Resorts

Major storms and massive snow years are the stuff of every skier's dreams. And access-road nightmares.

Photo above: Clearing Chinook Pass, elevation 5,430 feet (1,635m), in Mt. Rainier National Park, Washington, in 2011. Photo courtesy Mt. Rainier National Park.

It was President’s Day weekend of 2021 before Alta shook off a snow slump with an active weather pattern that dumped most of the weekend, eased slightly, then entered another cycle. Highway officials closed the road to Snowbird and Alta at midnight for avalanche control work. At Alta, the town marshal ordered an “interlodge,” confining all residents and guests indoors until avalanche work had been completed. That inconvenience is a powder skier’s dream, because it guarantees first tracks when the siege ends.

Ten more inches (25cm) fell between midnight and 8:00 a.m., then a natural slide around 10 a.m. took out Highway 210 and the Bypass Road between Alta and the Bird, and everyone stayed locked down for another day and night. On Wednesday more avalanches buried 210 under 14 feet (4.2 meters) of snow and debris, and swept a snowplow and snowcat off the Seven Sisters area of the highway. Luckily, no one was hurt.

Sixty hours after it began, Alta’s longest interlodge ever (they’ve been doing it since at least 1975) ended early Thursday morning. The road was still closed, but lifts opened at 11:00 a.m. The 65 inches of fresh snow since the lockdown started was untouched, and no one from the outside world could get there for hours. It’s what locals call a Country Club day, for one of powder skiing’s most exclusive clubs. But it had come with a price, making it the perfect symbol of all the good and bad that happens when ski resorts get buried.

Most ski areas have kept fairly consistent snowfall records since lift planning began. Snowstake readings are notoriously unreliable, but some records are certified by national weather services. For instance, in the United States, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says that the largest single-storm dump in the United States (and possibly in the world) occurred in 1959, in the Cascades of northern California. Mt. Shasta Ski Bowl recorded 189 inches (4.8m) over a seven-day period. Mount Shasta City, 4,000 feet (1,200m) lower, reported 33 inches (84cm) during the first day of the storm. Locals considered this normal.

It wasn’t normal for the ski area, because it was its first year of operation. The Ski Bowl had just opened a double chairlift on the southern flank of 14,179-foot Mount Shasta, with a base lodge at 7,850 feet. The storm rolled in on February 13 and over the week delivered nearly 16 feet—27 inches (70cm) per day.

The skiing must have been insane, the kind of godsend that could mint a new ski area’s reputation. But heavy snow brought problems, too: In January 1978, an avalanche wiped out the original lift, closing the Ski Bowl for good. Mt. Shasta Ski Park, opened in 1985, was sited 2,300 feet (700m) lower.

1993 and the Storm of the Century

Big storms and big snow years often concentrate on one region, but occasionally a winter comes along that crushes the whole country. It happened in the spring of 1993, when the “Storm of the Century” capped what was already a record season.

That year, Oregon’s Mount Bachelor would tally its second snowiest year on record with over 600 inches (15m), compared to its healthy annual average of 462 (11.7m). The Sierras picked up nine feet (2.7m) between Christmas and New Year’s Day, effectively barricading a huge chunk of Heavenly Valley’s holiday business. At Mammoth, it snowed three feet on the last night of September. The area opened on October 8 and closed for skiing in mid-August—an amazing season for a non-glacier-based resort. The downside included numerous gas line ruptures, explosions and fires because people couldn’t keep their propane tanks and lines clear of the snow weight.

At Squaw Valley locals savored every minute. The resort stayed open all year for the first time ever, keeping the Bailey’s Beach lift running through the summer until opening day in the fall. “Everyone had a great old time skiing all the new runs in the trees when the passes and the upper mountain were closed,” said then-local Seth Masia. “National Chute, on Palisades where Warren Miller films a lot, normally has an 8- to 10-foot drop (3m) at the entrance. Even on a good winter. That year you just skied in.”

In Park City, Utah, the booming real estate market took a hit in January of ’93 because the weather was so consistently stormy no one wanted to go out and look at property. Crews had to dig out the Jupiter Bowl lift in several places before closing on April 15 with more snow than there’d been all season. And there was plenty: over 42½ feet, 7 feet more than the previous record.

One day in March Little Cottonwood Canyon had five avalanches, and Alta ended the season with a heroic 650.4 inches total compared to a remarkable average of 497 inches over its 82-year history.

In the Rockies, Jackson, Wyoming’s daunting Corbet’s Couloir got more traffic than ever before, due to what locals described as “the lessened fear factor” from the much shorter entry drop. And Big Sky, Montana, opened its steep Challenger Lift earlier than ever before, on Thanksgiving.

Colorado also got blitzed in early November when Aspen had more than double its average snowfall for the month and opened weeks earlier than it ever had. Winter Park got a quick 6½ feet (2m) that month and was able to open its new Parsenn Bowl on November 18 (with face shots up high) instead of in mid-January as anticipated. For the rest of ’93, Keystone got seven feet (2.1m) in February and promptly extended their closing date “indefinitely.” Statewide snow totals didn’t end up setting records, but most resorts reported an abundance of big powder days.

It wasn’t all glad tidings. In Durango, Colorado—a town well-accustomed to winter—the hardware stores ran out of snow shovels on January 14. More were flown in from Denver, but on the night of January 19, the roof of the empty Fort Lewis State College auditorium collapsed under the weight of snow that couldn’t be removed in time.

“Bad news for the college, good news for skiers,” Mike Smedley, media relations director at nearby Purgatory, told SKI Magazine after the blizzard. “As soon as that story hit the wire, our business shot up. People figured we must be buried and we were. There were days when we had 22 inches of new snow and less than a thousand skiers on the mountain.”

In Taos, New Mexico, General
Manager Mickey Blake told SKI he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen the snowbanks as high along their roads, and his plow crews had run out of places to put it.

New England Buried

The ’92-’93 season started with a bang in New England when one of the most brutish nor’easters in history assaulted the Atlantic seaboard, handing Killington, Vermont, its earliest opening (Oct. 1) in 31 years. The weather turned mild in December, then rebounded in February when Vermont got anywhere from 6 to 11½ feet (2m to 3.5m) of snow and 98 percent of the state’s ski terrain was open for the first time in years.

Beginning March 11 and 12, an arctic high-pressure system formed over the Midwest at the same time an extra-tropical low-pressure front built over the Gulf of Mexico. The Storm of the Century was the cyclonic result of their collision over an enormous sweep of the country, from the Deep South to New England. It dumped up to 3½ feet (2.3m) on March 12 and 13. Okemo reported record base depths, and Killington went into April with the most skiing in its 35-year history.

“Sugarbush was incredible,” SKI contributor Dana Gatlin reported. “Doug Lewis [U.S. ski racer] told me he was born there and had never seen it like that.” The resort kept the steep and rugged Castle Rock area opened for two months on natural snow, which hadn’t happened since the ’70s. “And traffic in town slowed to a crawl because no one could see over the snowbanks at intersections.”

Writer David Goodman reported much the same thing from Stowe. “I’ve never seen conditions like it. The ‘Storm of the Century’ was a skier’s blizzard because it was on a Saturday evening. Stowe got two feet and only one lift was running on Sunday. There was hardly anyone on the mountain because no one wanted to venture out. We hiked to runs like Lookout Trail, that hadn’t been opened in a decade.”

Regional Records

The Pacific Northwest routinely ranks as one of the continent’s snowiest areas. One reason is because the region is visited by “extra-tropical cyclones,” with high winds and big snow that knock out power and bring highways, airports and trains to a standstill. During one three-day La Niña–inspired pounding in January 2012, parts of Oregon got 50 inches (1.3m) of snow.

Mount Baker averages 662 inches (16.8m), arguably the most in the Lower 48. In 1998-99 they got a positively freakish, world-record 1,140 total inches (29m) and were open for the entire year.

Whistler, British Columbia, gets a 448-inch (11.4m) annual average. Like Mount Baker, in 1998-99 the resort got walloped, scoring 644 inches (16.4m).

Powder magazine editor Leslie Anthony commuted there that winter from his home in Toronto. “Records are nice and all, but what’s it like to ski during a winter of endless snowfall? Pretty freakin’ great. Glorious even,” he recalls. “Like the hyenas gorging on a dead elephant that skiers resemble when it comes to powder, day after day after day of a foot or more of snow meant skiing bell to bell day after day after day—until you simply couldn’t do it anymore. And with the highway frequently closed, locals had a lot of it to themselves. After 22 years living here now, I have yet to see people take days off to rest their legs the way they did that winter.”

Whether you count it as part of the Pacific Northwest or as a region all its own, Alaska is home to one of America’s snowiest ski areas: Alyeska. The resort averages 669 inches (17m) at the summit, where it received a record 978 inches (24.8m) in 2011-12. Alaskan backcountry and heliski destination Thompson Pass reported an American record–setting 78 inches (2m) in 24 hours in 1963.

California has been racking up absurd amounts of snowfall since accounts have been kept, like the suffocating 32½ feet (9.9m) in a month in 1911 at Tamarack, near what’s now the Bear Valley ski area. In 1982 Donner Summit reported 87½ inches (2.2m) in a single two-day storm. Squaw Valley’s season record stands at 728 inches (18.5m) in 2016-17. Mammoth posted 668.5 (17m) inches for 2010-11.

Utah’s Wasatch Range is legendary for big storms moving in from the West Coast with crazy amounts of moisture and passing across a desert and then the Great Salt Lake before slamming into the mountains and releasing everything. Alta averages 551 inches (14m) but in 1994-95 posted 745.4 inches (19m).

In 1921, Silver Lake, Colorado, near St. Mary’s Glacier, got 75.8 inches (1.9m) in 24 hours out of a system that delivered another foot (30cm) over the next few hours.

New England’s snowfall king remains Jay Peak, claiming an average 355 inches (9m), and topping 513 inches (13m) in 2000-01. Stowe has been tracking snowfall on lift-served slopes since 1933, and claims an average 314 inches (8m). The record came in 2000-01 at 432 inches (11m). Locals say mountain operations are rarely stymied by storms, ’93 notwithstanding. However, as Town Manager Charles Safford notes, they have only one road in and, “We occasionally have a car that can’t make it up Harlow Hill, blocking traffic.” It doesn’t happen often or for long, but when it does it can mean that those already on the mountain have it all to themselves for a few hours.

Which sums up the divine dilemma of snow dumps: When the weather’s really bad for normal people, the skiing is delightful. If you can get to it. 

Jay Cowan’s last piece for Skiing History was the story of the X-Games (January-February 2021).

Shuttered for five years, Maine's Saddleback Mountain has reopened. Can it do well by doing good?

December 15, 2020, dawned cold and windy—and with the Covid-19 pandemic raging. But that didn’t stop about 300 skiers and boarders from riding the new Rangeley high-speed quad at Saddleback Mountain near Rangeley, Maine. It was the first time in five seasons that the lifts had spun at Saddleback—one of New England’s hidden gems. And more than just the ski area’s loyalists were happy. The entire region breathed a sigh of relief.

“There’s been a steady stream of people who have come to me, some of them ecstatic, some of them just really emotional, about how much it means to them that the mountain is open again,” said Saddleback CEO and general manager Andy Shepard. He’s a former L.L. Bean executive who started the Maine Winter Sports Center (now Outdoor Sport Institute) to help revive the economy of Maine’s far northern Aroostook County and teach the area’s youth how to ski.

But this is more than a story of a shuttered ski area’s resurrection. In an era of mass consolidation in the ski industry, it’s a story about a new model of ski-area ownership built on the foundation of impact investing, a financial strategy, growing in popularity, aimed to deliver social benefits in addition to financial gains. In Saddleback’s case, it’s about bringing back jobs and helping the local economy, which in turn helps the local community.

When Saddleback opened on New Year’s Eve 1960—with a 4,120-foot summit and the highest base elevation in New England—the owners envisioned the resort becoming the “Sun Valley of the East.” It promised 2,000 vertical feet of skiing, 200 inches of snow annually, and stunning views of the Rangeley Lakes region—the lakes themselves offer four-season recreation. But the lofty ideal was never achieved. The secluded resort—a three-hour drive from Portland and four-plus hours from Boston—was perhaps too secluded, especially with limited lodging in the area. During Saddleback’s first 18 years, it had five owners.

In 1978, Donald Breen, a Massachusetts businessman, came along with plans to revive the ski area. But the Appalachian Trail corridor runs across Saddleback’s above-timberline summit, and Breen spent almost two decades battling the National Park Service over access rights to the trail corridor. By the time Breen and the NPS came to an agreement in 2000, the battle had derailed Breen’s expansion plans. He sold the area for $8 million to retired University of Maine geologist Bill Berry and his wife, Irene, in 2003.

For a decade, the Berrys ran Saddleback as a labor of love, improving snowmaking, enlarging the base lodge, adding more expert terrain, and replacing a vertiginous T-bar with a chairlift. Saddleback has always had a devoted community of skiers—“a sense of family that I have not experienced, and I’ve been in this business for a long time,” noted Shepard. Saddleback patrons included locals and part-time residents alike, with nary a distinction between them—unlike the contentious vibe between the two groups at many large resorts. Skier visits climbed steadily.

But the Berrys had to weather the Great Recession (2007-2009), and Saddleback lacked a high-speed chairlift—an amenity that has become a standard resort convenience, even at modest ski areas. As a result, annual skier visits began to decline.

Unwilling to invest further capital, the Berrys put Saddleback on the market for $12 million in December 2012. But no buyers came forth. Three years later, they announced that if they could not acquire $3 million in funding for a new chairlift, they would not open for the season.

Potential buyers came and went over the next four years, including a group of Saddleback faithful who wanted to operate the mountain as a nonprofit Mad River Glen-like co-op. Then came a shyster from Australia proposing an EB-5 Ponzi scheme similar to the failed debacle at Vermont’s Jay Peak. “The community was put through the wringer, hopes raised and dashed on a regular basis,” said Shepard.

Locals and Saddleback fans had almost given up hope when Shepard’s group rode in on a white horse. Or rather a horse of a different color. Knowing how important Saddleback was to the Rangeley community, Shepard had been working with the Berrys since 2014 to secure a suitable buyer. And with his experience founding the Maine Winter Sports Center, Shepard knew that the mountain was as important an economic driver to the Rangeley region as the Sports Center was to Aroostook County.

He knew Saddleback could be profitable—but only if someone would first inject millions of dollars into the infrastructure. But who was going to invest that kind of money in an out-of-the-way ski area and in an industry that is susceptible to climate change? A traditional investor looking for private equity-style returns would look elsewhere. The state's Department of Economic and Community Development knew where to look. Early in 2018, they brought in Boston-based  Arctaris Impact Fund, which has been investing in projects in the Rust Belt and other economically disadvantaged areas for more than a decade. Arctaris leverages non-traditional impact investors and nonprofit foundations that are motivated by making a societal difference and will settle for smaller returns, New Markets Tax Credits, state-guaranteed loans, and support from the community and local foundations. Saddleback fit the profile.

It took two years to close the agreement, but Arctaris purchased Saddleback on January 31, 2020, for $6.5 million, with a plan to invest $38 million over the next five years in new lifts, base lodge refurbishment, a new mid-mountain lodge, a solar array to power the mountain, a hotel, daycare center, employee housing, and other modern resort necessities. 

Arctaris co-founder Jonathan Tower sees the deal as a chance to revitalize a region hit hard by Saddleback’s closing. “This is about more than opening a mountain,” said Tower. “This is about restoring 200-plus jobs to the community. It’s about the regional economic impact of Saddleback. And it’s about the health and wellness benefits of an operational mountain.”

With negotiations complete, Arctaris asked Shepard to become Saddleback’s CEO and general manager. Shepard was especially attracted to the deep connection between mountain and community. “It’s more than a ski area,” he said. “It’s been a family to people. There’s a deep sense of responsibility that goes along with that. Knowing that we’re stewards of that kind of connection is important to me. I’ve tried to make sure we build an organization of people to whom that’s equally important.”

Both the pandemic and the regional economy made Saddleback’s first season a challenge. Many people who once worked at Saddleback have moved away, so the hiring pool is smaller than it once was. But Shepard is confident that workers will be lured back by competitive wages, a creative program to provide year-round benefits like health insurance to seasonal workers, and the soon-to-be-built employee housing and daycare center.

Saddleback’s modest pass prices for youth and elders is another nod to the community. Purchase a season pass in the spring and prices range from $30 (under 6) to $50 for local students to $30 for a super senior pass (80 and over)—a pass category that is no longer offered at most resorts. In addition, all passes can be purchased under an installment plan.

Shepard is equally confident that the new Rangeley high-speed quad, which cut the 11-minute ride time by more than half, a refurbished base lodge, and a planned mid-mountain lodge atop the quad will attract more skiers to Saddleback. The mid-mountain lodge will have views west to New Hampshire’s Mount Washington and a flat roof planted with sod and blueberry bushes so that the building is largely hidden from across the ridgeline.

When new skiers and riders discover Saddleback, Shepard hopes that they will integrate into the community, as has happened for generations. “People care for one another here,” he explained. “There’s very little judgment about political opinions and who’s got money and who doesn’t. It’s just people who love Saddleback, people who love doing things with family and friends.” 

A masterpiece of American alpine architecture was nearly lost. Then a skier came to its rescue. 

Timberline Lodge surely rates as one of the most gorgeous examples of mountain architecture ever built. Against the backdrop of the 11,239-foot summit of Oregon’s Mt. Hood, the structure appears to be part of nature itself.

Construction of the lodge originated with a 1930s Works Progress Administration (WPA) government program that provided jobs to unemployed Americans during the Great Depression. In 1935, Oregon ski enthusiasts persuaded an eager WPA to allocate up to a quarter-million dollars to build a lodge at the 6,000-foot-high base of the slope. A crew of 350 workers completed the four-story lodge in just 15 months, entirely by hand, inside and out.

And what a lodge it would be. On a massive stone understory, built to withstand the weight of 20-foot-deep snow on Mt. Hood, architect Gilbert Stanley Underwood constructed a central frame of hand-hewn ponderosa pine beams that soared 100 feet into the sky. A monstrous stone chimney capped America’s largest fireplace. Inside, artisans carved stunning stonework and wood bas-reliefs, wove rugs, forged wrought iron and created beautiful stained glass. Their artwork reflected native wildlife and pioneer folklore.

By the time Timberline opened in 1938, with 70 rooms and a vast, imposing public space, it rivaled Yosemite’s Ahwahnee and surpassed the new Lodge at Sun Valley as America’s greatest alpine hostelry. After World War II, however, the lodge fell on hard times. The ski operation faltered. Rooms were being rented to prostitutes, and finally it was forced to close. Neglect and deterioration followed. But in 1955, tender love and care came in the form of Dick Kohnstamm, a native New Yorker and outdoorsman who’d recently moved to Portland.

Kohnstamm refurbished the lodge and the lifts, using family money and government funding. So successful was the restoration that Kohnstamm was elected to the US National Ski Hall of Fame, and the Park Service placed Timberline Lodge on its National Register of Historic Places. And so it remains, America’s most majestic slopeside lodge. 

Excerpted from the December 2008 issue of SKI Magazine. John Fry (1930-2020) was editorial director of SKI and Snow Country magazines, and longtime president, then chairman, of ISHA. He authored the award-winning book The Story of Modern Skiing. His final book, published posthumously, is Abandon Foolish Scheme: Deadly encounters that you won’t find in bestsellers about dying.

Photo: Ray Atkeson’s darkly emotive 1945 pre-sunrise image of Mt. Hood’s Timberline Lodge ranks among the most beautiful snow scenes ever captured on film. Courtesy of SKI Magazine

Backcountry boon: Bolton Valley skiers head off-piste during the pandemic

Capitalizing on its backcountry roots from the 1920s, Bolton Valley, Vermont, is enjoying a business bump during the pandemic, as skiers are looking to continue to ski, just with more personal space.

The snow was deep, the surrounding hillsides dappled in low-angled winter sunlight. As we caught our breath from the two-hour skin-up to Nebraska Notch, below the summit of Vermont’s Bolton Mountain, we looked down at a bowl of untracked powder. No one else was around, only a few of us with randonée gear and some backcountry smarts.

This year, Bolton Valley Resort, located 30 minutes east of Burlington, Vermont, began offering season-long leases on backcountry equipment: alpine touring gear for skiers, split boards for snowboarders. The leases are not cheap—about double the price of alpine equipment leases. But they sold out immediately. It was a bright sign for the small ski resort that was about to face an uncertain winter with the Covid-19 pandemic raging. It showed that people wanted to get outside on skis, but with more space around them.

Adam DesLauriers was not surprised. He’s director of Bolton’s backcountry program and part of the family that started Bolton in the 1960s, then rebought the area in 2017. That’s when the resort began offering backcountry lessons, tours, rentals, and tickets, and the program has sold well. “I think our timing was spot on, especially this year,” Adam said. “Our backcountry program has exposed Bolton to a whole new market share—at least half of the people hiring guides or taking clinics have never been here before.”

DesLauriers notes that “while the backcountry program isn’t a huge profit generator for the resort, there’s no question it’s a worthy value added.” Plus, “we love it—and that stoke reverberates.”

Backcountry is not new at Bolton. It’s how the ski area got its start almost 100 years ago. In 1922, Edward Bryant—a World War I veteran and the grandnephew of Frederick Law Olmstead, the landscape architect who designed New York City’s Central Park—purchased 4,400 acres in Bolton. A graduate of the Harvard School of Forestry, Bryant wanted to reestablish spruce stands in the area. He was also a skier, cruising the woods on seven-foot-long skis, dressed in heavy wool pants and a long wool coat. Off the flank of Ricker Mountain, he cut Heavenly Highway, North Slope, and Snow Hole—trails that still exist in Bolton’s backcountry. He also built Bryant Lodge (which is now called Bryant Cabin). In the 1920s and ’30s, skiers hiked almost five miles up a logging road from the Winooski Valley to ski Bryant’s trails.

After World War II, to keep up with the times, Bryant wanted to install a rope tow and build a new base lodge. But he was unable to obtain financing. In failing health, Bryant died in 1951, and the loggers returned.

Then in 1963, dairy farmer Roland DesLauriers sold farmland in South Burlington and used the proceeds to buy 8,000 acres of mountainside in Bolton Valley. Roland’s son, Ralph, had recently graduated from the University of Vermont and liked to ski. Father and son formed the Bolton Valley Corporation and began developing a modern alpine ski resort. It would include a nordic area for traditional kick-and-glide cross-country skiing. Alpine ski equipment at the time did not lend itself to easy backcountry access. Only intrepid telemark skiers ventured into Bolton’s backcountry or side-country.

The master plan called for 14 chairlifts, five base areas, 75 miles of trails stretching 3,100-vertical feet, from the top of Bolton Mountain to I-89 in the Winooski Valley below. Also planned: a gondola up from the valley, a golf course and a village.

The initial buildout was more modest: 968 vertical feet, three chairlifts, nine trails, a base lodge, and 24 hotel rooms. At 2,050 feet elevation the base lodge was—and still is—Vermont’s highest, and New England’s highest Zip Code. Work began on May 1, 1966 on the 4.6-mile access road, and Bolton Valley opened the day after Christmas 1966. Twenty years later, the Timberline lift and lodge expansion extended the vertical to 1,625 feet.

Over three decades, DesLauriers added more amenities and terrain, including glades cut by sons Rob and Eric, who would go on to extreme skiing fame. But the master plan was a far-off Shangri-La that remained out of reach. In financial trouble, DesLauriers began to sell off parts of the resort, including the village base area and much of the land. With foreclosure looming, he sold the rest in 1997. “It was,” said son Adam, “a relief.”

Over the next two decades, owners came and went, making few expansions. Then on April 14, 2017, Ralph DesLauriers, daughter Lindsay, son Evan, and a small group of investors bought Bolton back. The landscape, they realized, had changed. Many skiers and boarders were looking for an antidote to megaresorts. And slowly backcountry skiing was growing thanks mostly to modern equipment, which made it more accessible. Perhaps Bolton’s future could be found in the powder stashes in the area’s less populated backcountry, spread across Mt. Mansfield State Forest. State land abuts the alpine resort to the west, north and east.

Adam, who skied in California’s Sierra Nevada in his ’20s, looked at Bolton with 21st century eyes and saw backcountry access as one of the resort’s strongest assets. Among other attributes, the Catamount Trail—Vermont’s skiing version of the Long Trail—runs through Bolton’s nordic center and backcountry terrain. It takes skiers to Nebraska Notch and then over to Stowe’s Trapp Family Lodge. “We have a strong history of backcountry access,” Adam said. “The amount of terrain we have access to here is unique, and there’s already a strong contingent of backcountry skiers in the area.”

Over the past four years, the DesLauriers—with Ralph now chairman of the board, Lindsay as president, Evan as special projects director, and Adam running the backcountry and nordic programs—have brought Ed Bryant’s vision back to life. And it’s been popular. Skiers boot up in Bolton’s sports center and head out for their own exploration or sign up for a lesson or guided tour.

While Bolton’s alpine terrain may be small by modern standards, the 4,000 acres of mapped backcountry terrain is world class, with everything from mellow maple and birch glades to narrow gullies, cliff bands, and large rocks to launch off. “After 50 years, we’re about seven years into the master plan,” Ralph recently said in a vlog titled “Story Time With Ralph.”

Bolton’s original master plan never included backcountry skiing, but it should have. It really is Bolton’s ace in the hole. Even without a pandemic. 

Before Aspen, Ashcroft and Mount Hayden promised a cable car, ‘immense schusses,’ a village for 2,000. Then World War II intervened.

Photo above: A map drawn by Roch of his vision for a ski resort in the greater Aspen area. Courtesy Aspen Historical Society.

It is difficult now to realize that Aspen’s skiing development did not start in town but out on Castle Creek, where the Highland Bavarian Lodge housing two European guides was to offer ski touring for wealthy clients.

What a curious tale. During the summer of 1936, one-time Aspen resident Tom Flynn was peddling mining claims and happened on Billy Fiske at a party in Pasadena, California. Fiske came from a wealthy Chicago banking family. He was a sometime dilettante Hollywood film maker, flyer, member of the gold-winning Olympic bobsled team in 1928, and captain of the sled that was victorious four years later at the Lake Placid Games.

Fiske was as well-known on the Cresta run in Switzerland as he was in England’s society circles. Flynn showed him photographs of the mining claims but it was the area as a possible ski region that attracted Fiske, just as those photos had impressed Ted Ryan, New York banker, heir to the Anaconda Copper fortune and brother of Mont Tremblant developer Joe Ryan.

Fiske, Ryan, and Flynn bought land on Castle Creek, started construction of the Highland Bavarian Lodge, hired Swiss skier, mountaineer and already avalanche expert, André Roch, along with Gunther Langes, a south Tyrolian who had organized the world’s first giant slalom, on Italy’s Marmolata in 1935. The two made the trans-Atlantic crossing and arrived in Aspen in December 1936.

We know much of this from the article Roch wrote for the Swiss ski journal Der Schneehase. From this article and from Ted Ryan’s papers, deposited with the Aspen Historical Society, “what might have been” can be pieced together. For admirers of “what if” history, it makes for a fascinating study.

Roch and Langes believed they were being hired to scout out land in Colorado where a major ski resort might be financed, much the way Count Felix Schaffgotsch had done a year earlier for Union Pacific Railroad’s chairman Averell Harriman, which led to Sun Valley, America’s first purpose-built winter ski resort.

However, when the two arrived in Aspen they discovered “with some unease” that they were not to explore the Rocky Mountains, since Fiske and Ryan had already chosen the location. Their remit was “simply to verify its excellence, to check on terrain and climate,” all to ensure that the location was suitable for “the launching of a big winter sports resort.” However charming the lodge might be, Roch was immediately critical of the setting of the Highland Bavarian Lodge at the juncture of Castle Creek and Conundrum, about five miles from Aspen.

In a steep-sided, avalanche-prone valley, with wind-battered snowfields far above the tree line, this was not the St. Moritz of America. Worst of all, wealthy guests from Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Chicago had already been booked into the Lodge and expected to revel in pristine snowfields, guided by experienced Europeans…and it was a snow poor December.

The Lodge was not even finished, so Roch and Langes bedded down in Aspen’s Jerome Hotel and took clients up towards what is now Little Annie. Fiske and Ryan saw the town of Aspen, with its road connections to Glenwood Springs and over Independence Pass, and its railroad, as the hub of skiing. Before Roch left in June 1937, he had marked out a trail for the newly-formed ski club to cut. This became known as the Roch Run.

But 12 miles out of Aspen, farther on up the Castle Creek valley, lay Ashcroft, population one, remnant of a mining outpost. Now, said Roch, there was a real possibility as it sat in a natural bowl surrounded by 12,000-foot peaks. With plenty of options for ski runs on east and north-facing slopes, it would be “a resort without competition.”

Roch climbed from Ashcroft towards Hayden Peak on January 15, 1937. He turned back before reaching the top but had seen enough of the Conundrum valley and had admired the surrounding peaks: Pyramid, Snowmass, Castle, Cathedral and most spectacularly, the Maroon Bells.

That spring Roch, Langes and Fiske climbed Hayden. Soon after, renowned Eastern skiers like Otto Schniebs came out to be amazed by the spectacular West. And from Denver came ski manufacturer Thor Groswold and skiing man-about-town Frank Ashley. Other areas were explored, too.

The conclusion was inescapable: Fiske and Ryan had untouched resort territory. The road into Ashcroft would need rebuilding and in some places re-routing to avoid avalanches. Hotels were planned to hold 2,000 skiers. That figure was gauged to make a cable car up Mount Hayden economically feasible. The accompanying map indicates the lifts with the mid station marked leading to a second lift to reach a hotel at the top, some 3,000 feet above the valley floor.

Beginners were not forgotten, with the more gentle ski fields near the road, and two jumps were planned. Roch added comments, underscoring the importance of slopes on the north and eastern sides; south- and west-facing slopes had too much sun, too little snow and the western side was subject to winds. The first of two connecting chairs was proposed from Ashcroft to Monument. The second chair was to reach the summit of Electric Peak, providing a 2,000-foot-plus vertical.

This was vital because it would give access to Hayden’s ridge and thus to Cathedral Lake and on down to Pine, Sandy and Sawyer creeks. From there, transportation would be needed to get back to Ashcroft. Altitude was the drawback. Topping out at 13,600 feet, bad weather would shut the lift complex down. Even so “this splendid ski-area would not be developed into its proper capacity without it.” Descents from the top could be compared to the Parsenn. With “immense Schusses,” Roch skied down to Ashcroft in twenty minutes. He was ecstatic. And the valley below was long and broad, large enough “to combine hotels, bungalows and parking places.” A Swiss village was envisioned.

In Denver, the Colorado legislature voted a $650,000 bond for the lifts. Ashcroft was going to be the “Williamsburg of the Old West,” enthused architect Ellery Husted. Ted Ryan was all enthusiasm, too. As he recalled for the documentary Legends of American Skiing: “We had an area bigger than Zermatt.” “We were all set to go, and then ‘bang’ World War II came and Billy Fiske was shot down during the Battle of Britain.” Fiske, flying a Hurricane for 601 Squadron, was badly wounded when his plane was hit. He managed to fly his machine home, but died in hospital two days later. His death and the war ended what might have been the Mount Hayden development.

Maybe it is not all bad; backcountry skiers certainly like the way it has all turned out. The Ashcroft Touring Center became the first self-sustaining cross-country center in the U.S. in 1971, and its Pine Creek Cookhouse provides a uniquely memorable dining experience. And, as patrons will attest, the views are “unreal.” 

This winter, Israel’s Ski Hermon (skihermon.co.il) centre celebrated 50 years since opening its first ski lift, on land captured from Syria during the 1967 war. Of course, this was a freaky winter. Covid-19 kept the resort closed for half the season. Then, Israel’s successful vaccination campaign coincided with a meter of new snow in mid-February, and the resort opened on February 21.  

Israel isn’t the only country in the Middle East to offer ski slopes, in fact, most of the region’s 17 nations now offer snow skiing of one sort or another, and for some, they have been doing so for over a century.

In 1913, after young engineer Ramez Ghazzoui returned to Lebanon from his studies in Switzerland, he introduced his friends to skiing on the slopes near Aley. By the 1930s a national ski club had been formed. 1953 saw lifts installed at the Cedars (facebook.com/teleskiscedarsslopes), one of half a dozen centres that now exist in the country. Proximity to the Mediterranean means you can ski in the morning and surf in the afternoon.

In Iran, German railway engineers introduced skiing around 1930, and grew popular especially among young men returning from studies in France and Switzerland. One such student even manufactured skis in Tehran beginning in in 1938. The first ski lifts were installed in 1951. With mountains rising over 14,000 feet, Iran has probably the most extensive lift-served skiing in the region.

Iraq’s Korek ski centre (thekorekmountain.com) owes its existence to the country’s ethnic battles. As they gained autonomy, the Kurds have sought to broaden their economic base beyond oil drilling. The Korek gondola may not draw international tourism yet.

Where there’s no natural snow (or mountains), indoor skiing is booming. Egypt, Qatar, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Kuwait have created snowdomes, so you can find lifts turning in 10 Middle Eastern nations. And for its part, Syria has announced plans for a resort on Mt. Hermon – if it can get the land back from Israel. –Patrick Thorne

Photo: Mt. Hermon by Noa.

Cooperstown hit two fouls, then a 380-foot home run.

Photo above: Kate and Chris Mulhern at the base of Mt. Otsego in 1958. The main slope is visible behind the sign, with the rope tow to the right. Courtesy Barbara Harrison Mulhern

Cooperstown is, of course, forever the home of baseball, hosting the National Baseball Hall of fame since 1939. But it’s also the center of a pioneering New York ski region. Here, community leaders and volunteers created skiing opportunities at four locations for over 40 years.

Cooperstown, at the foot of Lake Otsego, lies in hilly terrain with annual snowfalls approaching 90 inches per year. In the early to middle 1930s, skiers toured these hills, including the Fenimore Slope next to today’s Farmers Museum. The land, now just north of the downtown district, was once owned by James Fenimore Cooper, author of The Last of the Mohicans.

New York State’s first rope tow operated for the 1935-1936 season in North Creek in the Adirondacks. In the fall of 1937, the Cooperstown Chamber of Commerce began making plans for a ski lift. A suitable location was found on the former Robert Sterling Clark estate in Bowerstown, located about a mile south of Cooperstown Central. By 1937 it was county land. A 1,200-foot gasoline-powered rope tow was installed, and the Reynolds brothers hired to operate it.

The tow officially opened on January 15, 1938 to enthusiastic skiers and spectators who had never seen anything like it. Skiers came from as far away as Binghamton, and more than 75 cars lined adjacent roads. However, improvements were needed: snow fencing, better grading for the tow, and lights for night skiing. These were installed over the next few months, but a lack of snow limited operation. Higher elevations nearby promised more consistent snowfall, and thoughts turned to relocating the tow.

Tow Moved to Drake Farm

In the summer of 1938, the Sports Committee of the Chamber of Commerce began the hunt for a new location. Dr. Francis Harrison, Sherman Hoyt, and others explored hills to the north, in Pierstown. Harrison’s daughter Barbara Mulhern, now in her 90s, remembers “riding along with my father and his cronies” on dirt roads as they scouted the region.

They found what they thought might be the perfect slope, on Drake Farm, 500 to 700 feet higher than Bowerstown. The tow was moved, lengthened and installed during the fall of 1938. The higher elevation was expected to provide deeper, more consistent snow depths.

To promote the bigger hill, the committee transformed into the Cooperstown Winter Sports Association. Lester Hanson, a founding CWSA shareholder and neighboring farmer, ran the tow. He would run tows here and at other locations for nearly forty years.

Despite the Association’s best hopes, the location was fraught with problems. While skiers came from all around to check out the new ski area, strong winds scoured portions of the slope clear. A third location would need to be considered for the following year.

The Opening of Mt. Otsego

The Association did not need to look far. To the south of Drake Farm, a broad slope offered 380 feet of sheltered vertical on the Lamb Farm. The tow was moved again, to its final location, for the 1939-1940 season. The Lamb farmhouse would serve refreshments to skiers.

The name Mt. Otsego was chosen, for the lake, called “Glimmerglass” in Cooper’s novel The Deerslayer. In November, crews cleared brush and cut new trails. Hanson fired up the tow in December of 1939.

To promote the ski area, the Cooperstown Ski Club was formed the same year. Vice president was Nick Sterling, principal at Cooperstown Central School. The club aimed to make skiing affordable for everyone. Membership was set at just one dollar for adults, and 25 cents for children. Principal Sterling arranged for school kids to get free ski lessons, taught by volunteers. Over several decades, thousands of students entered the sport.

Cooperstown Hires Inga Grauers

Shortly after organizing, the Cooperstown Ski Club hired Miss Inga Grauers, 30, the only certified female ski instructor in Sweden. A pupil of Hannes Schneider in St. Anton, Grauers was expert in the Arlberg technique. She left Sweden at the outbreak of World War II, to find new opportunities in the United States. For two seasons from 1939-1941, she taught at the Fenimore Slope on weekdays and the Mt. Otsego slope on weekends.

At the end of the 1940-1941 season, Grauers left to teach skiing at Stowe, Vermont. She married E. Gardner Prime, and after the war the couple purchased the Alpine Lodge in Lake Placid, where they started their own rope tow ski area. Later, Inga became a ski legend at Vail, and was featured in the 2002 backcountry documentary “Spirit of Skiing.”

Snow Trains

Many of the early New York ski areas were far from major population centers. The Cooperstown Ski Club arranged for several snow trains to visit Mt. Otsego in 1940 and 1941. Trains came from Albany, and even from New York City, bringing up to 400 skiers at a time. Skiers were picked up at the Delaware & Hudson Station in Cooperstown and brought to Mt. Otsego in any available vehicle.

Formation of the Ski Patrol

It became clear after the opening of Mt. Otsego that a ski patrol was needed. In late 1939, Carlotta Harrison, the wife of Dr. Harrison, met with Minot Dole in New York City to begin organizing a patrol, just a year after Dole started the National Ski Patrol. Dr. Harrison was the first patrol leader. A future patrol leader, Charlie Michaels, now in his 80s, learned to ski as a kid at Otsego, in exchange for hauling gas cans to run the rope tow.

Fenimore Slope Gets a Tow

The Fenimore Slope did have the benefit of being close to town. In the late 1940s, Lester Hanson put in a rope tow and lights for night skiing. The tow opened weekday afternoons and evenings, and occasionally on weekends. The slope was abandoned in 1950.

Otsego Reaches its Peak

Like many ski areas, Mt. Otsego closed during World War II. It reopened in the fall of 1945. Additional beginner tows were added, and by 1950 skiers enjoyed new trails and slopes, including Natty Bumppo. A new lodge went up in 1956, transforming Mt. Otsego into a center for community activities through the 1960s.

The largest capital project at Mt. Otsego was a Hall T-bar on new slopes south of the rope tow. Another T-bar was later proposed to replace the main rope tow, but skiers protested—the T-bar would take at least twice as long to ride, resulting in fewer runs. In 1963, Lester Hanson, who over the years had been buying up shares from his partners, finally owned the ski area.

Later Years of Mt. Otsego

The 1970s were not kind to many smaller ski areas throughout New York, and Mt. Otsego was no exception. Back-to-back mild winters in 1973 and 1974, gas shortages, rising insurance rates, a lack of snowmaking, and aging facilities took their toll. The area closed during the 1976-1977 season.

Lester Hanson sold Mt. Otsego in 1978, and a series of new owners tried to resuscitate the area. In most years, only the T-bar operated, and only when natural snow allowed. At the conclusion of the 1982 ski season, Mt. Otsego closed for good.

Today

The former Mt. Otsego Ski Area is on private property, clearly visible from Wedderspoon Hollow Road. The T-bar was removed and sold for scrap, though its drive building remains. The rope tows are long gone. The landowners have kept most of the trails clear.

Mt. Otsego may be gone, but like other small areas that closed in the ’60s and ’70s, its legacy lives on with the thousands of skiers who learned the sport there as kids and passed the passion on to their own families. 

Sundance Mountain Resort, the iconic ski resort that Robert Redford developed in Utah, has been sold. Redford announced the deal on December 11, 2020. Broadreach Capital Partners and Cedar Capital Partners were the buyers and the sale includes all assets of Sundance Mountain Resort, including the resort buildings, ski lifts, on-site dining venues, and event spaces. It did not include the Sundance Institute, Sundance Film Festival, Sundance Catalog, Sundance TV, or the Redford Center.

Redford purchased Timp Haven resort in 1968 and expanded it to become the Sundance Mountain Resort. In a statement, said “We knew that at the right time, and with the right people, we could make the transition. Broadreach and Cedar share our values and interest in maintaining the resort’s unique character, while honoring its history, community and natural beauty. This makes them well-suited to ensure that future generations can continue to find solace and inspiration here.” 

Sundance, which lies beneath 12,000 foot Mount Timpanogos, is like no other ski resort. It is the result of Robert Redford’s vision of environmental awareness: a 2,600 acre resort that includes 1,845 acres of conservation land. A pioneering environmental activist, Redford pulled off what was considered suspect, if not downright bad business, in resort operations during skiing’s boom years in the 1960s and 1970s: balancing limited development with a financially successful ski area. It took decades for the ski-resort industry to catch up.

Quietly well-heeled but not Hollywood flashy, Sundance has also managed to cater to locals from nearby Provo. It has offered night skiing since the 1940s, when it was called Timp Haven, offering a single rope tow and a $1 lift ticket. The ski area was an early innovator in school programs and season passes for students, concepts soon embraced by resorts nationwide.

Redford discovered the area that would become Sundance when he was riding his motorcycle from his home in California to college at the University of Colorado in the 1950s. He later met and married a girl from Provo, and bought two acres for $500 in 1961 from a sheep herding family named Stewart who owned Timp Haven. He built a cabin, and lived the mountain lifestyle with his young family between his early films.

But by the late 1960s, developers were circling. Redford scrambled, using some of his movie money and enlisting some friends, and bought another 3,000 acres in 1968, renaming the area Sundance after his role in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. In doing so, he halted a development of A-frames that would have forever changed the canyon.

Yet the irony was that for Sundance to be financially stable, it had to be self-sustaining, which meant some form of development. Redford started by improving the Timp Haven infrastructure, building the General Store and The Grill Room on the foundation of the former resort’s lodge. The Tree Room, with its signature massive pine tree dominating the interior, was constructed. So was the Owl Bar, centered on an Irish oak bar that had been commissioned by the real Butch Cassidy a century earlier. Redford unearthed it in a biker bar in Wyoming, where it was covered in Formica and shag carpeting before undergoing a restoration. He put the resort on the map when he used it as the backdrop for his film, Jeremiah Johnson, in the 1972.

Sundance suffered from low elevation and a short ski season. To make the resort financially viable, in the 1970s Redford created the Sundance Institute as a way to attract film producers, directors and actors. In 1985, the Sundance Institute took over operations of the United States Film Festival, and in 1989 changed its name to the Sundance Film Festival. In the late 1980s he built the first of the 95 cabins of what was now the fledgling Sundance Mountain Resort.

In time, his movie buddies and pals bought land and built their own houses. They included Jake Eberts, the producer of the Redford-directed A River Runs Through It, as well as Sydney Pollack, who directed Redford in Jeremiah Johnson, Three Days of the Condor and Out of Africa, among other films. Eventually, more than 200 private homes would be built, mostly out of sight and tastefully nestled in the trees.

What does the future look like? While Broadreach Capital Partners, based out of Palo Alto, California, and Cedar Capital Partners, out of London and New York, both have extensive international portfolios of luxury hotels and resorts, neither has a direct connection to the ski business. They have stated that they plan to build a high-speed lift, a day lodge and an inn.

The upgrades are planned to enhance, but not alter, Redford’s longtime mission at his resort. “As stewards of this unique place, it has always been my vision that the Sundance Mountain Resort would be a place where art, nature, and recreation come together to make the world a better place—now and in the future,” said Redford in a statement.  

In a fitting final act, the Sundance Kid entered into a partnership with Utah Open Lands to put over 300 acres of pristine wildlife habitat, streams, and wetlands into permanent protection at the base of Mt. Timpanogos. He named it the Redford Family Elk Meadows Preserve and anyone who’s been to Sundance knows that it’s the scenic heart of the resort—and now will remain that way. 

(Photo top of page by Milan Norling)

SKI ART

Edwin Hermann Richard Henel (1883-1953)

Carl Luther, the long-time editor of the German Ski Association’s Der Winter, employed Edwin Henel to scatter small drawings throughout his magazine, as well as regularly commissioning him for larger format drawings and paintings. Undoubtedly, Henel came to Luther’s notice before the start of World War I in 1914 because he had become a mainstay illustrator for the famous Munich firms of Loden-Frey and Sporthaus Schuster.

Henel had been born in Breslau, then within the German Empire (after the Nazi defeat in 1945, the city was transferred to Poland and called Wrocław). He studied for two years, 1908-1910, at the Breslau Academy taking architectural courses, among other art classes, before moving to Munich’s Fine Arts Academy. In his early years he was known for his aviation posters, some of which were turned into popular postcards. Once in Munich, he became enraptured with the growing sport of skiing and specialized in artistic country scenes while continuing to do advertisements.

He moved to Garmisch in 1934, where he produced watercolors of the mountainous countryside and became particularly well-known for his tourist posters. His graphic style set the era’s standard for depicting alpine tourism. This was something that appealed to the Nazis.

In 1936 he provided the cover of “Winter in Germany” for the Reich Committee for Tourist Travel. Against the Kreuzeck massif background, the featured skier resembled German ace Christl Cranz, alpine gold medalist at the Garmisch Olympics that year.

Henel was later commissioned to create a promotional poster for the 1940 Olympic Games, scheduled for Sapporo, Japan but cancelled due to the war. Henel lived in Garmisch until his death in 1953. —E. John B. Allen

Snapshots in Time

125 years ago 1896 Big year for books and bindings
In Austria, Mathias Zdarsky completed work on Alpine Lilienfelder Skilauf Technik, the first influential book of alpine ski instruction, and applied for a patent on a ski binding with a hinged and spring-loaded steel sole-plate. In Norway, Fritz Huitfeldt published Larebog I Skilobning (Skiing Textbook) and began selling the first nordic binding with steel ears to secure the boot toe.

100 years ago 1921 First national championship alpine race held by the British
On 5th January, 1921, fifteen competitors started together on the Lauberhorn . . . and raced down to a point some distance below the Scheidegg. Leonard Dobbs won by a comfortable margin from his brother Patrick, and on the combined competition finished ahead of a young Canadian, R.B. McConnell. Miss Olga Major was fifth in the Open Championship, and won the Ladies’ Competition with consummate ease. . . . It was not until 1929 that the Austrians, 1930 that the Swiss, and 1932 that the French, and 1933 that the Germans awarded national championships for Downhill racing. —Sir Arnold Lunn, The Story of Skiing (1952) pages 47-48.

75 years ago 1946 Aspen Skiing Corporation formed
AP reported: Aspen, Colo., is being developed into a year-round recreational site by a group of Denver men in cooperation with others from the middle west and east, George B. Berger Jr. said today . . . those backing the project had no intention of making the historic mining community . . . in[to] a Sun Valley type of recreational area. “What we want is a simple, attractive resort for year ‘round use. We expect to have accommodations for 350 to 400 people.” The Aspen company is headed by Walter P. Paepcke, Chicago industrialist, and a skiing corporation has been formed by . .Friedl Pfeiffer, former Sun Valley instructor.  —Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, May 12, 1946

50 years ago 1971 Ski instructors discover carving
Like wedeln a decade ago, carving is catching on – everyone is talking about the incredible control carving gives on ice and in heavy crud, the excitement and zap in it adds to skiing. . . . Actually, carving isn’t really new. The hotshots, the racers in particular, have been talking about carving for years. Some of the elements . . . were described four of five years ago in what was then called the round turn; and our better powder skiers have probably been carving for years without suspecting they were doing anything significant. —Sven Coomer and Doug Pfeiffer, “Carve that turn!” Skiing, February 1971

25 years ago 1996 First-ever FIS Snowboard World Championships
Ross Powers, who doesn’t turn 17 for another 2 ½ weeks, led a 1-2-3 American sweep Wednesday in halfpipe at the inaugural FIS World Snowboard Championships. U.S. women also collected the silver and bronze medals as the Yanks went 5 for 6 on Day One in Lienz [Austria]. —Paul Robbins, Rutland Daily Herald, January 24, 1996.

Just a few miles from glitzy St. Moritz, the cultural heart of this Swiss ski region beats quietly in Pontresina. 

The history of the Swiss resort town of Pontresina is inextricably linked to its glamorous neighbor, St. Moritz, which lies five miles away. Pontresina has always played second fiddle to St. Moritz, which was the cradle of winter sports in Switzerland and hosted the Winter Olympics in 1928 and 1948.

Photo above: At 42 kilometers, the Engadin Skimarathon, the second
largest cross-country ski race in the world, is bucket-list worthy for 14,000 racers each March.

Today, St. Moritz is closer in spirit to Monaco, an outpost of the uber rich. But take a 10-minute drive along the Val Bernina, the high-altitude valley that branches off the Upper Engadin Valley, and you’ll discover the cultural heart of the region in Pontresina. Much smaller than its glamorous sibling, the town lies at 5,822 feet elevation and is laid out on a long ridge on the south-facing shelf of Alp Languard mountain. It is subtly elegant, and redolent of the Belle Epoque with its cobblestone streets and pastel-colored stucco houses.

Many of these quaint buildings, which date back to the 17th century, are decked out in s’graffito, the stenciled plaster designs that are hallmarks of the region. The word itself is the origin of the term “graffiti” and the designs are of striking geometric patterns, fish, stars and whimsical beasts, along with sundials etched onto the sides of the homes.

The locals greet each other not with “Gruezi,” the Swiss German greeting, but “Allegra,” which is how one says hello in Romansch, the Latin-based mountain language. Less than 70,000 people still speak Switzerland’s fourth language (after German, French and Italian) and Pontresina is a bastion of Romansch. If you paid attention in 10th grade Latin class, you will be amazed at how much you can decipher.

Pontresina offers astonishing panoramic views of nearby mountains, the Roseg Glacier and the pistes of Corviglia and Corvatsch that rise up behind St. Moritz. Surrounding this genteel, well-heeled town are pine and larch forests. It’s an alpine landscape that was beloved by Italian-Swiss artist Giovanni Segantini, who spent much of his life painting it.

The main ski areas of Pontresina are Lagalb and Diavolezza, the latter resembling a giant, undulating meringue and offering glacier skiing as early as October and running as late as May. Closer to Pontresina is the Morterasch Glacier, the largest glacier by area in the Bernina Range of the Bündner Alps. There’s a 10km route along the glacier from Diavolezza, the longest glacier ski in Switzerland. So famed was the glacier that it was painted in the 19th century by Albert Bierstadt and drawn by John Singer Sargent. But what once was an attraction for Victorian visitors is now a poster child for vanishing glaciers. It has retreated nearly two miles since the late 19th century and in the past few years, the Swiss have enlisted snow guns to try and save the glacier from melting further.

Roughly translated, Pontresina means “bridge of the Saracens,” referring to Moorish brigands who raided here in the 10th century. It has the venerable Santa Maria Church, with its Byzantine-Romanesque frescoes, as well as the ruins of the 13th century Spaniola tower. There is also the Museum Alpin, set in a historic house filled not only with artifacts of daily life from this town but ski memorabilia.

In short, you go to St. Moritz for partying, shopping and nightclubbing. You go to Pontresina because you want to gaze out your hotel window onto the moonlit Roseg Glacier, fall asleep to the bells of the San Nicolò church, and then rise early to hit the pistes.

SKI HISTORY

As St. Moritz slowly developed into a winter sports resort in the late 19th century, Pontresina followed in its footsteps. By the 1870s, the Upper Engadine valley was being transformed with the arrival of tourists, most of them upper-class British, who came to climb, to walk and, eventually, to ski.

The importance of high-born British driving this change can’t be underestimated. As in St. Moritz, guesthouses and hotels in Pontresina were expanded or built to accommodate these new visitors. By the late 19th century, the so-called English Church was built in the heart of town, the Holy Trinity Church Pontresina, which some architectural historians considered the most important work of English church architecture in Switzerland. It was razed in the mid-20th century but even today, you can see parts of it, including the altar railing donated by one of Queen Victoria’s nieces, in the Museum Alpin.

As with St. Moritz, the history of the resorts, or at least their spirit, can be found within the walls of the great hotels. What began as a modest guesthouse that opened in 1848 evolved into the Grand Hotel Kronenhof, the grandest of Pontresina’s grand hotels, by 1898. The 112-guestroom palatial hotel commands the best view of the mountains and glaciers, and in the hotel’s basement wooden skis still line the walls, some of them left behind by English guests who stored them here nearly a century ago.

Other examples include the three-star Sporthotel Pontresina, an Art Nouveau beauty with etched glass windows and an elaborate central cast-iron stairway that opened in 1881. Swiss hotelier Leo Trippi, whose namesake company is today a luxury tour operator in London, was born in nearby Samedan and got his start in the 19th century running the family hotel in Pontresina.

In the Victorian era, Pontresina welcomed Sir Arthur Sullivan, of Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera fame, who organized a charity concert to raise funds for the English Church while visiting. The English writers Matthew Arnold and Elizabeth Gaskell found it a great place to linger and work, as did Hans-Christian Andersen and the composer Richard Strauss. These days, with the exception of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who spends her Christmas holidays here, the famous, the wanna-bes and their entourages head to St. Moritz for the glitz. In Pontresina, the streets and the money are quiet.

An English friend of mine has framed the bill of sale for her father’s ski trip to Pontresina in 1925, when he was a student at Oxford. It included second- and third-class rail transport from London, steamer passage across the English Channel, and 12 nights of room and board at the long-gone Hotel Park, all for a grand total of 19.83 pound sterling. It may sound cheap but in today’s currency, that would amount to about $1,612, far from a cheap ski holiday on a student budget in 1925.

THE SPORTS

The SkiClub Bernina Pontresina was founded in 1903, at the same time as the Swiss Ski Association. The focus was on ski tours, at a time when a single pole was still used in the sport.

After the world’s first bobsled club was founded in St Moritz in 1897 and a dedicated bobsled track was built in 1904, Pontresina joined the bobsled craze just a year later, in 1905, building two bobsled tracks.

As with many European ski resorts, the enthusiasm for ski jumping drove the need for infrastructure. The first ski jumping hills in Pontresina were set up in the beginning of the 20th century and allowed jumps of 20 to 30 meters. These included Clüx-Schanze, near the current valley station of the Languard ski lift, as well as Piccolischanze, which was on a steep slope below Spaniola tower. In 1907, construction of the Bernina-Sprungschanze in the Roseg valley started, which was opened officially in winter 1912 as a 40-meter hill. In 1925, under the direction of local builder and skier Luigi Costa, the SkiClub Pontresina opened a new ski jumping facility in the Val Roseg that made 80-meter jumps possible.

Up to four international competitions were held each winter and were considered the leading ones in Europe. It was in Pontresina in 1928 that the Swiss Bruno Trojani became the first ski jumper in Europe to soar more than 70 meters. A world record was set by Adolf Badrutt with a 75-meter jump in 1930. In 1948, the last competition took place but the 40-meter hill was still in use until the 1960s.

Skiing was already established in 1927 when Karl Gruber and partner Gregor Andreoli started making and selling skiing and mountaineering equipment in a small cabin on Via Maistra, the main street of Pontresina. Gruber Sport remains one of the region’s top outdoor equipment shops. Gruber’s son Erich took over the store in the 1960s, when he also was named head of the Pontresina ski school. Erich’s son Andy later assumed both roles.

In Switzerland in 1941, when the country was surrounded by Axis forces, the Swiss Army and Swiss tourism joined forces with a campaign to “help youth winter sports defend our borders.” This was more about eyes and ears looking out for the borders than outright military preparation. The very first Swiss Youth Ski Camp in Switzerland was held in Pontresina for 500 boys from “poor homes” while a similar camp was held for girls a year later, according to Michael Lutscher in his book, Snow, Sun and Stars.

The ski mountain Diavolezza is said to have received its name because a red-haired devil lived on the mountain. If nothing else, the story provided a memorable name and great devil logo. While the undulating treeless slopes still invite endless off-piste runs, access to the top was problematic for years. Plans for a funicular railway from Alp Bondo to Diavolezza or from Morteratsch through Munt Pers to the Diavolezza were floated in the 1920s. While the latter plan finally won favor in 1937, the financing fell through. Discussions resumed after the war. In 1954, the funicular idea was abandoned and a cable car was built from the valley to the top. Luftseilbahn Bernina-Diavolezza (LDB) began operating the 50-person cable car in 1956, but by the summer of 1958, it was necessary to add a larger, 62-person car. Meanwhile, a diesel-powered surface lift was built in the glacier in 1960. By 1980, a new 125-person cable car was opened.

While the 1928 and 1948 Winter Olympic Games in neighboring St. Moritz introduced the world to neighboring Pontresina, none of the medal events were held there. It does claim a footnote in Olympic lore, however. It was in Pontresina in 1948 that American skier Robert Lloyd “Barney” McLean, the captain of the U.S. Olympic Ski Team, skied several races one week before the Games began. In that January warm-up event, he took first in the downhill (Stein Eriksen came in second), third in slalom and first in combined. But in St. Moritz one week later, McLean fell in both the slalom and the downhill. He was quoted as saying afterwards, “I had run my race the week before.”

It was also in 1970 that “Club 8847—Piz Lagalb—Mount Everest” was founded. The club asked potential members to complete eleven ski runs from the Piz Lagalb, taking the Minor ski lift back up and then walking up to Piz Lagalb via a footpath and back again. If you could do this within one day, you were accepted as a member. The most famous member was the Shah of Iran, who passed the membership test in 1975 in the company of 19 bodyguards.

In a Swiss town that embraces the essence of winter, skiing is not the only pursuit in town. For more than a century, sport lovers have taken the funicular, built in 1907, up the peak of another mountain, nearby Muottas Muragl, for sledging (sledding) and tobogganing. The views from the top, beloved by painters and photographers, is a panorama overlooking the Upper Engadin Valley, from St. Moritz all the way to Italy.

Pontresina is also part of the second largest cross country ski race in the world, the Engadin Skimarathon, held every year on the second Sunday of March, between Maloja and S-chanf. The race debuted in 1969 and today welcomes upwards of 14,000 skiers annually on the 42 km race course, though some competitors choose to complete the half-marathon of 21 km that finishes in Pontresina.

As with St. Moritz and other Swiss resorts, some of the best graphic artists in the country were commissioned to create ski posters in the 20th century to advertise the resort. Arguably the best known was a now-iconic work by the Swiss artist Herbert Matter in 1935 simply called “Pontresina,” a bold photomontage of a skier wearing massive glacier goggles while another skier descends a steep piste in the background. The message seems to be that this village is not the lair of the idle rich of nearby St. Moritz but instead a place where the sport of skiing reigns supreme, an endeavor that requires skill and a sense of exploration. When you’re out on the vast white slopes of Diavolezza, that sentiment still rings true today. 

Everett Potter is a frequent contributor to Skiing History. He launched Everett Potter’s Travel Report in 2005 (everettpotter.com) and since then it has become one of the most widely read and respected digital sites in the travel industry.

For six decades, West Mountain in upstate New York has been bringing skiers—and racers—into the sport. 

By Paul Post

Spencer and Sara Montgomery purchased West Mountain in 2013 and have given the family-oriented ski area a $17 million makeover.

Spencer and Sara Montgomery moved east to West Mountain, where they’re pursuing the adventure of a lifetime in his hometown of Queensbury, New York. They’ve given the Southern Adirondacks
resort a $17 million makeover since purchasing it in 2013, including three new chairlifts, 40,000 feet of snowmaking pipeline, 200 new snow guns, four groomers and a 500-foot lift for the tubing park. 

It’s quite a change for a couple who met on the Chicago trading floor and spent 10 years in Colorado, skiing at some of the world’s most famous resorts. 

West Mountain has been a family-oriented resort since the founding Brandt clan opened it on Christmas Day 1962. By installing lights for night skiing, they quickly attracted local curiosity seekers and developed a strong customer base throughout the region. The
Adirondack Northway (Interstate 87) opened in the early 1960s, providing a direct link from the Albany area, about an hour away. While small in size, with a 1,000-foot vertical drop, the center has made a big contribution to the sport.

“It’s a feeder mountain,” Spencer said. “I’m willing to bet that West Mountain has taught more people how to ski and is one of the top training mountains in the United States. We have 1,600 kids in after-school programs. That’s our history and our future.”

The site’s steep trails have hosted competitive racing since 1962, when the late Tom Jacobs, who founded the ski school, begain coaching young racers (see obituary). With on-mountain upgrades complete, the Montgomerys are now turning their attention to developing a full-time ski racing

academy. One of their first moves was to hire Steve Lathrop, a former five-year World Cup competitor on the U.S. “A” Ski Team, who previously worked at Stratton Mountain School in southern Vermont. Lathrop is starting his third year as West Mountain’s alpine race director. 

A New Hampshire native, Lathrop learned how to ski on a rope tow built by his father, who served with the 10th Mountain Division during World War II. At one point, Lathrop was ranked 16th in the world in slalom. If not for injury, he would have gone to the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan, so he knows what a good racing program needs and believes West Mountain has all the key elements.

In January 2020—prior to the COVID-19 shutdown—West Mountain hosted a four-day FIS event including two huge U-16 and U-19 races, with 225 racers each day from all over the East. A full slate of high school, masters and New York State Racing Association competition is on tap for the 2020–2021 season.

This fall, West Mountain also opened a brand-new ski racing academy that allows student-athletes to train full time. Those from outside the area, a half-dozen from western New York and New York City, take classes remotely through Queensbury High School or their own home school. Next year, plans call for having a full-fledged lodging component as well.

“The academy is for older kids who are able to live on their own and handle their studies and ski training,” Sara Montgomery says. “A lot of kids at that U-19 level drop out of ski racing because it becomes unaffordable for their families, with all of the travel and the high cost of equipment. This gives them the opportunity to continue racing at a competitive level at a more affordable rate.”

With good coaching and top-notch facilities, it might just be a matter of time before a West Mountain racer achieves international success. “I really believe this mountain has everything needed to develop world-class ski racers,” Lathrop says.

California Ski Library: Chip In!

Since 2004, ski historian and ISHA Award winner Ingrid Wicken has housed her California Ski Library in a 960-foot modular building behind her home in Norco, California. The library has grown steadily over the years and is now one of the most extensive collections of ski books, magazines, photographs and paper memorabilia in the United States. The photo archive, for example, includes images of U.S. skiing from the 1930s through the 2000s, covering Sun Valley, Aspen, Squaw Valley, Mammoth Mountain, Yosemite, Mount Hood, American ski jumping, and many California ski areas, large and small. Her book collection numbers 4,500 titles from around the globe. She also has located many rare and hard-to-find brochures, programs, research documents and correspondence from ski racers, writers and resort developers.

Now Ingrid needs our help! Freestyle pioneer Doug Pfeiffer—honored member of both the U.S. and Canadian Ski and Snowboard Halls of Fame—has recently donated 99 boxes of one-of-a-kind ski books and vintage magazines. The building is chock full, and Wicken has launched a Go Fund Me page to add another 480 square feet of display and storage space.

The California Ski Library is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so donations are tax-deductible. Chip in to the fundraising campaign online at: https://tinyurl.com/
CASkiLibrary. Learn more about Ingrid’s library at skilibrary.com.

COVID-19 Puts Historic Ski Train on Hold Again

The Winter Park Express ski train, which has hauled Denver skiers through the Moffat Tunnel on and off since 1940, will take another hiatus for the 2020–2021 winter season. According to a Winter Park press release, Amtrak has been reducing the number of seats sold on each train to enable social distancing during the pandemic. “After evaluating seating options on the Winter Park Express … it is not possible to operate the train successfully this season,” read the release, while noting a hopeful return for the popular rail service in 2022.

In March 2015, to celebrate its 75th anniversary, Winter Park revived the train as a one-weekend experiment with Amtrak. Tickets sold out fast, so Amtrak scheduled regular weekend trips—leaving from Denver’s Union Station for the 56-mile journey across the Continental Divide—beginning in January 2017. To learn more about the history of ski trains, go to: skiinghistory.org/history/ski-trains-history.

Lost Ski Areas of Japan

Japan’s skiing history is rich and varied. People had long used simple homemade skis to get around, but in the 1930s Hannes Schneider arrived from the Arlberg to introduce his downhill technique.

From then on, as in Europe and North America, skiing grew as a popular sport. Hundreds of ski areas opened. By the 1980s there might have been more ski areas in Japan than anywhere else—at least 700, some open 24 hours a day.

During the recession that followed the 1989 collapse of Japan’s real-estate bubble, skier visits dropped from more than 20 million to nearer five million. Hundreds of Japanese ski areas closed, many quickly overgrown by bamboo forests.

Now Andrew Lea, creator of Japan’s largest ski-oriented website SnowJapan.com, has launched http://SnowJapanHistory.com. The new site documents all of these lost Japanese ski areas. Lea is meticulously cataloguing the former areas, making personal visits, taking current pictures and adding aerial images. The work in progress so far has more than 150 former ski areas and almost 1,000 pictures.

Among the listings, for example, is Goshiki in Yamagata, which opened in 1911 when the Austrian Egon Edler von Kratzer skied there, and closed in 1998. Nanamaki, located less than 3km (2 miles) from Nozawa Onsen (home to the world-famous Japan Ski Museum) operated only 10 years, until 1982. Dedicated skiers walked a kilometer from the rail station, crossing a river on a cable-pulled ferry to reach the slopes. —Patrick Thorne

The Man Who Skied on Rocks

When snow is unavailable, skiers will glide on anything: grass, pine needles, sawdust, sand dunes, volcanic ash, carpet, plastic mat, soap flakes, powdered mica and soda crystals.

In 1958, German industrialist Dr Rudolf Alberti (1907–1974) patented the concept of skiing on gravel. Alberti owned a mine in the Harz Mountains (still going today) that produced barium sulphate—a bright white dye—and calcium fluoride. The ore contained barite, or heavy spar, a very dense mineral used today in X-ray shielding, rubber mudflaps and oil-drilling mud. American industry alone uses about 3.3 million tons of the stuff annually.

Alberti noticed that barite nodules have a very low friction co-efficient and is dust free. He built a 1,300-foot-long (400-meter) ski run and covered it with a mix of river gravel and barite, about six inches (15cm) deep.

Contemporary reports recorded the surface proved pretty good for skiing, but that skis disintegrated due to the heat generated. Alberti ordered up a stock of skis with steel bases, and with a concrete mixer coated the gravel with used engine oil. This reportedly “dramatically increased ski speed but producing some hair-raising results and near disastrous falls.” Alberti received patents in Germany and the United States.

The slope does not appear ever to have operated as a commercial venture. But to this day Alberti’s home town, St. Andreasberg, has a small ski area operated by Alberti-Lifts. —Patrick Thorne

Sarah Lewis Out at FIS

The FIS Council abruptly dismissed Sarah Lewis on October 9 from her post as secretary general, a job she held for 20 years. The FIS announced the decision in a terse one-sentence statement that said the move was “based on a complete loss of confidence,” without providing specifics. The statement was amended within days, and no longer includes that verbiage.

Lewis, 55, was a member of the British alpine national team from 1982 to 1988, and participated in the 1987 Ski World Championships and 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, before joining the FIS in 1994 as a Continental Cups coordinator.

Lewis had been considered a candidate to run for FIS president to succeed Gian-Franco Kasper, who last year announced plans to step down at the next International Ski Congress, according to European media reports. The election has been postponed several times due to the pandemic, and is now scheduled for June 2021.

The current Swiss ski federation president, the 1993 downhill world champion Urs Lehmann, has declared his candidacy to replace Kasper. Two other possible contenders are FIS vice president Mats Arjes and Johan Eliasch, the London-based billionaire CEO of the Head Sport group, who was nominated by the British national ski association (GB Snowsport). FIS has had only two presidents—both Swiss men—over the past 70 years. Marc Hodler held the top spot from 1951 to 1998, with Kasper taking over for him. —Greg Ditrinco

The Crown’s Royal Avalanche isn’t a Snow Job

Television isn’t known for accurately depicting historic events. Where’s the drama, and ratings, in that?

The popular Netflix series The Crown, which chronicles the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, gets mixed reviews on that score. Critics have applauded the show, which has 39 Emmy nominations, winning 10 times. The Telegraph, Britain’s daily broadsheet, calls it “TV’s best soap opera,” a format not known for its accuracy. While historians quibble, the BBC claims the show, now in its fourth season, generally follows the facts.

The fourth-season episode “Avalanche” opens on an incident during a ski holiday at Klosters, Switzerland. The episode begins with a spectacular dry-snow avalanche obliterating a couloir in the Alps. The next shot shows the Queen and Prince Philip in Buckingham Palace, as her private secretary Martin Charteris reports the involvement of four skiers, including Prince Charles, and that two of the group were swept away. No one can say yet whether Charles is safe, and the family contemplates the possibility that he has died.

ISHA members will remember this March 10, 1988 incident. While skiing on steep off-piste terrain on the Gotschnagrat, two of Charles’ friends were swept up in the avalanche, which just missed the prince and local guide Bruno Sprecher. Major Hugh Lindsay, 34, a former equerry to the Queen, was killed, and Patricia Palmer-Tomkinson broke both legs but survived. The royal party flew home to London on March 12, accompanying Lindsay’s body. 

Why's it called that?

Dead End? Not for Skiers

Touted as North America’s equivalent of the French Alps, the granite spires of the Bugaboos tower over glaciers in eastern British Columbia. First officially noted by a surveying expedition in the late 1800s, the range attracted Europeans to the region during a luckless mini-gold rush in 1895. Miners staked out claims, but the modest deposits turned out to be galena and pyrite (whose yellow metallic luster gave it the nickname of fool’s gold). Frustrated prospectors soon anointed the area “bugaboo,” their term for a dead end. Deeper etymological roots, probably Celtic in origin, date to the mid-18th century or so, with the meaning of “an object of fear or alarm.” Any way you look at it, the Bugaboo name was an intimidating, rather than inviting, moniker for the mountain range. The Bugaboo name stuck, but the miners did not. What gold seekers abandoned, mountaineers soon championed, and one after another the flinty spires were summited. Next to arrive were adventurous skiers, with the Bugaboos becoming the cradle of heliskiing in the mid-1960s.

SKI ART

Edwin Holgate (1892–1977)

Edwin Holgate was born in Allandale, Ontario in 1892 and died in Montreal in 1977. He painted “The Skier,” a portrait of his friend Jackrabbit Johannsen, circa 1935. Oil on canvas (66.5 by 56.6 cm). Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Arthur M. Terroux Bequest (Acquisition No. 1980.9). Photo for MMFA by Brian Merrett. Copyright: Jonathan Rittenhouse

Nobody had to be told who “The Skier” was! So it’s surprising that this painting of Canadian ski pioneer Hermann Smith-Johannsen, known to many as “The Chief” and to even more as “Jackrabbit,” is not better known.

Edwin Holgate, his artist friend, painted this portrait in a typically direct approach—both in the way that Johannsen lived his life and the way that Holgate portrayed his subjects. Jackrabbit was proud to bear the symbol of the Canadian Red Birds ski club on his chest, while the Norwegian patterned gloves symbolize his heritage. The Laurentian hills around St. Sauveur, or perhaps Mont Tremblant, provide the backdrop.

He studied at the Art Association of Montreal before leaving for Paris to attend the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in 1912. He was visiting Ukraine when the war broke out and had to make his way back to Canada via Siberia and Japan. He joined the 4th Canadian Division that saw action on the western front and, after the armistice, was stationed in Flanders.

Holgate joined the Beaver Group, a liberal organization that included about a dozen women artists in Montreal in 1920. He was married that year, and the couple moved to Paris, where he was influenced by young Russian emigré painters. Back in Montreal in 1922, he had his first exhibition at the Arts Club and was later an instructor in wood engraving at the École des Beaux Arts. He joined the famous Group of Seven prominent landscape painters—as the ninth member!—in 1929 and was elected to full membership in the Canadian Academy of Arts in 1935. In the 1920s and 1930s, Holgate became well known for his woodcuts, book illustrations, landscapes and murals—he created one for the Canadian Pavilion at the World’s Fair in New York in 1939—and for portraits, too: Around 1935 he painted his friend Jackrabbit, a perfect model for “The Skier.”

Holgate secured a position as a war artist in World War II in England, but there were “difficulties,” and once back in Montreal, found that the art scene had changed…so he moved to the Laurentians. He died in May 1977. The National Gallery of Canada held a retrospective of his work in 1975 and a second retrospective was mounted by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 2005. — E. John B. Allen