Hundreds gathered in February at Deer Valley to honor the memory of the late Stein Eriksen.
STORY AND PHOTOS BY JOHN FRY

He was our hero. In his beautiful style of skiing and his charismatic persona, he combined the utmost grace we would ever see in the sport. 

Stein Eriksen, 88, died just after Christmas in 2015. On February 4, 2016, more than a thousand skiers showed up to honor his memory at an outdoor ceremony at Deer Valley in Utah, where Stein was director of skiing for 35 years. 

The ceremony was staged at the venue of the 2016 World Cup of freestyle skiing, a sport first popularized six decades ago by Stein with his famous, widely filmed and photographed inverted aerial. A simulation of that famous flip was performed by Dylan Ferguson, longtime U.S. Ski Team aerialist, to the roaring appreciation of the crowd. 

Speakers included Stein’s widow, Françoise Eriksen; U.S. Ski Team vice-president and spokesman Tom Kelly; Deer Valley Resort president Bob Wheaton; Stephen Kircher of Boyne, Michigan, Stein’s first U.S. resort employer; and Stein’s longtime fishing and hunting pal, Jim McConkey. 

Friends of Stein also memorialized him with speeches and Norwegian songs at a reception in the Stein Eriksen Lodge, and a party at the Eriksen home in Park City. RIP.  

For a full tribute to Stein Eriksen, "The One and Only Stein" by Morten Lund, see the January-February 2016 issue of Skiing History.

ISHA event at Whistler/Blackcomb was a success, the stage for more regional gatherings next season.

ISHA held its first-ever Skiing History Day on February 21 at Whistler/Blackcomb in British Columbia. Twenty-seven skiers and four guides attended the one-day event, and everyone had a grand time. After a First Tracks mountain-top breakfast, we skied with retired Whistler/Blackcomb executives Hugh Smythe, Roger McCarthy and Bob Dufour, plus Stu Rempel, the resort’s senior vice president of marketing and sales. They told great tales of the mountains’ development (for instance, the first snowmaking pond was excavated with a case of dynamite).

The plan was to split into four skiing groups, but the 30 expert skiers, most of them old friends, wound up skiing in a 35-mile-per-hour pack, mixing it up on the lifts to tell more stories. After lunch at Steeps Grill, we skied a few more hours and then repaired to Merlin’s Bar and Grill. Another 60 folks attended an evening lecture at the Whistler Museum (www.whistlermuseum.org) on “Celebrity Athletes and the Growth of Modern Skiing.”

ISHA plans to run more regional Skiing History Days next winter. Let us know if your local hill would like to host one! —Seth Masia, ISHA President

Ski filmmakers, authors and historians from North America and Europe will gather in Aspen, Colorado, on April 7, 2016, for the 24th annual ISHA Awards. Presented every year by the International Skiing History Association (ISHA), the awards honor outstanding creative works of ski history, including books, films and DVDs, Websites, museum exhibits and lifetime achievements. It is the most prestigious awards program in the world for projects that add significantly and artistically to the ski historical record. ISHA has honored 166 recipients since 1993, with Lifetime Achievement awards presented to Sir Arnold Lunn, John Jay, Warren Miller, Dick Barrymore, Bob Beattie, Billy Kidd, Michael Horn and Willy Bogner, among others.

ISHA is a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and advancing the knowledge of ski history worldwide; it publishes Skiing History (a bimonthly magazine) and operates www.skiinghistory.org, the world’s largest Website devoted to the history of the sport.

The April 7 awards banquet will be held at the historic Hotel Jerome in Aspen. For more information or to register, call 802.366.1158 or go to: https://www.skiinghistory.org/events.

The winners of the 2016 ISHA Awards are:

Lifetime Achievement Awards

Broadcasting: Greg Lewis

Over a thirty-year career, Greg Lewis excelled as a network television commentator, specializing in skiing and Olympic sports. He covered World Pro Skiing, two winter Olympics, four summer Olympics, and numerous world championships, earning two Emmy awards, among other broadcast honors.

Photo: Greg Lewis

 

 

Museum Curation: Karin Berg

Karin Berg directed Oslo’s Holmenkollen Ski Museum for three decades, until her retirement in September 2015. She supervised the creation of one of the world’s best collections of skiing artifacts while researching and writing several award-winning ski history books.

Photo: Karin Berg

 

Ullr Awards

Presented for a single outstanding contribution or several contributions to skiing’s historical record in published book form.

 

Edited by Marit Stub Nybelius and Annette R. Hofmann
This book covers the 150-year-history of women’s ski jumping, from its beginnings until it debuted as an Olympic sport in 2014. It recounts the struggle of female ski jumpers, their coaches and families to achieve acceptance in international sport.

Photo: Annette Hofmann

 

Fra Første Stavtak: Skistavens historie
(From the Start: The History of Ski Poles)
By Karin Berg
Karin Berg, for three decades director of the Holmenkollen Ski Museum, has written the definitive history of ski poles. While it’s written in Norwegian, the fabulous illustrations are worth the price of the book even to the English monoglot.

Freedom Found
By Warren Miller, edited by Andy Bigford
Warren Miller’s colorful memoirs, including many of his essays from years past, are skillfully stitched together, with much new material.

Photo: Warren Miller

 

 

The Fall Line: How American Ski Racers Conquered a Sport on the Edge
By Nathaniel Vinton
By examining the careers of Lindsey Vonn and Bode Miller, New York Daily News reporter Nathaniel Vinton has created the best introduction to alpine ski racing ever written in English.

Mathias Zdarsky: und die Bahnbrecher im alpinen Schnee
(Mathias Zdarsky: Pioneer of Alpine Skiing)
By Otmar Schöner    
A detailed biography of Mathias Zdarsky, who, beginning in 1905, invented the first alpine ski binding, created the first ski school in mainland Europe, and wrote the foundational book of ski instruction, Die Lilienfelder Skilauf-Technik.

Skade Awards

Presented for an outstanding work on regional ski history or for an outstanding work published in book form that is focused in part on ski history.

Chronicle of a Myth II: The Hahnenkamm Races
(Chronik eines Mythos II: Veranstalter Hahnenkamm-Rennen)
Kitzbüheler Ski Club (KSC)
This is the expanded second edition of an exhaustive illustrated history of the Hahnenkamm races, first run in 1931. The first edition was published in 2002, in celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the Kitzbüheler Ski Club. The new edition brings us up to date, including the races held from 2003 to 2015, covering 75 race meetings in all. It also expands details of race organization, technology and course development that were mentioned only briefly in the first edition.

Winter Park Resort: 75 Years of Imagining More
By Tim Nicklas & Winter Park Resort
Profusely illustrated, this is the detailed official history of the pioneering Colorado resort, conceived in the depths of the Depression as a project of Denver’s Department of Parks and Recreation.

Snowshoe Thompson: Jon Fra Tinn (Jon From Tinn)
By Halvor Kleppen
The prolific Norwegian author Halvor Kleppen brings us the most complete and thoroughly researched biography yet of skiing pioneer Jon Torsteinson Rue, who became a legendary mail carrier—nicknamed Snowshoe Thompson—across the Sierra in the pre-railroad era. Written in Norwegian.

Photo: Halvor Kleppen

 

Whistler/Blackcomb: 50 Years of Going Beyond
Film with accompanying book
Film produced and directed by Mike Douglas; book written and edited by Leslie Anthony and Penelope Buswell
To celebrate its 50^th birthday, Whistler/Blackcomb produced a 28-minute gem of a video, supported by a 116-page book of photos and biographies.

Photo: Mike Douglas

 

Honorable Mention (Skade Award)

Zorn, kyrkloppen och idrottsrörelsen 
(Zorn, Church Races and the Sports Movement)
By Isak Lidström
From 1907 to 1909, the well-known Swedish romantic-era painter Anders Zorn, in protest of organized skiing’s amateur rules, offered cash prizes to poor athletes who couldn’t afford to compete in sanctioned races. This is the story of how the church race series rose and was quickly banned.

Film Awards (Honorable Mention)

Jackson Hole Skiing Pioneers
By Roger Brown and Garrett Edquist
To celebrate its 50th anniversary, Jackson Hole Resort hired award-winning filmmaker Roger Cotton Brown (Summit Films)—who produced the resort’s first-ever film in 1964 with his business partner, the late Barry Corbet—to assemble a 26-minute video. Narrated by Brown, the film explores the early history of the resort, including pioneer Bill Briggs recounting his 1971 ski descent of the Grand Teton and dynamic shots of Hermann Gollner and Tom Leroy doing front flips into Corbet’s Couloir.

The International Skiing History Association
The nonprofit International Skiing History Association (ISHA) was founded in 1991 by the late Mason Beekley of Connecticut, who amassed what is believed to be the world’s largest private collection of ski books and arts. More than 1,500 members belong to ISHA, including retired Olympians and World Cup racers from North America and Europe, Hall of Famers, ski industry leaders and lovers of ski history around the world. ISHA’s Presidential Circle includes the late Stein Eriksen, Jean-Claude Killy, Nancy Greene Raine, Penny Pitou and Bob Beattie, among others.

Six times a year, ISHA publishes Skiing History (formerly Skiing Heritage), a high-quality print magazine that features profiles of great champions and innovators who have shaped the sport, early technique and equipment, resorts and historic inns, and news from the ski world with an historical perspective. ISHA also operates the world’s largest Website devoted to skiing history, www.skiinghistory.org, with a digital archive of back issues for members and many free resources for ski historians, including authoritative articles, photos, timelines, bibliographies, and comprehensive indexes to various ski publications.

For more information or to join, go to www.skiinghistory.org.

For additional information: Kathleen James at 802.366.1158 or kathleen@skiinghistory.org.

ISHPEMING, MI  (October 30, 2014) -- The U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame has announced that ten people have been elected to the Hall of Fame this year.  They are: Curt Chase, Joe Cushing, Chris Davenport, Kristina Koznick, John McMurtry, Ralph Miller, Ross Powers, Erik Schlopy, Bob Smith and Jeannie Thore

The induction of the Class of 2014 will take place on April 11, 2015 in Steamboat Springs Colorado at the conclusion of Skiing History Week. The class will also be enshrined in the Hall of Fame on September 18, 2015 in Ishpeming, Michigan which is the home of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame.  

CLASS OF 2014 INDUCTEES

Curt Chase (Colorado) was an innovator and motivating force in the field of ski instruction for over 40 years.  He served as a survival training Instructor of the U.S. Army’s 10^th Mountain Division and later held the same positon for the Strategic Air Command.  He contributed to what is now known as the American Ski Technique and was one of the eight founders of the Professional Ski Instructors of America.  He passed away in June of this year.

Joe Cushing (New Hampshire) was a pioneer in ski area planning and design.  Working with the legendary Sel Hannah he designed over 400 ski areas in North America and the world.  Among those areas where his impact can be seen are Loon Mountain and Bretton Woods in New Hampshire, Sugarbush and Stratton in Vermont, Copper Mountain and Keystone in Colorado and Deer Valley in Utah.

 Chris Davenport (Colorado) is widely regarded as one of the world’s premier big mountain skiers.  In 1996 he was recognized as the World Extreme Skiing Champion and four years later was the International Freeskier’s Association‘s World Freeskiing champion.  In 2007 he became the first person to ski all 54 of Colorado’s 14,000 foot peaks in one year.   He has been featured in 30 ski films.

 Kristina Koznick (Colorado) was an outstanding slalom racer from the mid-west who began her career under the coaching direction of Eric Sailer (Hall of Fame Class of 2005).  With six national titles and six World Cup victories she finished second twice in the season-long fis World Cup.  She was named to three Olympic teams and competed at six World Championships.

 John McMurtry (Colorado) was a US Ski Team coach during the 1980’s, which saw several of its members win World Cup titles, Olympic medals and the only Nation’s Cup Award for the U.S. Alpine Team. In 1987 he became the U.S. team’s development and later alpine director establishing a regional development program that continues to bring thousands of young athletes into the sport including Picabo Street, Bode Miller, Lindsay Vonn and Julia Mancuso.

Ralph Miller (Kentucky) was one of America’s top skiing competitors in the 1950’s where he excelled in four event competitions (downhill, slalom, jumping, cross country).  He won or placed in the top three of many of the top competitions held during this time and frequently was able to beat Olympians like Stein Eriksen and Othmar Schneider. In 1955 he set a world speed record of 109 mph which stood for 15 years.

 Ross Powers (Vermont) is the fourth person from snowboarding to be elected to the Hall of Fame.  He won the first U.S Olympic medal in snowboarding, a bronze, at the 1998 Nagano Games and was the Olympic halfpipe champion in 2002, leading an American podium sweep.  Two years earlier he had won a World Championship.  During his career he held every title in halfpipe snowboarding.

Erik Schlopy (Utah) was a three time Olympian and seven time national champion who had one of the longest and most successful careers in U.S. ski racing history.  He was a World Pro super G champion and a bronze medal winner in the giant slalom at the World Championships in 2003.  Throughout his career he demonstrated not only his great ability but also his perseverance and tenacity coming back from many serious injuries to compete with the best in this sport.

Dr. Robert Smith (Idaho) was a dentist turned goggle inventor who changed skiing, which was his passion, when he founded his eyewear company in the 1960’s   Smith Optics was founded literally from his kitchen table where he developed a thermal lens goggle that did not fog up when it was being used on the ski slopes.  It was an invention that was enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of skiers initially and continues to have an impact on the experience of skiers and snowboarders today.  He passed away in 2012.

 Jeannie Thoren (Minnesota) is regarded by many as the “Johnny Appleseed” of women’s skiing.  She was a pioneer in developing women’s specific ski equipment, which helped women ski better because they were using equipment better suited to their physique.  For nearly 20 years, beginning in 1988, she conducted an estimated 70 women’s ski equipment seminars annually around the country in her effort to improve the sport for all women.

 

 

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER ONLINE

SKIING HISTORY WEEK AND HALL OF FAME INDUCTION

APRIL 8-12, 2015

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, COLORADO

 

Colorado’s Steamboat Ski Resort has been selected as the site of the 2015 induction ceremony of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame, as well as the International Skiing History Association’s annual Skiing History Week.

The induction ceremony honoring the Hall of Fame’s class of 2014 will be Saturday, April 11, capping off the April 8-12 Skiing History Week. The week will feature skiing, historical presentations, awards ceremonies and a film festival open to the entire Steamboat community. 

HIGHLIGHTS

•Steamboat Ski Resort has been selected as the site of the 2015 induction ceremony of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame. Around 500 are expected to attend the annual installation of the class of 2014 inductees.

•The induction will be the culmination of nearly a week of activities in the Steamboat Springs community during April 8-12 Skiing History Week, which attracts hundreds of skiing history enthusiasts and recreational skiers.

•Centennial: Skiing History Week and the Hall of Fame induction will also celebrate the 100th anniversary of Steamboat’s fabled Howelsen Hill.

•Film Festival: The annual Ishpeming Snow 100 Film Festival will highlight some of the best films in skiing history at Steamboat’s Chief Theater, open nightly April 8-10 to attendees and the Steamboat community.

•Legacy Lectures: A presentation on Steamboat legend Buddy Werner will be one of several legacy lectures celebrating the heritage of skiing.

•Hall Induction: The Hall of Fame induction in the Korbel Grand Ballroom of the Steamboat Grand is expected to sell out with a field of 10 inductees including Olympic champion Ross Powers and Colorado’s noted big mountain skier Chris Davenport among others.

•First Tracks: Skiing History Week will wrapup Sunday, April 12 with a opportunity for First Tracks with Hall of Fame skiers and snowboarders.

•Tickets and Registration: Registration for Skiing History Week and tickets for the Hall of Fame induction are now available online by clicking the link above. Special lodging packages at the Steamboat Grand and discounted lift tickets will be available to Skiing History Week registrants.

SCHEDULE:

Park City, Utah
April 3, 2014

The International Skiing History Association Awards, established in 1993, are presented annually to authors of outstanding histories, films and DVDs, Websites, museum exhibits, and for lifetime achievements in broadcasting and other media. The honored work is judged to have added significantly and artistically to the ski historical record.

An ISHA Service Award may also be presented to an individual for substantial long-term support of a ski history organization in light of ISHA’s mission “to preserve skiing history and increase public awareness of the sport’s heritage.”

The awards are presented for work published or formally completed before the end of the preceding calendar year. For example, ISHA’s 2013 awards, presented in April 2014, are for books and films completed and available for review by the judges before the end of 2013.

ISHA Awards are presented in the following categories, though not every category is honored every year:

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD: Presented for contributions over a substantial period of time to ski history, ski journalism, photography, film, radio or television.

ULLR AWARD: Presented for a single outstanding contribution or several contributions to skiing’s overall historical record in published book form.

SKADE AWARD: Presented for an outstanding work on regional ski history, or for an outstanding work published in book form that is focused in part on ski history.

FILM OR PHOTOGRAPHY AWARD: Presented for outstanding contribution to the historical record of skiing in photographic or film/digital form.

CURATORIAL AWARD: Presented for outstanding work in curating a nationally recognized ski museum through its exhibits and publications.

CYBER AWARD: Presented for creating a Website that contributes substantially to the preservation, distribution and expansion of skiing’s historical record.

SERVICE AWARD: Presented for outstanding work over a substantial period of time with an organization engaged in the creation and preservation of skiing’s historical record.

SPECIAL AWARD: Presented for outstanding contribution to the historical record outside the above categories.

Michael Horn
ISHA Lifetime Achievement Award for Broadcasting

For half a century, Austria’s Michael Horn used his skills as an announcer to entertain and educate television and radio audiences, and spectators at ski races around the world.
       Horn began his announcing career—or “hobby,” as he calls it—at the age of only 15, promoting a Kitzbühel tennis tournament by driving around town in a car with a PA system. From that modest start, he advanced to announcing the famed Hahnenkamm ski races in 1963 when he was only 23. When the press chief for the Innsbruck Olympics heard Horn’s manner of speaking in different languages—he speaks seven—he recruited him to be the official speaker at both the 1964 and 1976 Winter Games in Innsbruck. Horn quickly went from being known as the “Voice of the Hahnenkamm” to also being dubbed Austria’s “Voice of Winter.” 
       Other Horn announcing appearances have included the 1982 Alpine Ski World Championships at Schladming, Austria, the 1985 Nordic World Championships at Seefeld in Austria, and the World Cup finals at Vysoke Tatry, Czechoslovakia. He worked as a commentator for the Austrian Radio-Television Network (ORF) at ski races in Austria, France and Italy.
       In 1980, Horn was invited to Colorado, where he provided race information in his trademark announcing style to Aspen spectators for the next 10 years. While in the U.S., he called World Cup races at Lake Tahoe’s Heavenly Valley, and at Vail/Beaver Creek, including the 1989 World Alpine Ski Championships. In 1988, when Australia celebrated its bicentennial with World Cup races in Thredbo, Horn was the announcer.
       Horn was there in 1964 to call it when Billy Kidd and Jimmie Heuga became the first American men to win Olympic medals in alpine skiing. He also announced the victories of the “Equipe de France” with Jean-Claude Killy, Adrien Duvillard and Guy Perillat. He watched the strong wave of Canadian downhillers Todd Brooker, Ken Read and Steve Podborski, and he announced the wins of Sweden’s Ingemar Stenmark and Italy’s Alberto Tomba. Horn also covered the only alpine victory of a Russian skier in 1980, when Valery Tsyganov won the downhill in Aspen; Horn also was there with his microphone when in 1982, American Steve Mahre became world champion in the giant slalom at Schladming. He also witnessed the excited pandemonium of the Austrian crowds when their heroes Karl Schranz, Franz Klammer and Hermann Maier set race records in the Hahnenkamm downhill.
       Through it all, Horn was still the Voice of the Hahnenkamm, acting as chief press officer for 24 years and announcing races from 1963 until 2008. When he retired, the Kitzbüheler Ski Club made him one of only three honorary members.
       Horn has not always held a microphone in his hand. He graduated with a degree in economics in 1965 from the University of Innsbruck, and began his “real” job in 1966 at Kitzbühel’s Aquarena spa, where he was general manager until his retirement in 2001. He also served as vice-mayor of Kitzbühel and did a stint in the state parliament in Vienna. In spare moments, he has announced hockey games and tennis tournaments for Austrian TV and radio.
       Michael Horn and his wife Christl live in Kitzbühel. — Stephanie Boyle Mays

Skade Award

Downhill in Montana: Early Day Skiing in the Treasure State
By Stan Cohen
       The recently released DVD Downhill in Montana: Early Day Skiing in the Treasure State was issued as a companion piece to the book of the same name by author Stan Cohen. Both illustrate the quick rise of skiing in Montana.
       The film uses original footage, stills and interviews to tell the state’s ski story. The tale starts in the 1880s with the first ski trip into Yellowstone, but most of the DVD covers the sport after the introduction of lifts in the 1930s.
       Much of the footage was provided by the heirs of Walter Morris, who owned a ski shop in Missoula from the late 1930s to the early 1970s. Morris shot 16-mm film of seemingly every ski event he ever attended. His footage is combined with filmed interviews and photographic stills to cover a gamut of skiing subjects, including the 1935 Anaconda Winter Carnival, tales of ski trains and the start of areas such as Big Sky, Bridger Bowl and Whitefish.
       The book traces the history of more than 60 ski areas in the state. Pages are laid out like a scrapbook, with accompanying text that relates what has happened from the area’s inception to the present day (or, in some cases, its demise). Included are reproductions of old articles, programs, people profiles, ticket stubs, advertising, photographs and other documentation of each area’s history. —Morten Lund
      
       Downhill in Montana, Early Day Skiing in the Treasure State; DVD (2012) produced by Pictorial Histories and Sunrise Studios, 96 minutes. Book (2010) by author Stan Cohen (Pictorial Histories Publishing Company), paperback, 278 pages with black-and-white vintage photographs and illustrations.

Skade Award

Highway to Heaven
By Peter Southwell-Keely
       Ten resorts, strung from the Thredbo River to the summit of Mt. Kosciuszko in New South Wales, are featured in this lavishly illustrated Australian ski history. Historical descriptions of each resort and approximately 400 photographs, with highly informative maps, are intertwined with chapters on Australia’s first ski troops, ski patrols, ski jumping, cross-country skiing, and the influence of Europeans. Throughout the book, many individuals who made a difference are also profiled.
       The most interesting chapters deal with the development of Perisher, an amalgamation of four towns: Perisher Valley, Smiggin Holes, Guthega and Blue Cow. Starting in 1945 there were three huts in the Perisher-Smiggins area; by 1956, nine more huts had been built. Now Perisher is the largest ski resort in the Southern Hemisphere and boasts 98 lodges, 29 ski lifts and the Ski Tube, a rack railway that includes an 1,805-foot tunnel.
       Six appendices include Winter Olympians and Paralympians, ski club results from the 1950s and 1960s and a list of ski clubs with founding dates (such as the Kiandra Pioneer Ski Club, ca. 1881). Almost 300 references support this well-produced tome that will appeal to anyone interested in Australian skiing. —E. John B. Allen
      
       Highway to Heaven: A History of Perisher and the Ski Resorts Along the Kosciuszko Road by Peter Southwell-Keely; Perisher Historical Society (2013); 400-plus photographs, hardcover, 260 pages.

Skade Award

Ski the Great Potato
By Margaret Fuller, Doug Fuller and Jerry Painter
       Ski The Great Potato provides the histories of all 21 areas and resorts that are still operating in Idaho, as well as stories on 72 areas that no longer exist. 
       Each ski area story has a detailed explanation of how readers could find the area in their travels. The areas are photographed as they appeared when fully operational, or what is left of them today. 
       It opens with a fascinating account of the Eastport-Kingsgate ski jump that was located right on the Idaho-British Columbia border. The jump opened in 1928 and had an in-run in the United States, with the jumpers landing in Canada. It closed in 1940 when the owner decided to start a ski area nearby. 
       Another interesting chapter recounts the founding and development of Lookout Pass, which at one time was the home ski area of Joe Jay Jalbert, one of skiing’s great filmmakers. It started in 1936 when a group of skiers hitched a ride on a Northern Pacific railroad train that took them to the summit of Lookout Mountain. One of the longest chapters details the founding and development of Sun Valley. The authors also include information about prominent people in Idaho ski history, from the Engen brothers to Picabo Street and Muffy Davis, who skied and competed together at Rotarun in Hailey. 
       Margaret Fuller has written and co-authored five books on hiking in Idaho. Her son, Doug Fuller, a former ski coach, and Jerry Painter, an outdoors columnist, worked with her on this project. –Tom West
      
       Ski The Great Potato by Margaret Fuller, Doug Fuller and Jerry Painter; Trail Guide Books (2013), 293 pages with black-and-white photographs.

Skade Award

Tales from Two Valleys: Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows
By Eddy Starr Ancinas
       Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows skiers will delight in reading the familiar and not-so-familiar accounts of how these two leading Sierra resorts got started. Eddy Ancinas’ well-researched book will also appeal to anyone interested in the history of skiing in the 1950s and ’60s, when the sport exploded in popularity. This growth was due in large part to such pioneering visionaries as Wayne Poulsen and Alexander Cushing at Squaw Valley. Lesser known is John Reily, who dreamed of a family-oriented resort at the adjacent valley, which later came to be called Alpine Meadows.
       Eddy Ancinas tells the story of the ongoing conflict between Poulsen, who had the land, and Cushing, who had access to financing. The two strong-willed men disagreed on “just about everything,” she writes. Poulsen was later voted out of the corporation at a stockholder meeting when he was traveling out of the country. 
       Ancinas also describes how Cushing applied for the 1960 Winter Olympics to get publicity for his five-year-old resort, which had only one chairlift at the time. By clever political maneuvering, Cushing succeeded in having the Games awarded to Squaw Valley. After near disaster—first a lack of snow, then almost too much snow—the Games were a great success.
       Ancinas accurately describes the continuing conflict between Cushing and the various state and federal agencies that control safety and conservation issues. She concludes that Cushing’s guiding philosophy was, “It is easier to beg forgiveness than to ask permission.”
       In 2010 a private equity firm, KSL, bought Squaw Valley and a year later, Alpine Meadows, consolidating the two valleys. Ancinas asks a relevant question: “Will the ski experience defined by Poulsen, Cushing and Reily be forever changed from a way of life to a highly developed form of industrial tourism?”  
       The dedication “To Osvaldo—for getting on the chairlift with me” refers to Ancinas’ husband, who was a member of the 1960 Argentine Olympic team. Eddy and Osvaldo live and have raised their family in a house on the Truckee River, between Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows. —Henrik Bull

Tales from Two Valleys: Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows by Eddy Starr Ancinas; History Press, February 2013; softcover, 160 pages

Film Award

Crash Reel
Produced by Lucy Walker

       Crash Reel by filmmaker Lucy Walker tells the story of Olympic snowboarding hopeful Kevin Pearce and his tragic accident during a training run in Park City, Utah, before the 2010 Winter Games. Pearce slammed his head on the icy wall of the halfpipe and suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). The film positions Pearce as the one guy who could have beaten superstar Shaun White and explores their rivalry in the halfpipe, a sport in which the most elite athletes routinely launch off 22-foot ice walls at 30-plus miles an hour, soaring almost 40 feet in the air. The margin of error is slim to none and injuries happen all of the time, from the professional to the recreational level.
       Crash Reel examines “extreme” athletes and their quest to obtain fame and fortune. It also shines a light on the extreme sports lifestyle and the lack of training methods and coaches. Walker focuses on Pearce’s family and the price they pay for their son’s accident, as well as the pressure that accompanies big sponsorship deals.
       In the last quarter of the film, Walker examines the lack of oversight and the insufficient safety net for extreme athletes who are willing to risk it all. She suggests that the lasting legacy of the industry might be the 173,000 sports- or action-related TBIs that are reported each year for people under the age of 20.
       Walker met Pearce in 2010, not long after his accident. Over time, she became convinced that, as she says: “The world of extreme sports posed questions that I couldn’t answer…When I watch big-wave surfing or halfpipe snowboarding, my eyes are glued to the screen. But half the reason I’m mesmerized is because it’s clear that the stakes are life and death…And Kevin’s story dramatizes just how dramatic the stakes are. It’s an exemplary study of risk and reward.” Walker’s strong writing and incisive storytelling capture the reality of extreme sports, from the glitz of the X Games to the harsh reality of the intensive care unit. (Pearce is now a motivational speaker, TV commentator and advocate for people affected by TBI and Down syndrome.)—Dan Egan
  
       To learn more about the film—and the related Love Your Brain advocacy campaign—go to www.thecrashreel.com.

Film Award

Legend of Aahhh’s
Produced by Greg Stump

       Seldom has a new ski movie been awaited as impatiently as Greg Stump’s Legend of Aahhh’s. Stump is the cinematographer who in 1988 produced Blizzard of Aahhh’s, a stunning work that captivated the emerging freestyle, extreme and snowboard generation, and its hitherto little-known stars. Two more action films followed. Then Stump turned to producing music videos and commercial work. Legend of Aahhh’s marks his return to producing a full-length feature about skiing.
       Stump spent the better part of two years trying different cuts and approaches to redact this film to a running length of 93 minutes. Legend endeavors to tell the history of ski moviemaking, as well as the cultural history of extreme skiing, powerfully visible today on magazine covers and in equipment and resort advertising.
       In Legend of Aahhh’s Stump pays generous tribute to his filmmaking antecedents, beginning in the 1920s with Arnold Fanck, Leni Riefenstahl, and on to John Jay, Dick Durrance, Warren Miller, Dick Barrymore and Roger Brown. Toward the end of the film, Stump shows the outstanding latter-day work of Teton Gravity, and notably of Matchstick Productions, the production quality and visuals of whose 21st century films largely exceed those of Stump, for reasons having a lot to do with advances in cinematographic technology. Stump was not a rival anyway. He withdrew from making films that exposed the actors to risk of death after two of his performers were almost killed in an avalanche in 1995. His was a wise, ethical, calculated decision.
       Much of the visual in Legend of Aahhh’s consists of action-packed series of skiers leaping and streaming down spectacular, precipitous terrain. The viewer gets a full serving of cliff-jumping, steep gully turn sequences, triggering of avalanches, and high-speed straight shots that take the breath away.
       Intermittently throughout Legend, Stump cuts to talking heads (Warren Miller’s appears most often) who offer their perspectives and recollections.
       Stump dedicates Legend to Barrymore, who defined why ski moviemakers have generally been unable to create works attractive to viewers living outside the ski world.
       “With a normal motion picture,” said Barrymore, “you shoot a film about a story. With a ski film, you make a story about the film you’ve shot.” Legend of Aahhh’s is among the best. —John Fry  

Legend of Aahhh's has a running time of 93 minutes. For more information, visit blizzardsnowstore.com.

Ullr Award

American Ski Resort: Architecture, Style, Experience
By Margaret Supplee Smith

       In American Ski Resort, Margaret Smith analyzes the vision, planning and construction that created North America’s winter mountain culture. She tells the story in 300 pages, punctuated by more than 300 well-chosen images of resorts, hotels and restaurants, houses and condominiums in New England, the Rockies, California and British Columbia. Some are renowned, like Idaho's Sun Valley; others are obscure, like Little Sugar Mountain in North Carolina.
    From New England farmhouse inns to million-dollar condos, from a basic Stratton Mountain A-frame to the Mountain Modern style of Snowbird, we learn what has been the driving force for change over the decades, how it was accomplished and with what result for people, landscape and business.
       Subsections are devoted to Historic Preservation and Cultural Aspiration (1930s to 1950s), Alpine in America (1950s to 1960s), and Reimagining the Mountain Resort Village (1970s to 1980s). The epilogue is important; Smith casts her socially alert eye on what is happening at American ski resorts in the 21st century. Some may find it disheartening to discover that Nobody’s Home (a film title) in Aspen. That's because many of its homes, averaging $4.9 million in price, are unoccupied for most of the year. Two appendices list three generations of architects, while the second offers more than 100 mini-biographies of relevant resort and landscape architects. The latter are important since, as one remarked, “We have to create postcard settings.”
       The University of Oklahoma Press is to be congratulated on an excellent production. The book contains outstanding photographs and art, and American Ski Resort is a delight. —E. John B. Allen
      
       American Ski Resort: Architecture, Style, Experience by Margaret Supplee Smith; University of Oklahoma Press (2013); hardcover, 300 pages with more than 300 illustrations.
      

Ullr Award

From Heming the Younger to Hemingway
By Jon Vegard Lunde

       From Heming the Younger to Hemingway by Jon Vegard Lunde is a collection of ski literature that runs from Ernest Hemingway's Cross Country Snow and The Snows of Kilimanjaro to writers such as John Updike, John Cheever, Sylvia Plath, Ian Fleming, Romaine Gary and Vladimir Nabokov. But all of the passages were either written in Norwegian, or have been translated into Norwegian by the author. So why should English-speaking readers care? Because the book’s illustrations are a superb collection of period, modern (and in some cases ancient) skiing art—more than 100 striking examples, including a vivid watercolor by Spanish painter and mountain guide Ricardo Montoro Delgado, which was featured on the September-October 2013 cover of Skiing History.
       The subtitle translates as “Skiing literature through a thousand years,” and its long row of renowned authors cries out for an English edition. Nevertheless, the serious collector will not miss the chance to add the book’s excellent illustrations to a library devoted to ski art. Even reviewers who have seen many collections of ski art will not likely have seen most of these works, let alone have such a great group of excellent, wide-ranging reproductions at hand. It is a beautiful book. —Morten Lund
      
       From Heming The Younger to Hemingway by Jon Vegard Lunde; Jevelaget, 416 pages, hard cover, profusely illustrated in color and black-and-white.

2013 HONORABLE MENTIONS
SKADE AWARD

Ski Pioneers of Stowe, Vermont: The First 25 Years by Patricia L.  Haslam

FILM AWARD

Ski America produced by New England Ski Museum

United We Ski produced by T-Bar Films (Richmond, Vermont)

Click here to see all ISHA Award winners since 1993.

 

ISHA’s Awards Banquet, held April 12 in Vail, honored the best works on ski history published during 2012.

Billy Kidd

ISHA Lifetime Achievement Award: Broadcasting

Billy Kidd retired from ski racing due to injuries in 1972, after nine years on the U.S. Ski Team and two on the pro circuit. His significant role in presenting the sport on television started with the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, where Kidd provided color commentary for the alpine racing events. He remembers those Games as a career highlight—especially when Barbara Cochran, a fellow Vermonter, won a gold medal in slalom.

Kidd has since covered two additional Winter Olympics, most recently the 1998 Games in Nagano, as well as numerous World Cup alpine events and freestyle competitions, working at various times for all three networks: NBC, CBS and ABC. He skied down several World Cup downhill courses—including Aspen, Wengen and Val d’Isere—while carrying a hand-held camera to show a racer’s-eye view of the terrain, and also headed down an Olympic slalom course on hockey skates to demonstrate for viewers the icy conditions of a well-prepared world-class slalom venue.

Kidd hosted a 30-minute syndicated television show, American Ski Scene, that aired for a decade. With segments taped at ski resorts across the country, he covered the lifestyle, business and sport of skiing, from colorful personalities to travel and ski instruction. He also traveled to Iran in 1978 with Suzy Chaffee, at the invitation of the Shah, to create a promotional film by Dick Barrymore about ski resorts in that country. He hosted a long-running radio show for NBC and appeared in numerous ski-instruction segments for CNN. 

Kidd’s racing results include his well-known silver medal in slalom at the 1964 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck—the first American man to win an Olympic medal in alpine skiing, an honor he shared with Jimmie Heuga—and a gold and two bronze medals from the FIS World Championships.

Kidd’s wide-ranging media experience includes developing Billy Kidd’s Ski Racing Book, which was also published as a video, as well as numerous magazine articles for SKI and Skiing. Though he has not worked in broadcast journalism for a number of years, he can be found many winter days on the slopes of Steamboat, Colorado, where he serves as director of skiing and leads a free afternoon clinic for guests. He has lived in Steamboat for 43 years.

Skade Award

The Sun Valley Story

By Van Gordon Sauter

Sun Valley’s storied ski history has required a number of books to describe its fascinations. Van Gordon Sauter’s book is fifth in line—and among the finest. The book begins with chapters on the pre-skiing history of the Snake River area, including a marvelous display of old Western prints. The following chapters document and illustrate the excitement that Sun Valley brought to the sport of skiing: It was the first American ski resort to combine a luxurious high-mountain hotel with 3,000-vertical-foot lifts and open slopes ideal for teaching. Instruction was courtesy of the first full Austrian ski school in America.

There were other advantages, knowledgeably pointed out by the author. Sun Valley was the first American resort connected to both coasts by rail, and also the first to establish a powerful public relations campaign. A glittering circle of celebrities—including Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Bing Crosby, Claudette Colbert and Ernest Hemingway—convened on the Sun Valley slopes.

The Sun Valley Story presents many previously unpublished Sun Valley scenes, with a cascade of photographs and illustrations. It also brings the Sun Valley story up to date. One of the last chapters focuses on an annual intellectual get-together that equals the stature of the famed Aspen Institute: Allen and Company’s most recent Sun Valley Conference was attended by 600 global elite. Event host Herbert Allen summed up the Sun Valley experience by saying, “The whole place is magic.”  The book proves that beyond doubt.

Author Van Gordon Sauter is a former president of CBS News and Fox News who began his journalism career as a reporter for the Detroit Free Press and the Chicago Daily News. The book includes a foreward by Academy Award winning actor, director and producer Clint Eastwood, who first visited Sun Valley in the 1940s with his parents and later purchased a home there. It was published by Mandala Media, publishers of the award-winning Sun Valley Magazine and numerous coffee-table and regional guidebooks. —Morten Lund

The Sun Valley Story by Van Gordon Sauter; Mandala Media LLC; 204 pages in coffee-table format, profusely illustrated with vintage and modern photographs.

Skade Award

Lost Ski Areas of the Southern Adirondacks

By Jeremy Davis

The first U.S ski lift, a rope tow, was built in 1933 in Woodstock, Vermont. Twelve years later, hundreds of ski areas had been built in the Northeast. But within the next decade, quite a few of them closed. This historical fact has allowed Jeremy Davis to write three books about the hills that didn’t make it, previously covering “lost” ski areas of the White Mountains of New Hampshire (2008) and Southern Vermont (2010).

An introductory chapter of his latest book, Lost Ski Areas of the Southern Adirondacks, describes athriving region whose future was boosted the day the first ski train arrived at North Creek Station on March 4, 1934. A vintage photo shows the platform full of skiers, waiting for cars to haul them to nearby Ticonderoga and Old Forge. The next winter, the area’s first rope tow opened at North Creek, and soon there were three operations within walking distance of the station. The race to build was on.

The multiplicity of ski areas in the Southern Adirondacks created the first ski-area bubble—the region overbuilt. Thirty-nine ski areas in the region either quickly or eventually closed, and can now be seen only in the book’s black and white illustrations.

When not prospecting for vanished ski areas, Davis is a dedicated lifetime skier and private weather forecaster, working out of Glens Falls, New York. He counts as “lost” only ski areas that had at least one lift. To locate ruins, he has collected old brochures and researched ads in library magazine collections. He has also had great help from contributors who sign onto his NELSAP Website (“New England Lost Ski Areas Project”) to provide leads. In all, Davis has located the remains of 600 early Northeast ski areas, now extinct. In terms of history, his research indicates that ski areas in the Northeast—both lost and surviving—likely surpassed the impact of ski areas in the rest of the nation in driving the early sport of American skiing to success. —Morten Lund

Lost Ski Areas of the Southern Adirondacks by Jeremy Davis; History Press; softcover, 160 pages with extensive black and white illustrations.

Ullr Award

Fifty Years of Serious Fun

By K2 Sports and Funny Feelings LLC

To mark its 50th anniversary, the K2 company hired Funny Feelings LLC—the talented editorial and design firm that publishes The Ski Journal and two other magazines—to produce a commemorative book. The result is 50 Years of Serious Fun, a rollicking title that traces the company’s evolution from “garage brand to global.”

Led by publisher Jeff Galbraith, the Funny Feelings crew conducted close to 100 interviews and sifted through the company’s extensive archives— including press clippings, photos, brochures, tech manuals and much more—to present this corporate success story.

Organized by decade and packed with photos, the book starts with Bill Kirschner, who in 1962 applied the technology from his family’s veterinary kennel-manufacturing business to create his first ski, featuring a fiberglass-wrapped torsion box. A subsequent section, titled “The Relentless Pursuit of the Strange,” covers the irreverent marketing campaign led by Terry Heckler that established the “cult of K2” in the early 1970s and built the brand’s identity.

The campaign’s most iconic image—the Chew K2 barn, on a highway near Stevens Pass, Washington—is featured on the book’s cover, and the table of contents shows a photo of the K2 “farm,” a spoof that depicted the company’s headquarters as a “motley assortment of trailers and tin-roofed warehouses.”

The book balances commentary from company insiders with the worldclass athletes—from racers to freeskiers—who have established K2 as an American icon, including Spider Sabich, Steve and Phil Mahre, Wayne Wong, Glen Plake and Shane McConkey, and those who continue to define the brand, like Sean Pettit and Seth Morrison. Other sections cover the company’s successful expansion: Based in the SoDo neighborhood of Seattle, K2 Sports is now an international portfolio of 14 brands and more than 40 consumer-product companies, from skis and snowboards to inline skates and apparel.

50 Years of Serious Fun by K2 Sports and Funny Feelings LLC (Jeff Galbraith, publisher); 194 pages, softcover, hardcover and hardcover with case.

Ullr Award

Colorado Powder Keg

By Michael W. Childers

In the frigid early morning hours of October 19, 1998, William Rodgers raced along the snowcovered ridgeline of the Vail ski resort, setting fires. In a matter of minutes, flames had engulfed six buildings across the mountain, including the aging ski patrol headquarters and opulent Two Elk Lodge. The most notorious act of ecoterrorism in American history, causing $12 million in damages to Colorado’s largest ski resort, the Vail arson attack epitomized the divisive political battles over the development of ever-larger corporate-owned ski resorts on America’s public lands in the latter half of the 20th century.

Colorado Powder Keg: Ski Resorts and the Environment examines Colorado’s ski industry and the emergence of the new postindustrial West, where mountains have become more valuable as ski resorts than rangelands, causing the transformation of once-rural mountain towns into sprawling resort communities and placing ski resorts at the center of the debate over the region’s future.

Childers’ book covers key milestones in this evolution, such as the development of the Winter Park ski resort by the city of Denver in the late 1930s and the construction of I-70 and the opening of the Eisenhower Tunnel in 1973. It devotes a detailed chapter to the 1972 defeat by Colorado voters of the state’s bid to host the 1976 Winter Olympics, which galvanized a coalition of antigrowth advocates, environmentalists, ranchers and fiscal conservatives under the leadership of Richard Lamm. The final two chapters discuss the controversy surrounding the construction of Beaver Creek, the industry’s consolidation, and the struggle over Vail’s Category III expansion. The book concludes with a look towards the industry’s future and potential looming crises, such climate change and the continued struggle over growth.

Childers, who was raised in the Colorado mountain town of Fraser, is a professor at Northern University of Arizona. A 19th and 20th century historian, he specializes in environmental and cultural history. To research this book—his first—he drew on books, newspaper and magazine articles, ski-resort statistics, U.S. Forest Service documents, real estate and tourism records, wildlife data and additional public records.

Colorado Powder Keg: Ski Resorts and the Environmental Movement by Michael W. Childers; University Press of Kansas; 234 pages, hardcover.

Film Award

Passion for Snow

Produced by Stephen Waterhouse, Lisa Densmore and Rick Moulton

The influence of Dartmouth College on American skiing is deeper, earlier and more widespread than that of any comparable institution. Passion for Snow, an authoritative DVD, is crammed with Dartmouth’s remarkable ski history. Dartmouth skiers organized the first American slalom, giant slalom and downhill. Dartmouth also worked successfully to establish regional and then nationwide alpine racing at a time when established national competitions were solely decided by point scores in ski jumping and cross-country.

In 1909, an undergrad established the successful Dartmouth Outing Club, whose competitors soon became a formidable force in ski history—more than one hundred Dartmouth men and women have played a part in the Winter Olympics. And 37 Dartmouth students and teachers have been elected to the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame, from racers and coaches to ski resort founders and winter sport shop pioneers. The film highlights many of these interesting characters. The film also examines Dartmouth’s role in the 10th Mountain Division—with archival footage showing the soldiers training at Camp Hale and battling in Italy—and that group’s leadership in postwar ski resort start-ups.

Passion for Snow has deep and beautiful moments. One is the 1988 sequence showing the late Diana Golden, Dartmouth’s first Olympic gold medal ski champion, executing a flawless descent on a giant slalom course at Calgary, on a single leg, in the adaptive ski competition.

The film is based in part on Stephen Waterhouse’s previously published book Passion for Skiing. Waterhouse served as executive producer for the film, with Lisa Densmore as producer and ISHA director Rick Moulton as associate producer. Dartmouth graduate Buck Henry, an Academy Award-nominated actor and screenwriter, narrated the film. —Morten Lund

Passion for Snow by Stephen Waterhouse, Lisa Densmore and Rick Moulton; 62-minute DVD plus extra footage included.

Film Award

Vail: The Rise of America’s Iconic Ski Resort

By Roger C. Brown

When Vail celebrated its 50th anniversary on December 15, one of the high points was the premiere of a new Roger Brown film, recapping the history of the resort. Brown, who shot promotional films for Vail in the 1960s and ’70s, had access to his own high-quality footage, and also to film shot for the original Vail Associates fundraising campaign between 1959 and 1962. He also had solid interviews with key Vail personnel, filmed recently and decades ago. The result—titled Vail: The Rise of America’s Iconic Ski Resort—is a great promotion for Vail, but it’s also a valuable oral history of the great ski boom of America’s midcentury. The script highlights the biography of Pete Seibert, but it also makes clear the critical role of Earl Eaton in finding, founding and building the resort.

Eaton is the unsung hero of Vail’s story, and it’s wonderful to see him age gracefully through the hour-long production, with something meaningful to say in each decade of his long life. The same can be said of Bob Parker, Morrie Shepard and Sarge Brown, whose lives intersected the invention of Vail. The shots of Pete and Earl skiing deep powder (on 1950s-era skis and boots) are worth the price of admission. So are the high-quality scenes of Camp Hale, with a couple of tantalizing glimpses of Cooper Hill. Interviews with many of the early backers—Jack Tweedy, George and Ellie Caulkins, Christie Blanche Hauserman Hill, among others—make clear the precarious, not to say miraculous, financing of Vail Associates. The script also details the setbacks (and the gondola disaster) that led to the corporation’s failure, and examines the 1998 arson fire. Mostly, though, the movie is great fun, with shots of Serge Couttet, Roger Staub, the sexually-charged club scene, the hairball gelandesprung contests of the late 1960s and the FIS Championships of 1989.

Roger Cotton Brown is a filmmaker based in Gypsum, Colorado; he was the principal cinematographer at Vail from 1962, when the resort opened, until 1989. He has continued to film in and around the Vail Valley and Colorado since then. —Seth Masia

Vail: The Rise of America’s Iconic Ski Resort, by Roger Cotton Brown; Summit Films, Inc.; 60-minute DVD.

2012 Honorable Mentions

Skade Award

The History of Cranmore Mountain by Tom Eastman

Never a Bad Year For Snow! by Henry M. Yaple

Women of Vail by Elaine Kelton and Carolyn Pope

Ullr Award

Historical Dictionary of Skiing by E. John B. Allen

The Straight Course by Dick Dorworth

Shut Up and Ski by Edie Thys Morgan

 

 

The recorded history of skiing is found in academic papers, books, filmed documentaries, and skiing history web sites that have been created by a worldwide community of dedicated researchers, historians, writers, and videographers who have focused their time and expertise on a wide range of historical topics.

 

Since 1994, ISHA has annually recognized the very best of skiing history that results from these efforts.

 

Through 2009, ISHA has given 107 awards to the individuals who, in aggregate, are responsible for documenting and communicating the history of the sport. The individuals and their output are, within the world of skiing history, akin to Oscar, Emmy, or Pulitzer winners who are honored in the film, television, and print worlds.

 

ISHA’s Annual Awards Gala – - – which is held during the annual Skiing Heritage Week – - – is the event where these prestigious awards are presented.

 

ISHA Awards have been given in the following categories:

 

Lifetime Achievement Award: given for career contributions over a substantial period of time to ski history, ski journalism, ski photography or ski film including digital formats.

 

Ullr Award: given for a single outstanding contribution or several contributions to the historical record in book form.

 

Skade Award: given for one outstanding book on regional ski history or for an outstanding work focused only in part on ski history.

 

Film Award: given for one outstanding contribution to the historical record in filmmaking including digital formats such as Video, CD or DVD.

 

Photography Award: given for an outstanding contribution to the historical record in photography, in film or digital form.

 

Curatorial Award: given for an outstanding work in mounting excellent exhibitions on the history of skiing for a nationally recognized museum.

 

Special Award: given for outstanding contribution to the historical record outside the above categories. Special Awards have been given in traditional ski song and in ski book publishing.

 

Cyber Award: given for designing and maintaining a website that contributes substantially to the preservation, spread, and expansion of the ski history record.

 

Beginning in 1994, ISHA has given awards to 120 recipients.

 

1992 First Annual Gathering Whistler BC

No awards given

 

1993 Second Annual Gathering Sun Valley. Idaho

Sir Arnold Lunn Lifetime Achievement Award for History

John Henry Auran Lifetime Achievement Award for Journalism

 

1994 Third Annual Gathering Park City, Utah

William Banks Berry Lifetime Achievement Award for Journalism

James Laughlin Lifetime Achievement Award for Journalism

Peter Miller Lifetime Achievement Award for Journalism

John B. Allen Ullr Award for From Skisport to Skiing

David Goodman Ullr Award for Classic Backcountry Skiing

Rick Richards Ullr Award for Ski Pioneers

 

1995 Fourth Annual Gathering Aspen, Colorado

Bill Dunaway Lifetime Achievement Award for Journalism

Dr. Jacob Vaage Lifetime Achievement Award for History

James Sloan Allen Ullr Award for Romance of Commerce and Culture

Dolores LaChapelle Ullr Award for Deep Powder Snow

Friedl Pfeifer Ullr Award for Nice Goin’, My Life on Skis

Marty Sterling Ullr Award for Days of Stein and Roses

 

1996 Fifth Annual Gathering Stowe, Vermont

John Fry Lifetime Achievement Award for Journalism

Roland Palmedo Lifetime Achievement Award for Journalism

Allen Adler Ullr Award for New England and Thereabouts—A Ski Tracing

Miggs and Dick Durrance Ullr Award for The Man on the Medal

Beth and George Gage Ullr Award for Fire on the Mountain

Otto Lang Ullr Award for A Bird of Passage

Glenn Parkinson Ullr Award for First Tracks

 

1997 Sixth Annual Gathering Aspen, Colorado

John C. Jay Lifetime Achievement Award for Film Making

Gretchen Besser Ullr Award for The National Ski Patrol, Samaritans of the Snow

Mary E. Hayes Ullr Award for The Story of Aspen

Luanne Pfeiffer Ullr Award for Gretchan’s Gold

Dick Barrymore Lifetime Achievement Award for Film Making

 

1998 Seventh Annual Gathering Squaw Valley, California

Roger Brown Lifetime Achievement Award for Film Making

Barry Corbet Lifetime Achievement Award for Film Making

Bill Tanler Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism

Louis Dawson Ullr Award for Wild Snow

Robert Frohlich Ullr Ward for Mountain Dreamers

Edna Berg & Anna Cicale Skade Award for Cold Smoke

Joy Lucas Skade Award for It Started in the Mountains

 

1999 Eighth Annual Gathering Mont Tremblant, Quebec

David Rowan Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism

Doug Pfeiffer Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism

Frankie O’Rear Ullr Award for Chateau Bon Vivant, The Aspen Story, The Mont Tremblant Story

W endolyn Holland Ullr Award for Sun Valley, An Extraordinary History

Danielle Soucy Skade Award for La Vallée de la Diable (The Devil’s River Valley)

Blais Arbique and Marc Blais Skade Award for Mont Tremblant: Following the Dream

 

2000 Ninth Annual Gathering Banff, Alberta

William Oscar Johnson Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism

Morten Lund Lifetime Achievement Award In Journalism

Gene Rose Ullr Award for Magic Yosemite Winters

Alan Engen Ullr Award for For the Love of Skiing

Stan Cohen Ullr Award for Downhill Skiing; The Games of ’36

Rodney Touche Skade Award for Brown Cows, Sacred Cows

 

2001 Tenth Annual Gathering Sun Valley, Idaho

Dick Dorworth Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism

Peter Seibert Ullr Award for Vail, Triumph of a Dream

Dick Hauserman Ullr Award for The Inventors of Vail

Dan Wendkin and Ellie Huggins Special Award for Publishing

Bill Wilson Skade Award for Challenging the Mountain, The Life and Times of Wendell Robie

 

2002 Eleventh Annual Gathering Vail, Colorado

Charley Meyers Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism

Mary Hayes Ullr Award for The Aspen Story

The Red Birds Ski Club Ullr Award for The Trail Breakers

Bernard Mergen Skade Award for Snow In America

Catharine McKenty and George Neil Skade Award for Skiing Legends and the Laurentian Ski Club

 

2003 Twelfth Annual Gathering Deer Valley, Utah

Bill Grout Lifetime Achievement Award in Publishing

Mike Korologos Lifetime Achievement Award for Journalism

Alf Engen and Ullr Award for First Tracks: 100 Years of Utah Greg Thompson Ski History

Alex Kelner Ullr Award for Skiing in Utah

Michel Beaudry Ullr Award for Against All Odds: Whistler

David Gonzales Ullr Award for Jackson Hole: On a Grand Scale

Tom Bie Ullr Award for Steamboat Springs: Ski Town USA

Ingrid Wicken Skade Award for Pray for Snow

 

2004 Thirteenth Gathering Mammoth Mt., California

Warren Miller Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism

Carson White Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism

Martin Forstnzer Ullr Award for Mammoth, the Sierra Legend

Gary Schwartz Ullr Award for Skiing Literature and The Art of Skiing.

Sonja Stallions Ullr Award for A Rough Way to Ride Between Sky and Earth

Peter Shelton Ullr Award for Climb to Conquer

Seth Masia Cyber Award for skiinghistory.org

 

2005 Fourteenth Gathering Stowe, Vermont

Dick Needham Lifetime Achievement Award

Henry Yaple Ullr Award for Ski Bibliography

Peter Oliver Ullr Award for Stowe: A New England Classic

Charles Sanders Ullr Award for The Boys of Winter

Irv Naylor Skade Award for Ski Roundtop—40 Years of Excellence

Rick Moulton and Ian Scully Film Award for Legacy: Austrian Ambassadors

 

 

2006 Fifteenth Skiing Heritage Week Vail, Colorado

Nick Howe Lifetime Achievement in Ski Journalism

Karen Lorentz Lifetime Achievement Award in Ski Journalism

Bill Briggs Special Award in Traditional Ski Song

Bob Parker Ullr Award for “What Did You Do in the War. Dad?”

Roger Brown Ullr Award for Requiem for the West

Jack McEnany Ullr Award for Ski Fast, Be Good, Have Fun

David Rowan ISHA Service Award

Lisa Olken Film Award for Ski! A Century of Colorado Skiing

 

2007 Sixteenth Skiing Heritage Week Vail. Colorado

Joe Jay Jalbert Lifetime Achievement Award in Film

John Fry Ullr Award The Story of Modern Skiing

Cal Conniff Skade Award Skiing In Massachusetts

Jeff Leich Curatorial Award New England Ski Museum

Morten Lund ISHA Service Award

 

2008 Seventeenth Skiing Heritage Week, Aspen, Colorado

E. John B. Allen Ullr Award for The Culture and Sport of Skiing From Antiquity to World War II

Byron Rempel Ullr Award for No Limits: the Amazing Life of Rhoda and Rhona Wurtele, Canada’s Olympian Skiing Pioneers

Rick Moulton ISHA Film Award for Ski Sentinels: the Story of the National Ski Patrol

Ingrid Wicken Skade Award for Skiing in Southern California

FIS/Gunter Witt ISHA Service Award for Skiing in the Fine Arts

Bill Kerig ISHA Film Award for Steep

Greg Stump ISHA Film Award, Lifetime Achievement

John Christie Skade Award for The Story of Sugarloaf

 

2009 Eighteenth Annual Skiing Heritage Week, Mammoth, California

E. John B Allen Lifetime Achievement Award for Ski History

Dick Barrymore Lifetime Achievement Award for Film

Paul Ryan Lifetime Achievement Award for Film and Photography

Mary Kerr Skade Award for A Mountain Love Affair; The Story of Mad River Glen.

Nils Larsen ISHA Film Award for Skiing in the Shadow of Genghis Kahn

Robin Morning Skade Award for Tracks of Passion: Eastern Sierra Skiing,

Dave McCoy, and Mammoth Mountain.

Jeremy Davis Cyber Award for The New England Lost Ski Areas Project

Roland Huntford Ullr Award for Two Planks and a Passion

 

2010 Nineteenth Annual Skiing Heritage Week, Park City, Utah

Steinar Hybertsen, ISHA Film Award for Norwegian Ski Legends

Henry Purcell, Skade Award for Portillo, Spirit of the Andes

David Antonucci, Ullr Award for Snowball’s Chance, the Story of the 1960 Winter Games

Chic Scott, Skade Award for Deep Powder and Steep Rock: The Life of Mountain Guide Hans Gmoser

Karin Rase, Ullr Award for Skiing in Art and Design

Lowell Skoog, ISHA Cyber Award for alpenglow.org

 

2011 Twentieth Annual Skiing Heritage Week, Sun Valley, Idaho

Tim Ryan, Lifetime Achievement Award for Broadcast Journalism

Dick Dorworth, Ullr Award for The Perfect Turn — And Other Tales of Skiing and Skiers

Stephen L. Waterhouse, Ullr Award for Passion for Skiing

Kitzbühel Ski Club, Ullr Award for Hahnenkamm: The Chronicle of a Myth

E. John B. Allen and Egon Theiner, Ullr Award for 100 Years of International Skiing

European Broadcasting Union, Film Award for 100 Years FIS

Dave Irons, Skade Award for Sunday River

James Benelli, Skade Award for Ski Tales: The History of China Peak and Sierra Summit

ISHA SKIING PIONEER AWARD

ISHA established this award program to posthumously honor 1-2 individuals per year.

Honoree are intended to be significant, long-time ski industry persons who had a deep commitment to and made contributions to the sport over many years of industry service. Further, a Pioneer awardee is intended to be someone whose great spirit and presence caused them to have industry wide friendships which embody the “comaraderie” and spirit that Mason Beekley felt should be an essential element of ISHA. The honoree should be a person whose “life story” is an inspiration to skiers and historians, and whose personality is a significant element of the very colorful backdrop of the sport.

ISHA has made two Skiing Pioneer awards:

George Bauer (2008) – George Bauer, the late publisher of Ski Magazine (Remembering, September issue), personified what was exciting and fun about skiing. George organized the annual Streeter Cup, which brought together past Olympic, World Cup, and U.S. Ski Team racers. He was also responsible for the creation of Ski Industry Week, the Ski Business Hall of Fame, and the Sun Valley/Ski Magazine 50th Anniversary Celebration. And he kept the Legends of American Skiing alive and thriving.

Stu Campbell (2009) – Stu Campbell ranks as one of America’s most influential ski teachers. He was a profound thinker about technique and ski equipment testing. He was a terrific teacher and innovator, a patient mentor, a man of wisdom and humility, generous a kind hearted , and because of his passion for the sport, had a legion of like minded friends, colleagues and admirers in the sport. His spirit is captured in a quote attributed to him, “Every turn you make is good for the soul.”