen; Hjalmar Hvam; Petter Hugsted; Arnhold Kongsberg; Nordal Kahldal; Tom Mobraaten; Henry Sodvedt; and Olav, Sigurd and Reidar Ulland.

The Ruuds Led the Way

The Ruud brothers dominated international ski jumping for Norway in the 1930s. Birger won back-to-back gold medals in ski jumping in the 1932 and 1936 Winter Olympics, plus the first Olympic Alpine downhill (not itself a medal event in 1936) and silver in jumping in 1948. He also earned two World Championship golds. In fact, the three Ruud brothers won the World Championships five times among them.

Sigmund won a silver medal in the 1928 St. Moritz Winter Games and Asbjorn won gold at both the 1938 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships and the 1946 Holmenkollen competition. In 1937–38, Birger and Sigmund toured the United States, setting new world records on America’s big hills.

Meanwhile, the Mikkelsen brothers contributed greatly to the development of ski jumping in North America. Strand won the 1929 U.S. National Championships, and younger brother Roy was a member of the 1932 and 1936 U.S. Olympic jumping teams.

Hjalmar Hvam grew up skiing in Kongsberg and came to Portland, Oregon, in 1927. Five years later, he won the first U.S. Nordic combined championship at Lake Tahoe, California, by taking first in Class B jumping and in the 18-kilometer cross-country race. He won several Northwest Alpine and Nordic events in the 1930s and 1940s and also is widely credited with inventing the first commercially successful Alpine release binding.

Petter Hugsted won the junior Holmenkollen championship in 1940 and went on to win a gold medal for Norway in the 1948 Winter Olympic Games.

The trio of Nordal Kaldahl, Henry Sodvedt, and Tom Mobraaten immigrated to British Columbia during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Known as the “three musketeers of ski jumping,” they dominated Northwest jumping events and helped organize, teach and judge skiing competitions throughout Canada.

In 1932, Kaldahl won more than five Class A jumping tournaments in the Northwest. The following year, Mobraaten won most of the same championship events, then joined the Canadian Olympic team in 1936 and 1948. Sodvedt, a champion in the combined Nordic events, was also active in the Canadian Amateur Ski Association, serving as a vice-president, and became a renowned international ski jumping judge.

Seven Ulland Brothers Competed

There were seven Ulland brothers. Sigurd came to the United States in 1928 and set hill jumping records at Lake Placid, New York, and Mount Shasta, California. In 1938, he won the U.S. Ski Jumping Championships in Brattleboro, Vermont.

In 1930, Sigurd’s younger brother Olav took third in the Holmenkollen junior championships. He then coached in France and won the 1935 French four-way championship. In the same year, Olav made jumping history at Ponte di Legno, Italy, where he soared 103.5 meters (339 feet) to become the first ski jumper ever to break the 100-meter barrier. He then coached the Italian jumping team at the 1936 Olympics. The Seattle Ski Club later hired him to coach their young ski jumpers.

Olav settled permanently in Seattle. He won several Class A jumping events in the Pacific Northwest, including the PNSA championships in 1939. Like many jumpers of his time, Olav was also an accomplished Alpine skier and took fifth in the Mount Rainier Silver Skis race of 1938. After years of teaching, he became coach of the 1956 U.S. Olympic ski jumping team, a role he continued through the 1958 World Championships in Lahti, Finland. In 1960, he was named chief of competition for jumping events at the Squaw Valley Olympic Games. Olav is also widely known for his role in the Osborn and Ulland sporting goods stores, a dominant Seattle area ski business from 1941 through 1995.

Olav brought his younger brother Reidar to Seattle in 1947. Reidar immediately found himself a top finisher in jumping tournaments. Four years later he brought his son, Ragnar, then 14, to Seattle.

Ragnar Ulland Continues the Legacy

Ragnar began jumping at age five in Kongsberg. By age eight, he was said to have been jumping from 110 to 120 feet in competitions.

During his first winter in Seattle, Ragnar consistently placed in the top five in Class B regional tournaments. At the 1952 National Junior Ski Jumping Tournament at Lake Tahoe, he took third and also received a prize for the most stylish leap of the day, a 127-foot effort.

Ragnar was said to achieve his amazing distances because he “held his float.” He had learned the technique of carrying skis higher on the float, keeping the air pressure under the blades all the way, leaning forward and then timing his landing to get the last yard, foot and inch. Indeed, the Kongsberg jumpers, starting with Ragnar’s uncle Sigurd, had refined a new style of leaning forward, bending at the hips and keeping the ski tips high on the descent.

During the 1952–53 season, Ragnar notched five first-place finishes, and the next year, at age 16, he began jumping in Class A events, consistently taking second in tournaments, with one first-place title when he beat Uncle Olav. The National Junior Ski Jumping Championships, held in Duluth, Minnesota, in February 1954, were no exception. He placed second, with longer jumps than the local youth, Jerry Lewis, who won the event based on style points.

In the 1954–55 season, Ragnar attended a two-week training camp at Howelsen Hill in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, under coach Gordy Wren. With three jumps at more than 230 feet, he took seventh in Class A events there. A month later, he won the National Junior Ski Jumping Championships at Leavenworth, Washington, and tied the hill record with a standing leap of 284 feet. With that win, he was invited, with 40 other jumpers, to the tryouts for the U.S. Olympic ski jumping team in Iron Mountain, Michigan. He took fourth place and earned a spot on the team.

Olympic Hopes Dashed

Going into the Cortina Olympics, Ragnar was 18, a senior at Seattle’s Roosevelt High School and, at that time, the youngest member of a U.S. ski jumping team to compete in the Olympics.

Before heading for Europe, the team trained at Lake Placid. The intensity there was high, as no American since 1924 had placed better than fifth in Olympic ski jumping. Uncle Olav, as coach of the team, knew European judges were tough on the landing and worked with the jumpers on their style.

In Cortina, the six U.S. jumpers pushed hard in practice, and mishaps occurred. Ragnar took a terrible spill and badly hurt his lower back. He was one of six U.S. winter athletes hurt in one day in Cortina. Disappointed and recovering, Ragnar went home to Seattle. He competed in the local Kongsberger Ski Club annual event, placing second.

With the 1956–57 season, tryouts loomed to select the next U.S. team to participate in the FIS World Championships, scheduled for Lahti, Finland, in 1958. Ragnar, now 19, still was recovering from his injuries, and, while he had several top-10 finishes, he finished 17th in the 1957 National Ski Jumping Championships in Berlin, New Hampshire.

In January 1958, he went to Ishpeming for the final tryouts for the 1958 U.S. Team. On the famed Suicide Hill, he repeated his 17th place finish from Nationals the year before. That effort, along with his previous record, was enough to qualify him as an alternate for the Lahti squad.

Later in 1958, he rallied and took third in the PNSA Class A championships at Leavenworth, with a long jump of 283 feet, one foot shy of his previous hill record. Judge Peter Hostmark told the local newspaper that, “The kid’s form was beautiful, better than I’ve seen him display before. I’ve never seen such uniformly good jumping in a Northwest meet.” Ragnar was said to have mastered the new “torpedo” style, with arms held back to augment torso lift.

Near Mt. Hood, Oregon, in March 1958, Ragnar soared 224 feet to set a Multorpor Hill jumping record, winning the Class A Western Open Jumping meet.

At age 21, going into the 1958–59 season, he was still in the running for the U.S. Ski Team and looking ahead to the 1960 Olympics. He had several first and second place finishes at tournaments in the Northwest but finished 14th at the National Championships in Leavenworth. While he missed the 1960 U.S. Team, Ragnar attended the Games as a trial jumper to test hill conditions prior to the official competitions.

Skiing Remains a Way of Life

Ragnar continued to jump through the 1960s, often securing a top-10 finish, but by then he was married and had a young family. He joined Osborn and Ulland on both the wholesale and retail sides of their business. In 1964, he was named manager of the company’s north Seattle store and ran that successful business for many years.

Today, Ragnar is retired in Mt. Vernon, Washington, where he looks back fondly on his ski jumping days. He makes annual trips to Kongsberg to visit relatives and friends, go cross-country skiing and reminisce about being lucky enough to recall the great era of Kongsberg jumpers. And his Multorpor ski hill record of 224 feet still stands. 

Longtime contributor Kirby Gilbert is vice president of the Washington State Ski & Snowboard Museum and Historian of the Ancient Skiers Association.

 

SKI ART: Sir John William Ashton (1881-1963)

Will Ashton emigrated to Australia from England with his parents as a young child. He was educated at Alfred College, a boy’s school in Adelaide, from 1889-97, where he studied painting. In 1900, he left for England to work on seascapes, and was particularly interested in the depiction of the changing light on foaming waves and billowing clouds, which led to his fascination with snowy ski scenes. He spent time at the Académie Julian in Paris and had work accepted by the Société des Artistes Français, as well as the Royal Academy in London.

(Painting above: Though Will Ashton admitted that “snow is not easy to paint,” “Kosciusko” won the Wynn prize for landscapes in 1930. Courtesy National library of Australia, Canberra)

Then, comparatively well-known, he returned to Adelaide in 1905 and exhibited in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide, winning the Wynn prize for landscapes in 1908. Off again to Europe and Egypt, his work was interrupted by World War I. In 1915, denied entry into the army due to his arthritis, he joined the Australian Imperial Forces as a volunteer driver.

Returning to Australia in 1917, he continued to paint landscapes, including a number of skiing scenes. “Snow is not easy to paint,” he wrote. “There is something crisp and precise about its character which always fascinates me.” He made repeat visits to Kosciusko National Park, and one his views of the area won the Wynn prize in 1930. He won it again in 1939.

In 1937, Ashton became director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. A member of several art institutes and societies, he was honored with an Order of the British Empire in 1941 and knighted in 1961. He died from cancer in 1963. —E. John. B. Allen

Why’s It Called That? Alpine or alpine? Nordic or nordic?

At Skiing History, we’re puzzling over when to capitalize nordic and alpine. Our thinking has been that the words should be treated the same way. If one is capitalized, both should be, and vice versa. That’s how we’ve been doing it in recent issues, using the terms nordic combined and alpine combined.

Many books of grammar disagree, suggesting that Nordic is a “proper adjective” referring to a region, while alpine is a plain adjective referring to . . .  a region. French and German writers capitalize neither adjective. They use nordique and alpin in French, nordische and alpine in German. Microsoft spell-checker corrects nordic to Nordic but not alpine to Alpine. National Geographic capitalizes both words. While their style manual specifies Alpine, it has no entry for Nordic at all. The Associated Press manual has entries for neither.

It appears that Nordic became “proper” because of its use to describe a “racial type.” In the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest examples for nordic are from 1898 and came from essays on white-supremacist racial theory. Nordic, capitalized, doesn’t appear in the main edition of the OED (published 1923), only in the First Supplement, published 1933.

In fact, Nordic appears not to have been used by skiers until after alpine skiing was formally recognized by the FIS in 1930, when it became necessary to distinguish between the two. The word appears nowhere in Arnold Lunn’s book History of Ski-ing (1927); instead, Lunn writes of Norwegian ski (plural), ski-runners and ski-ing.

Grammarians also dispute whether a billiard player puts english or English on the ball. And there’s French kissing versus french fries. With no hard rules, and to be consistent with such usages as Mediterranean cultures and Southwest cuisine, Skiing History will henceforth capitalize both words. —Seth Masia 

Snapshots in Time

1969 A Little Night Music
The present interest in night skiing marks a sharp contrast to the attitude of less than a decade ago. Then, almost all ski area operators were convinced that schussing down slopes was a daylight sport only; their opinion was that even a so-called hardy skier would hesitate to cope with the rigors of a cold winter evening. A few farsighted ski area operators, in Massachusetts, among other Eastern states, thought their registers might ring a merrier tune if their resorts remained open at night. —Michael Straus, “Night Skiing Starts to See the Light of Day” (New York Times, December 12, 1969)

1978 The Mahre Method
You have to have a desire to win. It all comes down to that. It comes from your heart. You’ve got to want it so bad that you’ll kill yourself to do it. —Dick Barrymore, “America’s Best” interview with Phil Mahre (Powder Magazine, September 1978)

1979 Who Are You?
Are you a Doer, Watcher, Thinker or Feeler? Understanding how you learn can improve your skiing. And since the final responsibility for learning always falls on the learner—you—your first task is to find an instructor whose teaching style meshes with your learning personality. —Stu Campbell, “The Way You Are” (SKI Magazine, October 1979)

1985 Shadow Instructor
As you ski, use the shadow as an instant replay of your skiing style. Check all parts of your body positioning with your shadow. Is your torso upright and balanced? Are your comfortable and natural? Do your feet work the skis away from underneath your body? One word of caution: If you get too carried away watching your shadow, you might miss seeing another skier or object below you. —Jim Isham, “The Shadow Knows” (Skiing Magazine, Spring 1985)

2005 Bode’s Curse
Bode Miller became the first American in 22 years to win skiing’s overall World Cup title. He finished ahead of his only remaining challenger, Benjamin Raich of Austria, in the season’s final giant slalom. The last non-Europeans to win the overall championship were Americans Phil Mahre and Tamara McKinney in 1983. “It’s been a bit embarrassing it’s taken so long. It was getting a bit like the Red Sox,” said Miller, a New Englander. “It was a bit embarrassing because it was like a curse.” —AP Press, “Miller Ascends to the Summit (Washington Post, March 13, 2005.)

2021 Homeless Olympics?
For those keeping score, here are the future Olympics that are scheduled: Beijing in February (really?), Paris in 2024, Milan and Cortina in 2026, Los Angeles in 2028 and Brisbane four years after that. You’ll notice an unprecedented hole, the 2030 Winter Games, still looking for a home. There’s a reason for that. —Barry Syrluga, “Fewer and fewer cities want to host the Olympics. That should tell the IOC something.” (Washington Post, Aug. 8, 2021)