Northwest Legacy of the Skjersaa Family

Norwegians pioneer skiing in Central Oregon

Skjersaa is a name familiar to many skiers in the Pacific Northwest. If you grew up in central Oregon, you knew the correct pronunciation was SHEER-saw. Three generations of the family were instrumental in developing two ski venues in this part of the state. Family members were also involved in all aspects of the sport in the Pacific Northwest, as top competitors, instructors and coaches in ski jumping, cross-country, telemark and Alpine events. The family opened the first ski shop in Bend, Oregon, too.

(Photo top: Founders of the Skyliners Club were (left to right) Nels Skjersaa, Nils Wulfsberg and Emil Nordeen. All photos courtesy Skjersaa family.)

The family has roots in Hjelset, a farming village of about 1,000 souls on the shore of the Fannefjord in western Norway. The name Skjersaa refers to the topography near the family home—a small stream that enters the fjord near a gravel bar. When several Skjersaas came to the United States in the first part of the 20th century, they brought with them a love of the outdoors, or open-air life, known in Norwegian as friluftsliv.

Nels Skjersaa immigrated to California in 1914. He worked in lumber mills and arrived in Bend in 1917. Skjersaa skied and competed against his work partner, the Swede Emil Nordeen. (See The Great Nordeen Race, March-April 2019 issue.) Together they loaded lumber into railroad cars at the Shevlin-Hixon mill, often working twice as fast as other two-man teams.

In 1927, Skjersaa and Nordeen, along with Nils Wulfsberg and Chris Kostol, formed the Skyliners, an outdoor recreation club focused on climbing and skiing. The club quickly grew to 300 members. The four Scandinavians were known as the Musketeers of the Mountains.

Wulfsberg and Nordeen realized a winter-sports facility would bring tourists to the area. In December 1928, the Skyliners created a winter-sports playground eight miles west of Sisters, Oregon, on the McKenzie Pass highway. The club built a lodge, a small ski jump, a toboggan slide and two Alpine ski runs. From 1929 to 1934, the best Nordic athletes from the Pacific Northwest competed in ski jumping tournaments and cross-country ski races there.

In the mid-1930s, the club sought a better venue, with a longer slope and more reliable snow, and relocated the facility 10 miles west of Bend, adjacent to Tumalo Creek. The club built a lodge and a 60-meter ski jump and held Alpine and cross-country ski races at the new venue. Nels competed in many cross-country ski races around the Northwest, most notably the epic 42-mile Fort Klamath to Crater Lake race. His best finish was second place in 1929. In 1931, he met his wife, Edna, on a climb he led on Mt. Washington. They married six months later.

Younger brother Olaf was just 13 years old when he arrived in Oregon in 1925 with father Ole, brother Ole and sisters Ingeborg and Margit. He met his wife, Grace, in high school, and they married in 1936. Olaf was a successful ski jumper and competed in tournaments across the Northwest. At the 1938 dedication of the Skyliners jump hill near Tumalo Creek he took the inaugural jump, which measured 180 feet. He held the

jumping record on the hill for many years.

As Alpine skiing became more popular, Olaf entered three-way events that included cross-country, jumping and slalom. He won the 1941 Oregon Three-Way Championship. Realizing that central Oregon skiers did not have access to good ski equipment, he begin selling gear out of his Bend garage, on Florida Avenue, in 1939. Two years later the family moved to East 10th Avenue, and he built a 1,200 square-foot carpentry workshop where, among other things, he installed steel edges to wood skis to improve performance. In 1958, he opened Skjersaa’s Ski Haus on Greenwood Avenue, the first dedicated ski shop in Bend.

For Olaf and Grace, skiing was a family affair with their four children: Karol, Terry, Greta and Karen. Grace was an energetic grandmother. A fabulous skier and early fitness enthusiast, she exercised to television’s Jack LaLanne fitness program. “We did not go to church on Sundays because we were going skiing. And so that was our church,” recalls Karen (Skjersaa) Weeks.

Grace once admonished her grandchildren Harold and Terry. “You boys shouldn’t schuss! You are not even making turns,” she declared. “It was a given you ski as a Skjersaa family member,” Harold says.

Harold remembers his mother, Greta Cecil, née Skjersaa. She was a ski instructor for Central Oregon Community College. Greta told future husband Gary that if he wanted to date, he needed to ski. “My mom was truly an athlete. I was 13 or 14 years old before I could out-ski my mom,” says Harold. Sister Kristine remembers learning to ski as a two-year-old between her mother’s legs and often tagged along to lessons at Mt. Bachelor. Harold has carried on the Skjersaa tradition of working in outdoor recreation. For 10 years, he wrote gear reviews for Eco Traveler at the Outdoor Retailer Show.

Terry Skjersaa Sr. started skiing at age three at the Hoodoo Ski Area, about one hour west of Bend. The access road was not plowed in the winter so his dad, Olaf, would carry him in a backpack into the ski area.

While attending Reid School in Bend as a second grader, he received a gold ski award from Olympic champion Gretchen Fraser, for most improved skier. In 1955, as a teenager, he began to race with the Skyliners ski club and was one of the best Alpine ski racers in the Northwest. He and his Skyliners teammates had Bend native Gene Gillis, an elite racer and 1948 Olympian, as a coach. Gillis also brought in 1954 World Champion and two-time Olympian (’48, ’52) Christian Pravda from Austria for a short time as a coach. “We had great coaches,” remembers Terry. “Both were incredible role models.”

Terry would go on to compete in three junior national championships at Franconia, New Hampshire; Winter Park, Colorado; and Reno Ski Bowl, Nevada. His teammates included Terry Foley, Joe Darr, Dale Elmer and Joan and Jean Saubert. At the 1964 Innsbruck Olympics, Jean Saubert won the bronze medal in slalom and silver in giant slalom. Terry raced against nationally prominent ski racers Dave Gorsuch, Jimmie Heuga and John West. In November 1958, Terry was skiing Tippytoe, a steep run on Mt. Bachelor, and fell and broke his neck. He was temporarily paralyzed from the neck down for several weeks and spent a month in the hospital with a body cast. Several vertebrae were later fused.

In 1961, Terry turned his attention to coaching and began to work with Kiki Cutter and Sherry and Jerry Blann. (In 1968, Cutter would be the first American, male or female, to win a World Cup competition, a slalom race in Oslo, Norway.) In 1965 Terry opened Skjersaa’s Ski Chalet on 14th St. in Bend and another ski shop in the basement of Eagan Lodge at Mt. Bachelor. He owned the Ski Chalet from 1965 to ’96. SKI Magazine named it a Best Ski Shop in 1994 and 1995.

Terry’s son, also named Terry, grew up in Beaverton, Oregon, and followed the family racing legacy. He went on to complete two years at Colorado Mountain College in Steamboat Springs, studying the ski business. For the next three years he immersed himself in the ski industry, working at Breckenridge and then for two years at Snowbird. He began testing telemark skis for the brand Kazama and working at the Wy’east Telemark Camp on Mt. Hood in the summers. For the next 13 years Terry Jr. was a sales representative for K2 and Kazama skis, Asolo boots and Gregory packs before becoming a real estate broker in Bend.

For nearly 100 years, the Skjersaa family have been successful competitors and provided expert advice on the hill as coaches and instructors, along with helping to outfit central Oregonians to get onto the slopes.