Eriksen, Andresen, Briggs headed
to Intermountain Ski Hall of Fame

By Mike Gorrell, The Salt Lake Tribune

Norwegian immigrant Axel Andresen introduced Utah to ski jumping in 1915.

Wyoming's Bill Briggs earned the moniker "Father of Extreme Skiing" with a number of daredevil firsts, including his 1971 descent of the Grand Teton on skis.

And Stein Eriksen's name is known worldwide, as much for his role as a handsome ambassador for skiing as for his accomplishments on snow: Capturing gold and silver medals at the 1952 Oslo Olympics, then popularizing freestyle skiing with some of the earliest somersaults on skis.

These three innovators will be recognized for their contributions to the sport when they are inducted Saturday into the Intermountain Ski Hall of Fame. The invitation-only ceremony will take place at the Joe Quinney Winter Sports Center at Utah Olympic Park, just outside of Park City.

This is the second class of inductees selected jointly by the Alf Engen Ski Museum Foundation, based at the park, and the University of Utah Ski Archives. The honorees were chosen for their "contributions to the sport that resulted in significant benefits to the Intermountain Area over a long period," said Foundation President Alan Engen.

When his father and uncles -- Alf, Sverre and Corey Engen -- made their way to Utah from Norway in the early 1930s, Andresen already was a well-established figure in the state's ski circles. He had won Utah's first amateur ski jumping championship in 1915, sailing 65 feet on a course set up on a hill above the block 'U' east of the University of Utah. Eight years later, he started the Norwegian-American Athletic Club, which became the Utah Ski Club in 1931. Before his death in 1969 at age 73, Andresen was assistant general manager at Deseret Book.

Briggs, now 72, has a well-established reputation as longtime director of the Snow King Ski Area ski school in Jackson, Wyo. But he really made a name for himself by skiing down mountains once thought unskiable, achievements that utilized his skills as a climber (he was a guide in the Tetons) and a skier. His exploits began in the mid-1950s when he led a group of Dartmouth College students on a ski adventure through the largely unknown Bugaboos portion of the Purcell Range in British Columbia. Over the next two decades, he made a 100-mile traverse from the Bugaboos to Glacier National Park and made first descents down a slope of Mount Rainier, the Middle Teton and Mount Moran.

In 1971, Briggs added the Grand Teton to his list of conquests, concluding "yes, it probably is difficult and dangerous, but impossible it is not."

Noted Snow King Ski Area manager Jim Sullivan: "He did them first and safely, so he's still alive to tell about it. He's quite a legend . . . but not in a puffed-up sense."

Perhaps no legend looms larger than that of Eriksen's. "He will probably go down in the record books as influencing skiing as much as anybody has in the history of skiing," said Engen. At the 1952 Olympics in his native Norway, Eriksen won a gold medal in the giant slalom and a silver in slalom. Two years later, he won three golds in the world championships. Eriksen then moved to the United States, where he ran a number of ski schools before settling in Utah, first at Park City Mountain Resort and now at Deer Valley, where an elite hotel bears his name. A member of the National Ski Hall of Fame, Eriksen was designated a Knight First Class by the King of Norway in 1997.