Technology

When the first “shaped” skis arrived at ski shops in 1993, they were a revelation.

Deep sidecuts to help skis carve short, clean turns had been sneaking up on us for a century – so slowly that only a very few savvy ski designers, largely outside the mainstream Western European factories, could see them coming.

Sidecut – the subtle hourglass shape of the ski – goes back to skiing’s prehistory. It was invented by now-forgotten artisans sometime before 1808 and was adopted universally after being popularized by Sondre Norheim and his friends in Telemark, Norway, around 1856. Early skiers, who carved their own skis, found that pinching in the waist of the ski made it easier to turn. Since that time, the “straight” ski with parallel edges has been a rarity, enjoying real popularity only as a light cross country ski for use in modern machine-set tracks, and for modern jumping skis. In alpine skis, sidecut shape has grown gradually deeper over the decades, stalling for about five decades starting in 1936, and at a greatly accelerated pace since 1988.

In the beginning: 4mm of sidecut

The original Telemark skis were carved by hand in home workshops, and the dimensions could vary quite a bit. But a typical Norheim-era ski, as represented in modern replicas from Morgedal, measured 81mm across the shovel, 67mm at the waist, and 70mm across the tail, for a sidecut depth of 4.25mm. (These skis, patterned after Sondre Norheim’s own work, were built to commemorate the 1988 Calgary Olympics.) Telemark dimensions worked well for Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen, and this standard shape was still relevant midway through the 20th century, when ski manufacturers began to think about making skis of metal and fiberglass in elaborate molds.

Sidecut depth means that if we put the ski on a table and tilt it up so the base or sole is at a right angle to the tabletop, resting on the widest points of the tip and tail, then the distance from the ski’s waist to the table is, in the case of the original Telemark model, 4.25mm. (Today’s turny slalom skis have a sidecut depth of about 18mm.) Based on the ski’s running surface length (that is, the length of edge in contact with the snow, excluding the turned-up tip), the radius of the sidecut curve is 83 meters – very long by modern standards, but certainly not straight. The geometry worked well enough for running and jumping skis, and it changed very little into the 1930s, when a typical 230cm jumping ski (91-77-80mm) still had a sidecut of 4.25mm, and an agile 192cm women’s cross country ski might be 88-73-80mm, for a sidecut depth of 5.5mm and a turny radius of 47m – about half that of the jumper.

This basic shape was still viable when Howard Head cranked out his first aluminum Standards in 1950. The 79-inch version of that ski (203cm) measured out at 81-68-77mm, for a sidecut depth of 5.5mm and a 62 meter radius.

Experiments in carved wood: 7mm of sidecut

When skis were made of carved hickory, it was pretty easy for a craftsman to experiment with sidecuts. The workmen at Thor Groswold’s factory were among the more innovative talents. They were happy to build a ski to an athlete’s specifications, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone who has watched him ski to learn that Dick Durrance liked a very turny shape. The 206cm Durrance signature model, from around 1939, measures 74-54-62mm. This is remarkably narrow for an alpine ski, unless it was meant exclusively for running slalom on ice. What most folks didn’t notice was that the ski offered a dramatic increase in sidecut depth to 7mm (radius 42 meters). And a wider GS-style ski, the 212cm Barney McLean model from 1950, ran 90-73-81 – sidecut depth 7.25mm and radius 48 meters.

The 7mm sidecut depth became the new standard for race skis, good for the next four decades. The Kastle slalom used by the 1964 medalists Pepi Stiegler, Billy Kidd and Jimmie Heuga had a 6.75mm depth on a 64mm waist; the 1968 Rossignol Strato and Dynamic VR17 measured 6.75 and 6.5mm on a 69mm waist; and as late as 1983, the Rossignol SM GS ski still used the Strato shape (the contemporary FP slalom ski was narrower – and straighter). The big innovation, introduced by Dynamic in 1967, was to move the waist back about six inches, from the ball of the foot to the heel. The change was hardly noticeable to the eye, but it helped the great French racers of the era to accelerate out of the end of the turn.

The Mahre brothers raced and won on slalom and GS skis with a 7mm sidecut depth, patterned after the French race skis. From 204cm down, K2’s molds emulated the VR17 slalom shape. From 207cm up, they used the Strato GS shape. The Mahres were so successful on the 710 and VO Slalom that the shape was widely imitated in Austrian factories – thus the first Fischer Vacuum Technique slalom was a mirror image of the VO, which of course was patterned closely on the original VR17. All these skis featured a stiff tail, cracked edges, a sidecut shape close to 7mm and a waist width close to 68mm, making for a radius of 48 to 51m. Atomic, Kastle, Blizzard and Volkl all built their own versions of this ski.

Ingemar Stenmark held an advantage over the Mahres, skiing on an Elan shape with an 8mm sidecut depth, giving him a 20% shorter turning radius of about 41 meters (it's now reported that Stenmark liked to file an extra millimeter off each edge at the waist, which would have given him a 9mm depth and a 37m radius). Partly to save money, many skimakers liked to have single set of molds, so during this era, if you wanted a full-length Elan ski, you got the company’s standard “Uniline” sidecut shape. The big differences between models were in flex pattern and materials – slalom skis had stiffer tails, GS skis had aluminum layers, recreational skis had a softer, rounder flex. If you were to graph the evolution of sidecut, the line would show a flat spot from 1940 to 1980, an era when most skis stalled at the 6 to 7mm depth.

Snowboards shake up the scene

Something dramatic happened in the mid-70s: snowboards. Snowboard designers owed no loyalty to ski design. The 1975 Burton Backhill Board, a plywood plank 140cm long, with no steel edges or plastic base, sported a radical sidecut shape of 302-265-295mm, for a sidecut depth of 17mm and a radius of just 6 meters. The shape set a pattern — a modern 155cm freeride board typically has dimensions of 302-257-302mm for a radius of 7 meters.

Most ski designers ignored this phenomenon, though we often hear the myth that ski designers learned all about sidecut from snowboarders. Around 1979, Head’s chief engineer John Howe and marketing chief Gary Kiedaisch came up with the concept Natural Turning Radius, under which short, agile recreational skis would have a slightly deeper sidecut than the factory’s long high-speed cruising and racing skis. The idea reached the market in 1981, when the 180cm Head Yahoo (92.5-71.5-80mm), with a 7.3mm sidecut, offered a turn radius of about 35 meters. The company didn’t go so far as to build deep-sidecut molds, but Kiedaisch produced a pocket-size flexible aluminum ski for salespeople to use in demonstrating how a carved turn works. The sales tool had an exaggerated sidecut, and some people who saw it thought, “Hmm, why don’t they make real skis that way?”

Albert goes wild

In 1984, an executive at Olin Corp. had been having trouble learning to ski. He asked Frank Meatto, an engineer at the company’s ski division, why the factory couldn’t build a sort of Prince tennis racquet for skiers – something that would make the learning process a lot easier. Meatto, along with Ed Pilpel, had been working on designs for a better race ski, and had an idea that the key to a great teaching ski would be a deep sidecut. According to Pilpel, Meatto came up with “Albert,” which ski industry insiders consider the first of the modern shaped skis. Albert, named after a plastic toy belonging to Meatto’s dog – had a very fat tip and ridiculously narrow waist: according to Pilpel, the dimensions were 128-40-79mm. The prototype would have had a sidecut depth of 31mm and a radius of 8 meters. The swollen tip wouldn’t fit in Olin’s presses, so Meatto had to figure out how to make it narrower without sacrificing the deep sidecut. At the time, racers skied a very one-footed technique, leaping from inside edge to inside edge. Meatto wondered if they even needed an outside edge. He sliced Albert almost in half and prototyped an asymmetric 150cm ski, with a ruler-straight outside edge and a radical sidecut on the inside edge with a 10 meter radius. The waist wasn’t wide enough to accommodate a ski boot, so Meatto engineered an elevated Delrin platform to carry the bindings. He took out a patent covering the deep sidecut and the leverage advantage of the platform, specifying that the ski edge ran close to the centerline of the bootsole, like an ice skate. Olin produced a run of 150 pairs for introduction at the 1986 SIA Trade Show. Instructors who tested it thought Albert was a fabulous idea, but retailers thought the asymmetric hourglass shape far too cartoonishly weird and declined to buy it. Albert slid into obscurity, but the patent drawings lived on in Olin’s corporate legacy, to surface in other offices.

Powderfats

In 1988, Atomic engineer Rupert Huber was asked to create a better powder ski. By this time, like most ski factories, Atomic was building snowboards. It seemed logical to Huber to use the capacious floatability of a wide snowboard as a powder ski, so he simply bandsawed a snowboard in half, turned its steel edges inward, and put ski bindings on it. The production version became the Atomic Powder Plus, at 133-115-122mm the world’s first superfat powder ski – with a traditional straight-ski sidecut depth of 6.25. But a year later Volkl began work on its mid-fat Explosiv; the original 190cm version carried a profile of 118-94-110mm, for a sidecut depth of 10mm and a scary-short radius of 28 meters — helping this massive metal ski to feel reasonably agile underfoot.

The 10mm race ski

During the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, giant slalom racing changed. The Brothers Mahre and their chief rival Ingemar Stenmark developed a faster, straighter line from gate to gate, with a tighter, slalom-like turn. Course-setters responded by placing GS gates further across the fall line. According to K2 engineering chief Jim Vandergrift, by the late ‘80s GS had become a race of round turns across the hill. A few race ski designers began to think about pushing the sidecut depth up to 9 or 10mm. For race stock GS skis, used exclusively on hard snow, it was easy to make the waist narrower. Most of the European factories put their racers on new limited-production skis with a waist width around 62mm and a sidecut radius around 32 meters. By comparison the Rossignol SM VAS ski sold to the public had a 69mm waist for a radius of 48 meters.

At K2, designer Walter Knott remembers, “We figured we needed a little deeper sidecut to help the racers make a cleaner turn.” Thus was born, in 1990, the aluminum K2 GS Race, with its 10mm sidecut (my pair of 205s actually measures 10.6) and, in 1991, a fiberglass version for fast recreational skiing, the Velocity. These skis were a delight for fast skiing on groomed snow. A good skier quickly learned to start the turn with a touch more edge tilt – and a lot less steering. You got less tail slip at the beginning of the turn, and noticeably more speed through the entire arc. Volant followed on, in 1992, with the Zmax G, a fast racer/cruiser with a radical 12mm sidecut. On groomed Western snow, the G lived up to its name, in every sense. The first time I made a run on these, I found myself catapulting from arc to arc with effortless speed. The young racing star Amy Livran said “Hey, where have you been training?” It was becoming clear that better sidecut could make us all better skiers. By ’93, Dynastar also had a 12mm cruiser, the G9 race ski. K2 revised the Velocity as the MSL, which in its second year featured a 12mm sidecut. K2 also sold a version of the Volkl fat ski as the Big Kahuna, specifying an 11.5mm sidecut.

Other race ski designers were thinking along similar lines. In 1991, Bernhard Russi created a very twisty, technical downhill course for the 1992 Olympic venue on Bellevarde Face in Val d'Isere, a course clearly designed to favor very technical skiers like Gunther Mader, who had won World Cup races in slalom, GS, Super G and combined. At least one factory responded with experimental, turnier downhill skis. Little-known Austrian racer Patrick Ortlieb, who had never won a World Cup downhill, took gold on a slim-waisted Head ski, barely edging out Franck Piccard, 1988 Olympic Super G champ, on an Atomic-built, Dynamic-branded ski. Mader took third on Fischer. The speed specialists who finished at the top of World Cup downhill standings that year -- Franz Heinzer, Daniel Mahrer and AJ Kitt -- finished more than a second back. Race rooms are always very secretive about what they do, and in the era before FIS imposed rules on ski dimensions, there was no reason to reveal the actual sidecuts of downhill skis. 

Meanwhile, an Austrian ski instructor named Reinhard Fischer published a paper on the "accelerating turn" with the Austrian Ski Association. He theorized that a deep-sidecut ski would enable that turn and in 1980 began pitching the deep-sidecut ski design to major Austrian factories. Blizzard, Atomic and Kneissl responded to Fischer’s overtures by making prototypes for testing, with radius as short as 35 meters. Most of the test skis were long – around 200cm – and in on-snow testing the factories judged the skis unsuitable for most recreational skiers using the typical skidded-parallel techniques of the era.

Breakthrough

But the real breakthrough came from out in left field. Jurij Franko graduated from the University of Ljubljana in 1983, with a degree in engineering, and joined Elan in ’87 as a lab manager. In 1988, he had an idea for a deep sidecut ski, and his colleague Pavel Skofic calculated a suitable flex pattern. They organized a project dubbed Sidecut Extreme – SCX – and set out to build prototypes. (Jurij Franko is often confused with his schoolmate Jure Franko, whose successful World Cup career was capped by a silver medal in giant slalom at the Sarajevo Olympics.)

Over the next couple of years some very strange skis emanated from Franko’s lab. Back in 1977 Elan had produced a run of Variable Sidecut System skis, or VSS, slotted along the centerline through the shovel and tail. Across the top of each slot was a jackscrew, so the skier could adjust the width of the shovel and tail and thus the sidecut. It was a crude experiment, but it produced data that helped Franko and Skofic zero in on a new sidecut shape. Franko’s calculation was straightforward: “Choose the radius of the turn — 10 meters, for example. Choose the speed you want to ski — 5 meters per second for example. Calculate the centrifugal force and the lean angle, as for a bicycle. This is the angulation of the ski. Imagine a ski of constant width bent to the radius of the turn and penetrating through the snow. ‘Cut’ the ski with the snow surface, and there you are!”

By 1991 Franko and Skofic had finalized a 203cm mold for a GS race ski with a 110-63-105mm profile – that’s a 22.25mm sidecut, three times what most racers were using for slalom at the time. Sidecut radius was just 15 meters – about 35 percent of Jure Franko’s medal-winning Elans from ‘84.

The SCX was blazingly fast on the GS course. In its first local races, skiers on the SCX took eight of the top ten places. The new ski conformed more easily to the actual arc required to carve a clean turn in the racecourse. For any given turn, the racer needed less edge angle, and could therefore stand on a straighter, stronger leg. Folks on the World Cup circuit woke up.

In the Austrian Tyrol, Kneissl was trying to scramble back into the international market. In the late ‘70s the Tyrolian factory had tried to streamline production by converting to injection-molded foam-core construction for all its skis. The result was a marketing fiasco and bankruptcy. The company went through several ownership changes, and from 1986 to 1989 was partnered with Olin and Trak as part of Tristar Sports. Kneissl designers may have seen the Albert drawings. By 1990, reduced to being the local Tyrolean brand, Kneissl had resorted to making the “Bigfoot” novelty ski, a strange 80cm snowskate pitched at casual skiers. The Bigfoot, which featured a tip shaped like a set of toes, could strap to ordinary shoes as easily as to ski boots, and had a snowboard-style deep sidecut. Early in 1992, designer Wolfgang Wagner thought the deep sidecut might make an interesting recreational ski, and came up with the 180cm Ergo at 100-62-100mm – 19mm of sidecut depth, with a radius of 14 meters. Kneissl took the prototype to ISPO, the European trade show, that spring. Reinhard Fischer considered that the design derived from his drawings. 

The Revolution: Carving for everyone

By April ’93, Elan’s sales organizations in Europe and North America had seen the SCX prototype. Mike Adams, marketing director in the U.S., sent four sets of samples out to ski instructors around the country, including Bill Irwin at Killington and this author at Squaw Valley. I was amazed at what the ski would do – it made me instantly the equal of the best skiers on the mountain, in any kind of snow. More to the point, when I put a middle-aged intermediate-level student on the Kneissl Ergo, she was immediately able to carve clean turns in spring corn, over rotten crust. I put her husband on the SCX, and he could do the same. The couple were the novelist Amy Tan and her husband Lou deMattei – and they may have the honor of being the first ski school clients ever to learn to carve on modern shaped skis. All the instructors who tried the SCX called Adams back and said “I don’t know what this is, but it’s a fabulous teaching tool,” or words to that effect.

Adams got the message. Franko and Skofic spent the summer creating a shorter version, scaling everything down but keeping the same radius. The result was a 163cm teaching ski for adults, and a 143cm junior race model. By December, Adams was demonstrating the short SCX to ski school directors and resort managers. “Everyone who skied on it was blown away,” Adams recalls.

Another Balkan racer was thinking along the same lines. Ivan Petkov retired from the Bulgarian ski team in 1976 and took up windsurfing. He designed and built a line of “Bora” sailboards and won the national championships three times between 1977 and 1980. He came to the US in 1987, to spend the summer in Hood River and the winter teaching skiing in Aspen. By 1989 he was managing a retail operation for Robbie Naish on Oahu, and while watching the craftsmen there carve custom sailboards, got the idea for a new carving ski. In the spring of 1992 he went back to the resort town of Pamporovo, in the Rhodope mountains of southern Bulgaria. There, Atomic had set up a factory to make some of their inexpensive constructions.

“I had them make a mold for a 187cm ski with a profile of 113-61-91,” Petkov says. “We couldn’t find a wide-enough base material, but they also made water skis there so we got some greenish-blue polyethylene and cut the base out of that. I took three or four pairs in different flexes and went to Mt. Hood. We were amazed at how well they held.”

Petkov called his new product the S-Ski, for its turn shape. He applied for a patent on the geometry. He ordered more skis in 183 and 193cm lengths, and went to the SIA Trade Show in the spring of ’93. “Everyone came to the booth,” Petkov remembers. “Warren Witherell (author of How the Racers Ski) was very excited.” He shipped 300 pairs. The 183cm sample in the Colorado Ski Museum measures 115-61-85, for a 19.5 sidecut depth and a 15 meter radius.

For 1994, there were shorter lengths, 163 and 178cm, and Petkov sold 1200 pairs. S-Ski was on a roll, but Petkov was unhappy with Pamporovo’s quality, and opened negotiations with Blizzard to build his ski.

Wagner, Franko and Petkov settled on shorter lengths for a simple reason: When the tip and tail grew wider, a full-length ski felt intolerably heavy – there was simply too much mass out there at the end of the lever. The 208 version of the K2 GS Race, for instance, felt as ponderous as a downhill race ski, and it was called by insiders The Hammerhead. The solution was to shorten the ski dramatically. When average width rose 13% (from 72mm to 83mm), length needed to fall 13% (from 204cm to 178cm). Bearing surface area remained the same, and so did material weight. But the turn radius – proportional to the square of the running surface length – fell dramatically. Additional mass at the tip and tail, combined with improved edge contact through the turn, meant that the new 180cm skis could be as stable as the old straight 205s. Another design change proved essential: the ski had to be stronger and stiffer through the center to prevent the wider tip “hinging” upward in bumps and deep snow.

Atomic, Fischer and Head had taken notice and quietly began to design 15mm sidecut skis of their own. There was the Fischer Revolution Ice (92-62-92mm), the Head Cyber 24 (94-61-90mm), and a whole group of identical skis marketed under the Atomic-built labels: Atomic, Dynamic, Hart, Rohrmoser, Colt. “It turns out that everything we thought we knew for forty years was wrong,” admitted one Austrian ski designer. But the big Western factories – notably Rossignol/Dynastar, Salomon and K2 – seemed somnolent in the face of impending revolution. “Shapes are a fad,” snorted a senior executive for one French skimaker.

There was a good economic reason for their delay. 1990 was the year Salomon entered the ski market with its “cap” ski – a good conventional ski with a seamless one-piece plastic top to replace the traditional “square” sidewalls and topskin. The streamlined look was really just a simpler way to make skis but, billed as a “monocoque” structure, it took the world by storm. By ’93, factories around the world saw their business eroded by the Salomon invasion and decided to invest millions in new molds to build cap skis. With crash programs under way to compete with Salomon, few plant managers wanted to spend additional millions creating molds for deep sidecuts. As late as 1994, Rossignol built an entire factory for rapid manufacture of the injection-molded 4SV cap ski, with a painfully straight 7mm, 83-64-73mm profile – and the factory didn’t yet have a shaped ski in progress.

Many factories went bankrupt trying to keep pace with Salomon. Among them was Blizzard, which slid into the control of the banks during ’94 and ‘95. But the factory already had Petkov’s S-Ski mold, and began producing its own cap-ski version that spring. Meanwhile Pamporovo made versions of the original S-Ski for other brands.

But Elan, the odd little factory in Begunje, Slovenia, was never threatened by the Salomon monocoque. Presciently, in 1990 it had developed its own cap ski, the MBX Monoblock. By ’94 Monoblock sales subsidized the creation of a complete set of cap-style SCX molds. Elan not only had a lead in shaped skis, it had a catchy name for them: “When Jurij tried to describe the turn shape to a journalist, he used the word parabolic,” Adams recalls. “And that’s what we named the ski.”

Bode Miller and mainstream acceptance

Engineers at K2 at last paid attention. In the spring of ’94, without reference to the Albert patent, a series of internal memos defined the profiles for what would become the K2 Four, Three and Two. The shovels wouldn’t be as wide as the 105+mm Elan, Kneissl and S-Ski, because all of K2’s wide presses were busy building snowboards. With a width limit, the Four wound up with dimensions of 98-65-87 – a 14mm sidecut depth, describing a 22 meter radius at the 195cm length. When the mold was finally cut the following year, the result arrived in New England just in time for a young racer named Bode Miller to try it out in the ’96 Junior National Championships. In four events at Sugarloaf that March, Bode took three firsts and a second. Overnight every Master’s racer in the country needed a pair of K2 Fours just to be in the game.

The word was out: If you wanted to keep up with the hot guys, you needed shaped skis. Traditional 7mm “straight” skis began to pile up in warehouses. Salomon and Rossignol had hundreds of shipping containers full of slick, straight, heavily discounted cap skis. In ’96, playing catch-up, Salomon began work on the Axendo series (99-64-89mm; 15m) and hired Mike Adams away from Elan. Rossignol created a series of Cut 10.4 shaped skis (104-62-94; 19m) at a dramatically reduced price and shoehorned them into every rental inventory they could reach.

That winter, Petkov realized he’d been undercut by Blizzard and Pamporovo: both factories planned to compete with him using his own mold. He turned to K2, which offered to build skis in his dimensions. The Vashon Island factory backed out of the deal when Petkov threatened to enforce his patent against any and all factories, including his own supplier. With no one to build his product, Petkov’s S-Ski slid from sight.

By 1997, shapes had proliferated in all directions. There were fat shapes for powder, called Chubbs and Fudds and midfats. It was possible to buy deep shapes, moderate shapes, race shapes, carver shapes, powder shapes, expert shapes, learn-to-carve shapes and learn-to-ski shapes. Straight skis were piled in clearance racks across the country for $29.95.

In the new century, shapes have grown so radical that the International Ski Federation has imposed limits. Today a FIS-legal GS ski must have a radius of at least 21 meters – that’s K2 Four territory. Civilians can buy an “oversize” illegal GS ski – designed before the rules went into effect – for fast cruising, and that has in fact become a popular category among non-racing experts. And a slalom race ski must be at least 155cm long (for men – 150cm for women). Something as radical as the K2 Seth Pistol – meant for huge jumps and stunts in powder – with its 128-90-115mm, 14 meter radius, looks conservative next to a full-boat World Cup slalom like the Volkl P60: 115-62-98mm, with an 8.2 meter radius.

On skis like this, today’s racers — Bode Miller, Hermann Maier, Benni Raich and the Kostelic kids– can bend space-time. Hell, so can you and I.

That’s a revelation.

A radical early experiment

In the winter of 1948-49, DU racer Jerry Hiatt, who worked in Thor Groswold’s shipping department, got together with high schooler Jerry Groswold and proposed making a turnier slalom ski. They took a pair of the laminated hickory Rocket model – a very flexible ski to begin with – and carved it down to about a 52mm waist, leaving the tip and tail alone. This gave them roughly a 15mm sidecut, twice the normal depth. “We put the edges back on, and went up to Winter Park to try them out,” Groswold remembers. “They turned sensationally but wouldn’t stop turning. We got one long round turn, and a step turn, and another long round turn. We each made one run and went back to the factory and threw the skis in a corner. They probably became firewood. It never occurred to us to keep the waist at 70mm and make the tip and tail a lot wider, as is done today.” This oversight was a natural one, considering that Groswold bought hickory lumber in 4-inch widths. To make the tip wider than 100mm would have required some fancy gluing. Moreover, when they made their skis so narrow at the waist, the two Jerries also made them very soft in flex through the middle, giving them a severe case of double camber. The solution would have been to make the middle of the ski thicker, not wider.

Copyright 2005 by Seth Masia

The first “safety” bindings, by Portland skier Hjalmar Hvam, weren’t all that safe. But 50 years ago, Cubco, Miller, Look and Marker began to change skiing’s broken leg image.

By Seth Masia

(First published in Skiing History, September 2002)

By the mid-Thirties, half of the great inventions of alpine skiing were already in place. The standard waisted and cambered shape for a turning ski had been established 80 years earlier by Sondre Norheim. Rudolph Lettner had introduced the steel edge in 1928, and the first laminated skis – with ash tops and hard bases of hickory or even Bakelite plastic – were produced in 1932. The Eriksen toe iron and Kandahar heel cable assured a solid connection of boot to ski.

Too solid. Every racer could count on breaking a leg from time to time, and some of the classic European downhills hospitalized up to a third of the entry list. Around 1937 a small company in Megeve, Reussner-Beckert, introduced a primitive adjustalble-release toe iron. The Ski Club of Great Britain liked it enough to offer a 25 pound prize for the best "safety" binding produced in the coming year. The winning entry, from one P. Schwarze of St. Gallen, Switzerland, provided that if the boot sprang free of the heel cable, the toe would also release -- but upward, not laterally. 

Some of the brighter lights in the skiing community experimented with homemade release systems. One of these brighter lights – and one of the injured racers – was an elegantly tall, slim athlete named Hjalmar Hvam. Like Mikkel Hemmestveit and countless Norwegians before him, Hvam was a great Nordic champion who emigrated to the U.S. Born in Kongsberg in 1902, Hvam won his first jumping contest at age 12, and won consistently through his teens. But he jumped in the shadow of the local Ruud brothers – Birger, Sigmund and Asbjorn – who snapped up all of the Kongsberg team slots at the annual Holmenkollen classic.

Hvam quit skiing and emigrated to Canada in 1923, arriving in Portland in 1927. He worked as a laborer in a lumber mill until joining the Cascade Ski Club in 1929. He was quickly recognized as a leading jumper, cross-country racer and speed skater, peaking at the national championships in 1932 at Lake Tahoe, where he won both the jumping and cross-country events to take the Nordic combined championship. Coaxed onto alpine skis, he won both runs of his very first slalom race, in 1933 – the Oregon state championships. On borrowed skis.

That experience led to twelve consecutive downhill victories in 1935 and 1936, including the Silver Skis on Mt. Rainier and the first running of the Golden Rose race on Mt. Hood. On Mt. Baker, in 1936, he won a four-way competition with victories in all four disciplines – jumping, cross-country, slalom and downhill. He qualified for the U.S. Olympic Team that year, but couldn’t compete because he was still a citizen of Norway.

In 1935, he opened the Hjalmar Hvam Ski Shop in Northwest Portland, with a branch at Mt. Hood. The city shop had a great location, right on the 23rd St. trolley line from downtown. Hvam saw firsthand the dozens of injuries suffered by his customers, as well as by competing racers. No one kept national records, but it appears that the injury rate was horrendous. Ski injury experts like Dr. Jasper Shealy and Carl Ettlinger estimate that in the years just before and after World War II, about 1 percent of skiers suffered an injury on any given day – so it’s likely that by season’s end, 10 percent of all skiers were out of commission. About half of these injuries were probably lower-leg fractures. The most visible après-ski accessories were plaster casts and crutches. It wasn’t a recipe for long-term commercial success.

Trained as a mechanical drafstman, Hvam began tinkering with toe irons, looking for a reliable way to release the boot in a fall. The problem then, as now, was how to make a sophisticated latch that would hold a skier in for normal skiing maneuvers – steering, edging, jumping, landing – but release in abnormal or complex falls. It was a puzzle.

Injury Leads to Invention

Hvam’s “Eureka!” moment came under the influence of a powerful anaesthetic. In June 1937, Hvam won the Golden Rose on Mt. Hood – again – and then climbed with some friends to do a little cornice jumping. The result was predictable: In the spring snow, someone was bound to punch through the crust and break a leg. This time, it was Hvam, and he sustained a spiral fracture. He was sent to Portland’s St. Vincent Hospital for surgery. “When I came out of the ether I called the nurse for a pencil and paper,” he wrote decades later. “I had awakened with the complete principle of a release toe iron.”

What he imagined looked like a simple pivoting clip notched into the boot’s sole flange. An internal mechanism held the pivot centered as long as the boot toe pressed upward against the clip. But when that pressure was removed, as in a severe forward lean, the clip was freed to swing sideways. Thus Hvam provided for sideways toe release in a forward-leaning, twisting fall.
In 1939, Hvam broke the leg again, this time while testing his own binding. He always claimed the leg had never healed properly, but it did teach the lesson that “safety” bindings aren’t always safe. Nonetheless, Hvam launched his Saf-Ski binding into the market. His release toe was received with enthusiasm by his racing and jumping friends. Jumpers used it by inserting a heel lift under the boot, thus jamming the toe iron so it couldn’t swivel. It seemed a pointless exercise, but professional jumpers from the Northwest wanted to support their friend.

Many racers viewed the idea of a release toe with intense suspicion, especially after Olaf Rodegaard released from his Hvam binding in a giant slalom. Rodegaard, however, was convinced that the release saved his leg, and kept the binding. Hvam sold a few dozen pairs before World War II broke out, and tried to talk the Pentagon into buying the toe for the 10th Mountain Division – but the troops shipped out before he could close a deal. At least three pairs of Saf-Ski toe irons went to Italy with the division, bootlegged by Rodegaard and by the Idaho brothers Leon and Don Goodman (the Goodmans would introduce their own release binding in 1952). Thus the first production release bindings found their way to Europe, screwed solidly to GI Northland and Groswold skis.

After the war, Hvam produced the binding in several versions for retail sale and rental. It was widely accepted by his buddies in the jumping and racing communities, at least in the West. He sold 2,500 pairs in 1946-47, and watched as a dozen North American companies rapidly imitated the principle. His new competitors included Anderson & Thompson, Dovre, Northland, Gresvig, Krystal , U.S. Star and O-U.

Euros Develop Release Systems

There were also European inventions. In 1948, in Nevers, France, sporting goods manufacturer Jean Beyl built a plate binding mortised into the ski. There’s no evidence that Beyl was inspired by American toe irons, and his binding was based on a completely different principle. It didn’t release the boot in a fall – instead, it swiveled to protect the lower leg against twist, without actually detaching from the ski. It did something no other binding could do: It would absorb momentary shock and return to center. The binding’s lateral elasticity was a revolutionary idea and it wouldn’t be duplicated by other manufacturers for another two decades. The plate also eliminated the flexible leather ski boot sole from the release mechanism, vastly improving reliability. Beyl wanted to give the product an American-sounding name, and settled on the title of a glossy weekly picture magazine published in New York. By 1950 Beyl had talked several members of the French team into using his Look plate, including world champions Henri Oreiller and James Couttet.

Norm Macleod, one of the partners in the U.S. importing firm Beconta, recalls that the problems with the Look plate were weight and thickness. To install the binding, a mechanic had to carve a long, deep hole in the top of the ski. “The plate was mortised into the top of the ski and therefore the ski had to be thick,” Macleod says. “It was set about a centimeter into the ski, and stuck up another 6 or 7 millimeters above the top surface. There was resistance to that. Racers thought it was advantageous to be closer to the ski.”

So in 1950 Beyl created the Look Nevada toe, the first recognizably modern binding design, with a long spring-loaded piston to provide plenty of lateral elasticity for shock absorption. Beyl was a perfectionist; in an era when most bindings were made of stamped steel, his Nevada was made of expensive, heavy cast aluminum. It was nearly bulletproof. It was a two-pivot toe unit-that is, the main pivoting body carried along a second pivot on which was mounted the toe cup, thus assuring that the toe cup would travel in parallel with the boot toe.

Hannes Marker, a native of Berlin who had learned to ski as a Wehrmacht soldier stationed in Norway, went to Garmisch after the war and found a job as a civilian ski instructor for the U.S. Army recreational center, where Leon Goodman was supervisor of the ski school. There he saw the American-made release toes, and thought “I can do better.” In 1952 he introduced his Duplex toe, a two-piece toe that gripped the corners of the boot toe flange in much the same way future pincer bindings would work. He followed this, in 1953, with the Simplex. Like the Look toe, and unlike the Hvam, it was adjustable for release tension, and was the first release toe to be widely accepted by racers outside France. And like the Look Nevada, the Simplex was a double-pivot system.

Cubberley Attacks Heel Release

Other tinkerers were hard at work. Beginning in 1948, in Nutley, N.J., mechanical engineer and recreational skier Mitch Cubberley brought an ingenious mind to the problem of skiing’s broken-leg image. Skiing with his friend Joe Powers at Highmount, Belleayre and Bromley, Cubberley concluded that a key problem – thus far addressed by no one – was unreliable heel release, arising from the combination of the soft leather boot sole, the longthong wrap used to reinforce the sloppy leather boot cuff, and the complex, serpentine Kandahar heel cable. He figured out how to eliminate the heel cable and its grip on the soft leather sole, designing an elegant spring-controlled latch which could be mounted at both toe and heel.

A key element of the Cubberley design was the boot plate. Steel plates were screwed solidly to the toe and heel of the boot, and the spring-loaded binding gripped these plates rather than a soft, wet, flexible boot sole. The metal-to-metal contact provided more consistent release and reduced boot-to-ski friction. Cubberley sold about 200 sets during the winter of 1949-50. In Orem, Utah, Earl Miller was on a parallel track, and a bitter rivalry grew between the two men.

In Annecy, France, Georges Salomon, manufacturer of steel ski edges and cable heel bindings, produced his own release toe, the Skade, to sell with his popular Lift cable heel. It was neither a single-pivot design, like the Look, nor a two-pivot toe, like the Marker, but instead used a pair of roller bearings, riding on a steel cam, to guide the toe cup in its lateral travel. It was a less elegant system, but it worked, and Salomon signed up a roster of ski racers to endorse it. The basic design, beefed up with more substantial castings, eventually produced the best-selling S.444 and S.555 bindings.

In 1952, Mitch Cubberley patented a toe unit that would release in all directions, and sales took off. By 1955 he’d added a lip to his heel latch and created the first step-in heel. Earl Miller dubbed his own binding the Hanson. He spent several winters promoting the binding by throwing himself into terrifying tumbles to demonstrate its release.

Back in Portland, Hvam kept cranking out a few thousand pairs of Saf-Ski toes each year. In 1952, at age 50, he coached the U.S. Nordic Combined team at Holmenkollen – and found he could still outjump most of his young athletes. His ad agency created the slogan “Hvoom with Hvam – and have no fear!” Magazine ads featured a photo of Hvam soaring through a gelandesprung jump, accompanied by a chatty text in which Hvam explained, in Norwegian-English syntax, how his binding worked. “Maybe you do not know about release bindings,” read one ad. “Maybe you are in a hospital with a broken leg. . . . Let me tell you about how the Hvam toe release works. It never releases while you ski, because this part has two rounded pins that fit into sockets and it cannot swivel because this part is pushed upwards. As long as it pushes up, it cannot swivel. When you ski, your boot sole always pushes up on the toe release lip. The harder you edge, the harder your toe is locked in place. Now. When you fall bad, your foot may twist. Your foot twists sideways, there is not much pressure up. The toe swivels, and your boot may be twisted out without injury. Maybe you think I would tell you a lie. If you think so, I am sorry for you. I would not lie about anything. Especially I would not lie about skiing, because skiing is what my whole life is about.”

By 1953, with the widespread adoption of “safety” bindings, it became disconcertingly clear that the injury rate wasn’t improving. The Stowe ski patrol reported that they were still transporting about four leg fractures per 1000 skier days, and placed the blame on the fact that there was no standard method of adjusting and testing release bindings. In France, in 1954, Jean Beyl offered a $71 indemnity for any broken leg suffered using a factory-mounted Look-and paid out only twice based on 1,180 skiers. Ski Magazine estimated that this amounted to an injury rate of .17 per 1,000 skier days-which presumably meant you’d be 24 times safer skiing on a properly adjusted Look than on the average New Englander’s recreational rig. Earl Miller responded the following winter by offering his own $100 bounty for broken legs suffered on Hanson bindings mounted in his own Provo shop.

Release Toes Proliferate

By the late 1950s, American ski shops were selling release toes under some 35 brand names, including A&T, ABC, Alta, Aspen, Attenhofer, Cervin, Cober, Cubco, Cortina, Dovre, Eckel, Evernew, Geze, Gresvig, Goodman, Gripon, Kenny K, Krystal, Look, Marker, Meergans, Miller, Northland, O-U, P&M, Persenico, Ramy, Ski-Flete, Ski Free, Spearhead, Stowe Flexible, Suwe, Top, Tyrolia, U.S. Star and Werner. Hvam kept his prices low – in 1961, when the Look Nevada toe sold for $12.50, Hvam’s Standard model, in chrome, retailed for $6.95 (though there was a Deluxe model, in gold, for $12.50). Hvam introduced his heel release cable for $4.50, when the Look cable sold for $7.50.

Other than Cubco and Miller, no one else had yet figured out how to eliminate the heel cable, essentially unchanged from Reuge’s 1932 Kandahar design. Because cable heels were generic, it was common to see mixed systems: You could mount a Hvam toe with a Salomon Lift cable, or a Look toe with a Marker turntable. As late as 1965, Marker was still selling a non-release sidethrow turntable heel. At this point, Look introduced the releaseable Grand Prix heel, based on the same high-elasticity principle as the Nevada toe unit.

Hvam’s binding was already obsolete, and while Cubco’s system worked efficiently, it was viewed with disdain by experts, who distrusted upward toe release.

In 1961, rivals Earl Miller and Mitch Cubberley introduced the first ski brakes, eliminating the “safety” strap and with it cuts and contusions due to windmilling skis. Ski resorts wouldn’t accept ski brakes until the major European binding brands adopted them beginning in 1976.

On the racing side, momentum was moving steadily in favor of the European factories, which had access to the top racers. Stein Eriksen, for instance, endorsed Marker, and in 1960 Jean Vuarnet and Roger Staub won gold medals at the Squaw Valley Olympics using the Look Nevada I toe. Look got another promotional boost when Karl Schranz and Egon Zimmermann switched from Marker.

Rocket science

The ski binding market was about to change. In 1961, a real rocket scientist named Robert Lusser ruptured his achilles tendon while testing his own cable bindings in his hotel room at Saas-Fee. A champion aerobatic pilot and designer of Klemm light aircraft, Lusser went on to design German fighters for Messerschmitt and Heinkel during WWII. At Heinkel he was responsible for the first jet fighter that ever flew, and had created the Fieseler V-1 “buzz bomb.” The U.S. Navy grabbed him in 1948 to work on early cruise missiles at Point Mugu, California, and he did some work for Wernher von Braun on the Redstone missile project, before returning to Germany, and Messerschmitt, in 1957.

Lusser did a thorough engineering analysis of the binding release problem, and came up with three key innovations: A teflon anti-friction pad under the boot toe, a heel release system based on a heel cup, a cam and a fixed-tension spring, and a simple toe unit that gripped the upper radius of the boot toe instead of the toe flange. This last innovation provided a long high-elasticity stroke before release, which meant that the binding could return to center without releasing — even at relatively low spring tension settings. It was an ugly toe, built like a Cubco spring turned sideways and linked to a couple of steel-wire boot-grippers. But it worked.

Lusser patented these inventions, and the major binding companies picked up his innovations. At Look, Jean Beyl redesigned the two-pivot Nevada toe. The result, in 1962, was the ingenious single-pivot Look Nevada II, with its long toe wings that gripped the boot’s upper toe, rather than the sole flange. This patented design remained the basis of Look toe units for the next 40 years.

In 1963 Lusser quit his job at Messerschmitt and launched the Lusser binding company. He died in 1969, and the brand died with him. But he had started the ball rolling on his three key breakthroughs.

During the Sixties, Mitch Cubberley and Gordon Lipe proved the importance of reducing boot-ski friction, and, in parallel with Lusser, created the first anti-friction devices. Personal injury attorneys began paying closer attention to ski binding design. Cubberley had the test results to prove that removing the leather boot sole from the release system improved safety, and by the mid-Sixties Cubco was selling more than 200,000 sets of bindings annually. Cubco was the binding of choice for rental operators.

With his dated design, Hvam had a problem. In 1966, his insurers wanted a $160,000 liability premium. He would have had to sell nearly 120,000 sets of toes just to pay for insurance, and he had nowhere near that kind of market share.

Standardized Sole

Technology was advancing on other fronts. Look had introduced the Nevada II toe, following Lusser’s idea of gripping the upper radius of the boot toe. The company aggressively, and correctly, promoted the value of high elasticity and shock absorption, and the message got through. As racers talked about “Markering out” of the Simplex, European factories redesigned their toes for longer travel, producing products like the Marker M4 and Geze Jet Set on Lusser’s patents.

In 1967 Tyrolia introduced the Clix Rocket step-in heel unit, and Salomon responded with a heel unit that could be cocked open for step-in by closing its cover latch. By 1970, Kurt von Besser, Rudi Gertsch and Dr. Richard Spademan introduced new variations on the plate binding, just as plastic boots offered the promise of a standardized boot sole, which would eliminate the need for notched toes and screwed-on steel plates. It was clear that to stay competitive, a ski binding company needed deep pockets for research and testing.

On the commercial side, the big European factories found sizeable American corporations to distribute their products in North America. Beconta commanded almost 30 percent of the market for Look, while Garcia Corp. – distributor of Fischer and Rossignol – hawked Marker even more successfully. Salomon found a home at A&T. Tyrolia was purchased by AMF. Tiny independent companies like Hvam, Cubco and Miller began to look irrelevant in the great merchandising wars. Even smaller start-ups – Americana, Moog, Allsop – muddied the waters and cut into market share.

Saf-Ski R.I.P.

In 1972, Hvam retired and the Saf-Ski binding disappeared for good. Hvam died in 1996 at the age of 93. Hvam never fully solved the problem of pre-release, or heel release, or boot sole flex, but he defined the issues and led the way.

Cubco, armed with brilliant reviews from the testing labs, soldiered on. Mitch Cubberley was determined to build a safe, effective and cheap binding, and seemed equally determined to keep it ugly. With the universal adoption of standard plastic boot soles, his binding lost its performance advantage. Thanks largely to his own efforts in partnership with Gordon Lipe to eliminate boot-to-ski friction, industry-wide injury rates fell 75 percent to about 2.5 sled rides per thousand skier days, and most of those injuries were upper-body fractures entirely unrelated to ski binding issues.

Moreover, Cubberley was amazingly generous about his own designs. When other companies infringed on his patents-the original Gertsch plate and the Rosemount toe unit are egregious examples-he declined to protect his rights. Cubco, a victim of its own technological leadership, slid into commercial obscurity.

Cubberley, more than anyone the man responsible for destroying the sport’s broken-leg image in North America, died in 1977 at age 62. Cubco folded two years later. But the truth is, if you have a late-model Cubco binding, complete with its standard Lipe Slider, it still works pretty well.

By 1976, when Look’s single-pivot patent expired, Salomon was ready to adopt its long-elasticity design with the first of the 727-series bindings. Even so, the Look Nevada toe of the era featured almost twice the elastic travel of the 727, or of any other toe unit available at the time.

Thanks largely to the work of Jean Beyl, Robert Lusser, Mitch Cubberley and Gordon Lipe, today’s bindings – with long-elasticity toe and heel units, anti-friction devices, and standardized boot soles – have reduced lower leg injuries to an insignificant level, while largely eliminating pre-release. The complex issue of knee injuries is another matter, which we may well revisit in these pages in years to come – if new binding designs succcessfully address it, and new pioneers step up to the plate. 

Photos: Top of page, Cubco step-in; middle of page, Robert Lusser's low-friction, high-elasticity ski binding.

Caption: North end of Gotthard Tunnel; train to Andermatt climbs away to the right.

Skiers have been following rails into the snowy mountains for 140 years now. 1868 was the year the Mt. Washington cog railway first hauled passengers to the summit. The cog railway didn’t run during the snowy months, because New Hampshire’s vicious weather made it dangerous to keep the tracks clear of snow. But that same spring, the first passenger train ran the route from Sacramento across Donner Pass into Truckee and on to Reno. The nine-hour trip cut 41 hours off Snowshoe Thompson’s best time. During the following winter, the train ran through snowy trenches dug out by hundreds of navvies and coolies. This was the heyday of long-board racing in the Sierra mining camps, and while we have no record of it, it would have been odd indeed if a Norwegian miner didn’t depart the train at Soda Springs or Donner Tunnel to ride his snowhoes down to Truckee. Thompson himself was probably one of them: during construction of the railroad, he’s known to have skied mail from the station at Cisco south to Meadow Lake, now a ghost town south of Kirkwood.

In 1920, Switzerland had enough hydroelectric dams to electrify all these routes (can you imagine riding behind a steam locomotive through a nine-mile tunnel?). One side-benefit of a high-alpine dam is that its construction – and the maintenance of the head-pipe running down to the generating station – usually required a funicular (cable-drawn) railway. Ernest Hemingway’s 1924 short story Cross Country Snow – perhaps the first evocative description of the ski bum life – begins with a couple of American skiers jumping from the baggage car of a Swiss funicular train for a powder run back to the valley.

The Canadian Pacific Railroad pushed across Rogers Pass in 1885, and Glacier National Park opened the following year. The railroad encouraged tourism, putting up alpine hotels and, in 1899, hiring the first of a team of Swiss guides who would help to pioneer alpine skiing throughout the region. Over a 35 year period, avalanches across the tracks killed 200 railway workers. In 1913 construction started on the five-mile Connaught Tunnel, and the surface tracks were abandoned.

The 20th century brought true wintersport tourism to snowbound towns served by railways. In 1909, Charles McGlashan of Truckee founded the town’s annual Winter Carnival, designed to lure tourists from San Francisco. At Hilltop, a knob overlooking the train station on the southeast edge of town, organizers built a toboggan slide. In 1910 some local genius rigged a steam donkey (a steam-driven winch) to haul the sleds up the hill. Skiers rode the rope, too, and thus was born North America's first mechanical ski lift (The first mechanical ski tow, powered by a water mill, was built in 1908 by Rober Winkelhalder at his hotel in Germany's Schwarzwald region). 

During the 1920s, as ski clubs grew, they rode trains into the Alps, the Laurentians, the Adirondacks, the Rockies, the Sierra. And when the Depression cut into railroad revenues, creative marketing men in New England and elsewhere hit upon the idea of special weekend excursion trains. According to John Allen (From Skisport to Skiing), the Boston & Maine ran its first ski train out of Boston to Warner, New Hampshire on Jan. 11, 1931, carrying 197 members of the AMC, Dartmouth Outing Club and Harvard Mountaineering Club. Over the course of the winter, the railroad ran 12 trains northward, carrying over 8,000 skier, experts and newcomers alike. Clerks and secretaries climbed aboard – many came not to ski but to party. Local innkeepers reopened for the winter weekends. In January, 1932, the Rio Grande Railway ran special trains from Salt Lake to Park City.

After Alex Foster set up his first rope tow early in 1933, the ski train business boomed. The Boston & Maine hired ski instructors and put in a stock of rental skis, racked in the baggage car. In 1935 the New York, New Haven & Hartford sent trains north from Grand Central Station. Averell Harriman, president of the Union Pacific, took note and began dreaming up Sun Valley. By 1936, John Allen writes, 70,000 skiers rode trains out of New York in January, February and March alone.

(Right: Canadian Pacific crosses Rogers Pass. Painting by Max Jacquiard)

The Colorado Ski Train

When the Colorado Ski Train glides out of Union Station at 7:15 a.m., its 14 heavy cars and 750 passengers are drawn by three 3,000 horsepower General Electric F40PH locomotives. Over the next two hours, the 16-cylinder diesel engines will turn at a constant 900 rpm as the train climbs 3,960 feet in 56 miles, to the Moffat Tunnel and Winter Park Station.

That’s the basic numbers. Here’s another one: It’s been 97 years since Carl Howelsen and his buddy Angell Schmidt turned the Denver, Northwestern & Pacific Railway into a ski lift – and started a revolution in Rocky Mountain skiing.

In 1902, Denver banker and railroad executive David Halliday Moffat, Jr. developed a plan for a six-mile tunnel under Rollins Pass. He pushed a temporary line over the pass, at 11,660 feet on Colorado’s Continental Divide. The Moffat Road would require a sizeable crew to shovel the tracks – in fact, 41% of the railroad’s expenses eventually went to snow-clearing – and so the company built a dormitory at the summit, dubbed the Corona Station. The DN&P business plan was to haul coal eastward from the Yampa Valley, and eventually to run the line out to Salt Lake City. In the meantime, Moffat’s main revenue stream came from tourism: He marketed the spectacular ride up Boulder Creek to the Top of the World, and expanded the Corona dormitory into a hotel.

(Left: Corona Station, located in a snow shed at the top of Rollins Pass, Colorado)

Within a year, Moffat was able to run his tourist traffic all the way to Hot Sulphur Springs, a spa town at 7,600 feet on the western slope. Hot Sulphur Springs had been developing as a mineral-baths resort since 1864. The railroad was a big deal for this town – it meant steady business right through the winter. To celebrate the opening of the line in September, 1905, a special excursion train carried 900 passengers over the top.

In the fall of 1911, Swiss-born hotelier John Peyer decided to promote his winter business in Hot Sulphur Springs by organizing a Winter Carnival, complete with skating and sledding. He scheduled it for final weekend of the year.

At 8 a.m. on Saturday, Dec. 30, 1911, a DN&P train pulled out of the North Denver station for the long climb to Corona. It carried a load of New Year’s Eve celebrants bound for the Peyer’s Winter Carnival. Among them was a Norwegian mason who happened to have been Holmenkollen combined champion in 1903 (and the 50k cross-country champ in 1902 and 1903). After helping to found the Norge Ski Club in Chicago, Carl Howelsen (originally Karl Hovelsen) had moved to Denver in search of some real snow. He found it.

At noon, the train pulled into Corona Station. Howelsen and his friend Angell Schmidt climbed down, put on the their skis and began the long exhilarating run down the west slope of the Rockies. They descended 3,100 feet to Fraser, about 16 miles, following close to the railbed because of all the fallen timber in the woods. They then ran another 18 miles to Hot Sulphur Springs, the last four miles all downhill. They langlaufed into town at about 9 p.m., at the height of the party.

The crowd was happy to see them. In the morning, they shoveled snow into a small ski jump on the hill behind Peyer’s house. Before the day was out, Peyer and his winter sports club were planning another carnival for February, and the Norwegian pros were invited back. Thereafter, the Hot Sulphur Springs Winter Sports Carnival was an annual event. Hundreds of Denverites rode special trains to the event. The following winter, Howelsen settled in Steamboat Springs and began teaching the local kids to ski and jump, and in 1914 Steamboat launched its own Winter Sports Carnival. Howelsen and his Norwegian friends were busy teaching skiing – and building jumps — from Denver north and westward to the end of the line in Craig. Top Norwegian jumpers like Ragnar Omtvedt and Anders Haugen traveled from the Upper Midwest to visit little Colorado towns and set records on their big jumps. The Winter Carnivals formed a circuit of ski racing and ski jumping events that could support a crew of athletes through most of the winter. As in the Midwest, a jumping meet was the occasion for most of a town’s population to climb on a train and follow their champions across a couple of counties.

The train schedule was not dependable. Despite the huge budget thrown at snow removal, despite the adoption of steam-driven rotary plows, sometimes the weather simply shut the pass down for weeks at a time. Weather forced the railroad into bankruptcy in 1913, and again in 1917. The route was taken over by the Denver & Salt Lake Railroad, the D&SL.

North American ski trains took a break for World War I, when Moffat Road locomotives were busy moving coal and oil for the war effort. Work began on the Moffat Tunnel, under the pass, in July, 1923, and the first freight train hauled 12 cars of lumber eastward on Feb. 24, 1928. The following morning, passenger train service began.

During the intervening years, trains had usually been able to get over the top to Hot Sulphur Springs and Steamboat Springs for their Winter Carnivals. With the tunnel open, access was guaranteed, even as the Depression deepened.

In February of 1936, Denver’s Rocky Mountain News sponsored an excursion train to the 25th Annual U.S. Western Ski Tournament and Winter Sports Carnival at Hot Sulphur Springs. The D&SL charged $1.75 for round-trip fare and admission to the carnival. The response was huge, and the railroad ended up sending three trains with over 2,200 passengers. Another train with 500 passengers ran down from Steamboat Springs. Among the Steamboat crowd were 50 local jumpers and the 42-piece high school marching band. Some 7,000 visitors found their way to Hot Sulphur Springs for the carnival. According to Patterson and Forrest, writing in their book The Ski Train:

The winter carnival kicked off at 8:30 a.m. with a snow shoe race, followed by a three-legged race, then a novelty race – one ski and one snow shoe. Ski races, sled races and toboggan raced preceded a hockey game, figure skating and barrel jumping. There was even a skijoring jump with automobiles. The afternoon had an impressive line-up of nine ski jumping events on that part of Bungalow, Dean or Maggie Hill dubbed “Howelsen Hill,” concluding with with slalom and what was then called “down-mountain” races by Arlberg Club members.

A week later the News ran a Pullman sleeper train overnight to the 23rd Annual Winter Sports Carnival at Steamboat. Before long, other businesses – the Denver Post, Montgomery Ward, Safeway Stores — ran trains to Aspen or Gunnison. And the News Snow Train became an annual event.

Meanwhile, skiers could ride regularly-scheduled trains up to snow country on any winter day. The easiest trip, of course, was to the West Portal of the Moffat Tunnel – just two hours out of Denver. This was the site of the prosperous Fleming Bros. sawmill, which had produced all the railroad ties and shoring lumber for construction of the tunnel and approach track. The logging trails offered good skiing upward to timberline and the open bowls above. Members of Denver’s Arlberg Club had built a few private cabins and in 1933 cut the first dedicated downhill ski trail near the old Mary Jane mining claim. In 1937 George Cranmer, a club member and Denver’s manager of parks, talked the city into spending $30,000 on a rope tow. Winter Park opened as a municipal enterprise with a three-day carnival at the end of January, 1940, and of course a series of special trains hauled the celebrants. Meanwhile, in 1939 local skier Frank Bulkley had founded his Eskimo Ski Club and loaded up to 300 kids on the regular D&SL train to West Portal each weekend morning in winter.

After World War II, skiing and ski trains resumed. Winter Park acquired four Army-surplus rope tows from Camp Hale, and built three Constam T-bars. The Denver & Salt Lake merged into the Denver & Rio Grande. In 1947, the new railroad entered into a 40-year partnership with the Eskimo Ski Club and Winter Park. Bulkley, along with Gordy Wren, launched the Winter Park Ski School. Bulkley showed the D&RG management how to set up special trains to handle hundreds of skiers, equipping baggage cars with ski racks, and providing one car with a snack bar.

In the early days, kids paid $3 for the round trip. At its height in the mid-‘60s the train ran with 22 ancient cars, most of them built in 1915. This was the practical limit, because the cars were heated with steam lines from the locomotives, and that was about as far back as heat would carry. In theory the cars seated 80 each – that’s almost 1800 kids – but there wasn’t always room for everyone to sit. In a big winter, trains hauled as many as 30,000 passengers, most of them under 16.

More or less unsupervised for the two-hour ride, some of the passengers grew obstreperous. Water-pistol fights were common, occasionally aided by the discharge of a fire extinguisher. A favorite stunt was to vandalize the lights so the car would go dark for the trip through the tunnel. Teenagers began smuggling booze aboard. The railroad resorted to putting three sheriff’s deputies aboard, but they couldn’t patrol 22 cars at once. A couple of generations of Denver kids learned to ski in the rowdy culture of the D&RG train, which may explain some of the doings at Colorado’s ski resorts (and in the ski industry) in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.

By the late ‘60s, like most railways around the country, the D&RG wanted out of the passenger business. Concerned about passenger safety and the vandalism of its cars, the railroad began scaling back the service. First they dropped the snack car, spurring dozens of young entrepreneurs to haul suitcases full of candy bars aboard for sale to their peers. Then the railroad terminated Sunday service, and finally reduced the string to just eight 70-year-old cars, limited to 30 mph because of their ancient trucks. Frank Bulkley fought for a few years to keep the ski train running. The gasoline shortage of the mid-70s gave the train a new lease on life, and the much-reduced ski train chugged on through another decade. But the Eskimo Ski Club relied on a fleet of buses to haul kids over Berthoud Pass.

In 1983, what remained of the D&RG passenger service was absorbed into Amtrak. In November, 1984, the railroad was purchased by Philip Anschutz, a Denver-based billionaire who had made his money in oil, railroads, telecommunications and entertainment conglomerates. Anschutz had an instinctive love of trains and railroading. He saw in the ski train a chance to recreate an earlier era and culture. He sold the creaky old coaches to an outfit that ran wine trains in Napa Valley, and bought 17 lightweight, high-speed cars from Canada, where they’d served the Montreal-Toronto run.

Anschutz had the Tempo cars fully refurbished and painted in the Rio Grande colors, gold and silver with black trim. Today the ski train, operated by Ansco vice president Craig Meis and general manager Jim Bain, is a luxurious experience, with three classes of service and elaborate dining facilities. For the 69th season of the Denver Ski Train, beginning Dec. 27, passengers will pay $59 in coach and $85 in the club car, with plush lounge seating. Corporate groups can reserve a deluxe observation car, parlor car or sleeper/dome car. It’s a long way from sharing your brown-bag lunch with 80 screaming 13-year-olds.

Ski Trains Around the World

Today, the D&RG Ski Train is unique in North America, the only dedicated train that delivers skiers directly to a ski hill. Out in California, a skier can still ride from Oakland to Truckee via Amtrak’s California Zephyr, and catch a cab up to Northstar, Squaw Valley or Alpine Meadows. For that matter, you could catch the Zephyr from Chicago and change at Denver’s Union Station for a regular Amtrak train that follows an hour behind the D&RG Ski Train. There’s still a ski train out of Boston to Wachusett (but the last few miles are by van).

Japan still runs regular trains from Tokyo north to ski country, and the Glacier Express runs across most of the high country in Switzerland. The slickest modern ski train, for my money, is the 8-hour overnight Eurostar run from London’s Waterloo Station to Bourg St. Maurice, via the Channel Tunnel. From the Bourg station, passengers stroll directly onto the aerial tram for a 7-minute ride to Arc 1600 and the high-alpine skiing of the Tarentaise.

This story is based largely on accounts by Steve Patterson and Kenton Forrest (The Ski Train), Leif Howelsen (The Flying Norseman), and John Allen (From Skisport to Skiing). 

From pine pitch to perfluorocarbons, ski waxing has come a long way since the days of Scandinavian ski-sport and Sierra longboard racing.

During the Vancouver Olympics in February, skiers contended alternately with slush and bumpy ice—basically, refrozen slush. The shifting weather was especially brutal during the men’s 20 kilometer biathlon on February 18, when skiers starting midfield, during a snow squall, had no chance to ski fast or shoot accurately, and during the first run of the women’s giant slalom on February 24, when late starters got soft, wet snow and limited visibility.

Rapidly changing snow conditions have always been the bane of ski waxers. Very warm and very cold weather provokes a kind of silent panic among the ski-tech reps, the people who wax the skis. When the weather can’t be predicted, reps go nuts. They pore over old notebooks, looking for a similar combination of humidity, temperature and elevation, hoping to find a combination of wax and base structure that works. For downhill and Super G, they need a solution that can accelerate out of the start and slide quickly across a flat section 2,000 vertical feet down. For a long cross-country race, they need a combination of kick and glide that will work over a two-hour weather change and resist picking up dirt along the course. At Vancouver, even the freestyle events required a specific wax solution: the snow at Cypress was so soggy that puddles formed in the troughs before the kicker ramps, and skiers needed to splash through the wet spots without slowing down, which could throw off their timing in the air.

Photo above: Coach Bob Beattie waxes Buddy Werner's Kastles at the starting gate of the 1964 Innsbruck Olympic slalom. Note that Buddy hasn't even stepped out of his long-thong bindings. It was a simpler time. Joern Gerdts photo for Sports Illustrated.

I saw this wax panic up close during the 1989 World Championships in Vail. In the week before the downhill, temperatures dropped to minus 40 overnight. No one had ever seen a ski race run in that kind of cold, which gripped the 11,000-foot elevation of Beaver Creek’s summit. No one knew how to wax for it. Alpine waxers resorted to superhard “polar” nordic waxes, and some even used hardwood floor wax. In the end, the weather moderated for the race and the medalists – Hans-Georg Tauscher, Peter Muller and Karl Alpiger – apparently used “conventional” waxes.

We’ll never know, really, because at the World Cup level, wax gurus don’t give away their secrets. Outside the locked waxing rooms, where snooping reporters are decidedly unwelcome, we had no way of knowing that the tuners were already experimenting with fluorinated waxes, which would hit the market a year later. Waxing had become a sophisticated pseudo-science, practiced with the secrecy of classified weapons development.

Waxing: It Goes Way Back

Ski waxing long predates the development of alpine skiing. It arose naturally, in the early days of Scandinavian ski-sport, from the happy coincidence that waterproofing wood also helps it to glide on snow.

Wood is designed by nature to soak up water. Trees transport water from soil to leaves, through the cellular structure visible to us as wood grain. Any wooden structure exposed to water needs to be protected from drenching. Whether you’re building a ship, a roof or a ski, you need to apply a preservative to wood to keep it from absorbing water. The earliest known preservative was pine tar, often called pitch. There’s no way to tell when the practice began, but God Himself told Noah to use it in Genesis 6:14: So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. The Phoenicians certainly used it for sealing amphorae, among other things. The stuff was produced by distilling scraps from the lumber trade—often the roots—in a pit covered with peat, or in a funnel-shaped kiln. A ton of wood, burned slowly in a nearly oxygen-free container, produced about 250 pounds of charcoal and about 50 gallons of mixed turpentine, pitch and rosin. The pitch was pine tar.

The earliest literary reference to ski preparation found by the Norwegian historian Jakob Vaage was a history of Lapland written in Latin by Johannes Scheffer and published in English translation in 1674. Scheffer reported that Sami skiers used pine pitch and rosin.

That recipe is pretty good for running on the flat. For good glide, the important issue is that the wood repel water. The technical term for water repellency is “hydrophobic” (the opposite is hydrophilic, or perhaps wettable). Pine tar glides on snow because it’s insoluble in water. Water beads on it nicely, forming droplets instead of sheets. This means that at a microscopic level, the ski glides not on a sheet of water, nor on hard-point snow crystals, but on the equivalent of tiny liquid ball bearings, mixed with a lot of air. That’s good because air is about 99 percent less viscous, and therefore a lot faster, than water.

At the same time, pine tar on wood isn’t perfectly smooth, so when you kick back the surface links up mechanically with the snow surface to provide traction.

It’s this combination of qualities—durable wood preservative, with good kick and decent glide—that made pine tar the standard choice as a permanent base treatment for several centuries. One of the first skills you learned as a new skier was to boil pine tar without burning it, and to paint it onto a hickory base. As a running surface, pine tar was supplanted only in the late 1940s, with the development of celluloid surfaces, and then in the mid-1950s by polyethylene. As late as the 1960s, when I started skiing, a good ski shop still reeked pleasantly with the sharp resinous scent of boiled pine tar, because we were still using it on the wood cross-country skis of the era.

If all you were interested in was glide, pine tar could be improved with a temporary coat of some waxy substance. California’s longboard racers, who invented a form of straight-line downhill racing during the 1850s to pass the time during long snowbound winters in Sierra gold camps, didn’t need kick. They sought faster glide, and that meant improving the water-repellency of their pine-tar bases. By 1868, they were trying anything they could find that seemed slick: glycerin, whale oil, kerosene, candle wax and, famously, spermaceti, the waxy goop harvested from the heads of sperm whales. They mixed these into fragrant combinations called “dope.” Each ski club had its own continually-evolving formula, and some were packaged and sold under brands like Greased Lightning, Skedaddle and Breakneck.

Meanwhile, in Europe…

Until around 1890, ski meets held in Norway and elsewhere in Europe required a competitor to jump on the same skis that he used for cross-country. Then, as jumps became longer and cross country skiing faster, skimakers began building narrower, lighter running skis, while jumping skis grew straighter, wider and heavier. Looking for higher take-off speeds, jumpers began painting their bases with a variety of hard water-repellent shellacs, and in wet conditions might paint on a thin layer of paraffin.

Peter Østbye, born near Lillehammer in 1888, was a pretty good cross country racer. In 1913 he patented Østbyes Klister. The word is of German origin and means glue or adhesive; it was a mix of paraffin, pine resin, venetian turpentine and shellac, packaged in tubes and meant specifically to improve kick in wet snow. With his klister, Østbye beat favorite Lauritz Bergendahl to win the 18-kilometer race at Holmenkollen in 1914.

Klister was a sensation. Østbye sold it for 2 kroner per tube, roughly 30 cents at the contemporary exchange rate, but it looked like a fortune in those hard times. Gunnar Kagge, writing in Aftenposten in 2003, recalls that during the Depression he and his friends cooked up their own klisters using beeswax, resin, melted phonograph records and bicycle innertubes, and occasionally blew up a kitchen.

On the alpine side, in 1922 a new wax factory in Stuttgart introduced candles and shoe polish products under the brand Loba. At the same time it introduced a durable ski-base coating labeled Holmenkol-Mix—it was a season-long varnish rather than what we would recognize as a daily wax. In 1933, a competing leather-wax company in Attsätten, Switzerland, launched its own Ski-Gliss base varnish, followed in 1940 by a rub-on alpine wax called 1-3-5. The brand name was Toko. By World War II, North American firms had begun packaging rub-on ski waxes, usually put up in metallic tubes. The 10th Mountain Division was issued waxes for three or four temperature ranges, each imprinted with the warning that they should not be applied with heat. The waxes were clearly the byproducts of industrial processes: One of the manufacturers had, as its main business, the production of torpedo fuses.

A breakthrough in ski wax technology came in 1943, when the Swedish chemical firm Astra AB hired Martin Matsbo, 1937 winner of the Holmenkollen 18-kilometer race and bronze medalist in the 1936 Winter Olympic Games and 1935 and 1938 World Ski Championships 4×10 relay, to develop a commercial ski wax based entirely on controlled, synthetic waxes. By that time synthetic waxes were predictable, stable, plentiful and cheap byproducts of petroleum refining. Paraffin sold for pennies the pound, and was widely used in hundreds of consumer products, including cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and even baked goods (it was used in place of pricey butter to make baking pans slippery). By mixing paraffin with microcrystalline waxes to make harder and more flexible formulas, Matsbo produced a series of three hard waxes and two klisters designed to provide a good combination of kick and glide across the entire range of cross-country snow conditions. A new company was founded in 1946 by Börje Gabrielsen and began producing waxes in Skåne county in Sweden and at Fjellhamar, near Oslo, under the brand name Swix, a blend of the words ski and wax.

Because synthetic waxes were colorless, tasteless and odorless, Swix added pigments, with warm reddish colors for warm wet snow and cool blue-green colors for cold dry snow. The principle was simple enough: soft waxes, with low melting temperature around 110°C, were very hydrophobic and worked well for wet snow, especially when the snow crystals had gone soft and round; hard waxes, with melting temperatures around 140°C, were less hydrophobic but resisted penetration by the hard sharp corners of cold snow crystals. You could blend the soft and hard waxes to cover intermediate conditions. The brand quickly grew popular and inspired competition; in time for the Helsinki winter games in 1952, a group of young Finnish chemists established the Rex brand and gained wide acceptance.

The concept caught on quickly amongst alpine skiers, too. Both Holmenkol and Toko produced their own color-coded synthetic alpine waxes beginning in 1948. Because the materials were cheap and available worldwide, the new color-coded waxes inspired worldwide competition. In North America, dozens of skiers who had taken high school chemistry were able to brew their own wax lines. Naturally, every major distributor wanted its own brand of wax, too. Thus were brightly-colored boxes of paraffin, and even spray bottles, marketed under the labels A&T Blue Streak, Austro, Fall Line, Faski, Fastex, Hoffer, International, Jack Rabbit, Poly-Fin, Merix, Northland, Quick, Scia, Skee, Ski Spree, Ski-Z, Sohm’s, Speed Ski, St. Lawrence and Tip-Top.

Beginning in 1955, alpine skis were sold with polyethylene bases branded as Kofix, P-tex or something similar. By one scientific measure (droplet surface angle), high-density polyethylene (PE) was roughly 40 percent more hydrophobic than pine-tarred wood, and in fact a good-quality paraffin based wax couldn’t improve its repellency very much. Racers continued to wax because even a two or three percent improvement could be the margin of victory—one percent on a two-minute course means 1.2 seconds.

In 1964 Swix moved its entire production to Norway, and in 1978 it was fully acquired by Ferd AS, a Norwegian company.

Waxing Goes Downhill

Waxing for alpine glide speed was still a black art. As late as 1964, despite the advent of polyethylene bases, slalom racers often applied melted wax with a paintbrush, the better to fill up the screw holes on their segmented edges. Over the next couple of decades, the European ski factories and alpine ski teams embarked on expensive research projects to improve glide speed. For instance, it was theorized, and possibly proven, that at downhill racing speeds the heat of friction under the base created more water. A downhill racer might therefore need a slightly softer wax than, say, a GS racer in the same snow conditions.

Waxroom progress wasn’t a strictly scientific, peer-reviewed process, because even small improvements were kept secret. It cost millions of schillings, francs and kroner to send vanloads of waxing technicians scurrying about the World Cup venues every winter, on top of the pool fees required by the national teams—an alpine supplier of skis, boots, poles, goggles, helmets, clothing or waxes typically paid more than $50,000 per national team per winter just to have access to the racers. This level of investment made incremental knowledge very valuable. It could produce victory, which produced sales not only of skis and boots but of wax, too. Despite the universal adoption of “no-wax” polyethylene bases, ski wax remained a viable consumer product. Figures from Snowsports Industries America show that in recent years, retail sales of ski wax in the U.S. alone averaged about $5 million annually. A rule-of-thumb projection suggests that the worldwide market is about $25 million.

In search of improved glide speed, World Cup waxing technicians experimented with additives derived from more modern chemistry: graphite powder, silicon liquid, various metal powders for lubricity, and “plasticizer” additives like ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) to produce “polar” waxes useful in temperatures down to minus 20°F. These materials provided small but important performance improvements, especially as track-setting by increasingly heavy machines hardened the surfaces of cross-country racecourses. There were many experiments with miracle ingredients like Teflon (a solid fluoride plastic called polytetrafluoroethylene, or PTFE), but the stuff has such a high melting temperature —more than 200° C—that ironing it in often destroyed the ski base. Graphite additives seemed to work, but no one knew why: They didn’t really improve hydrophobic performance, and scientists scoffed at the idea that carbon’s electric conductivity could have any effect on glide speed.

By 1974 fiberglass construction and plastic bases had arrived at the top of cross country racing, thanks largely to Kneissl and Fischer. The Austrian factories successfully promoted fiberglass race skis to top competitors, among them Thomas Magnusson, who won the 30k race at the Falun World Championships that year. The design engineers in Austria had learned their craft in alpine racing, and they naturally tested their skis with alpine glider waxes at the tip and tail, resorting to a softer kick wax —even a klister —in the camber “pocket.”

Because World Cup technicians don’t share their secrets to success, much waxing lore has the apocryphal character of folktale. I got a glimpse of the secrecy-shrouded world of alpine ski waxing during the lead-up to the Olympic downhill in 1984. American Billy Johnson had an astonishing run of victories on soft-snow and “glider” courses that season, thanks in large part to a few pairs of blazing-fast Atomic skis prepared by tuner Blake Lewis. Lewis protected those skis from tampering and even inspection by stashing them under his bed when he slept. Like his competitor tuners, he refused to discuss what might be in his wax mixtures. He once showed me his collection of waxes: a tray of small pots, each filled with a plain white wax and each labeled with a numerical code. “There you go,” he said. “Know any more now than you did five minutes ago?”

However, two big advances in ski wax chemistry—surfactants and fluorocarbons—took place more or less out in the open, and well away from the alpine World Cup circus.

Terry Hertel was a recreational skier from the San Francisco area. He had made some money during Silicon Valley’s computer boom and in 1972 introduced a cute little electric waxing drum for home use. To go with it he created a line of waxes. As a Lake Tahoe skier, Hertel was fascinated with the problem of glide in very wet snow. In 1974, on the advice of UC Davis chemistry professor Tim Donnelly, he added a surfactant to his paraffin wax to produce a universal wax he called Hot Sauce. A surfactant is a wetting agent, the exact opposite of a hydrophobic agent. It shouldn’t have worked. But the stuff Hertel used, sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), is an odd columnar molecule with a hydrophobic end. It's commonly used in toothpaste, shampoo and shaving cream as a foaming agent. Suspended in wax, SDS molecules clump into spheres, called micelles, with the hydrophobic end out, each sphere acting as a water-repellent ball bearing. Hertel said his surfactant ingredient was “encapsulated.” Super Hot Sauce earned an insiders’ reputation for great glide in heavy snow. Town racers liked it. Hertel could never afford the fees to join the U.S. Ski Team supplier pool, let along send a technician to Europe, but he says he sent some surfactant wax to Europe with the team and is convinced it was an ingredient in the Diann Roffe and Eva Twardokens medals in GS at the Bormio World Championships in 1985.

At around that time, Hertel started looking for a “Spring Solution,” something that would work in very wet snow but repel the pine pollen, diesel exhaust particles and other dirt that darkened the ski slope snow in April and May. He tried polypropylene glycol, a food-grade antifreeze used to keep ice cream from melting, and it worked. But he also talked to Rob Hunter, a chemist at 3M, who mentioned that the company sold a liquid fluorocarbon to the cosmetics and paint industries—it dried to a smooth, glossy surface. Hunter thought the liquid fluorocarbon would work well in a ski wax, but warned that at $1,000 per pound, it was far too expensive.

Hertel wound up buying the 3M perfluorocarbon (PFC) liquid in five-gallon drums, mixed it into a high-strength candle wax called Paraflint, and in 1986 introduced a hard block wax he called Racing 739. It was very hydrophobic, and very fast. (Perfluoro means that all the lateral links in the polymer chain, not just some of them, are capped with fluorine atoms.)

Meanwhile, at Swix, chief chemist Leif Torgersen was also looking for something to repel dirt. A hard glide wax was essential to last throughout a 50 km race or a ski marathon, but the softer kick wax picked up pine pollen and other dirt, slowing the ski progressively through the course of the race. So he sought a form of PFC that could be ironed into the base. In Italy, he found it: Enrico Traverso at Enichem SpA, a state-owned industrial giant, had a PFC powder with a melting temperature of about 155°C. High-density polyethylene typically melts at about 130°C, but if you had a really good sintered base and kept the iron moving, you could apply the powder without destroying the ski base. Enichem had no other commercial customers for the material, but were willing to produce small, expensive lots for use in ski waxes. Swix began experimenting with the stuff on both cross country and alpine race courses and found that it improved glide by about 2 percent over the best non-PFC waxes. In 1990 the company introduced a commercial version called Cera F (cera is Italian for wax). The price: $100 for 30 grams. The parents of young racers screamed in agony: Apparently you couldn’t win without it. Fortunately, a little went a long way. Speed skier C.J. Mueller remembers waxing his skis with the scrapings from another competitor’s skis.

In the meantime, in 1988, Swix had been contacted by engineers at Salomon. The French company was developing its first alpine ski, and had spent a great deal of money to improve the quality of the base and edge grind. It wanted a broad-temperature wax that could be applied without heat in the factory or on the hill. Swix proposed a liquid form of PFC diluted into a thin paste. It could be applied with a paintbrush or with a sponge applicator. Named F4 for the Salomon ski, it was introduced to the market by Salomon and grew widely popular.

Belatedly, it occurred to the various parties in this technology race to patent their products. On March 2, 1990, Enichem applied for an Italian patent on a “ski lubricant comprising paraffinic wax and hydrocarbon compounds containing a perfluorocarbon segment.” On the same day, Hertel filed for a U.S. patent on a “ski wax for use with sintered-base snow skis,” containing paraffin, a hardener wax, roughly 1% perfluoroether diol, and 2% SDS surfactant. “That’s not the full formula,” Hertel cautioned me. “I’ll never tell anyone what else is in there.”

These were the two earliest patents for PFC ski waxes. Later patents were granted to Dupont and to a New York chemist named Athanasios Karydas.

Hertel claims his perfluorocarbon Racing 739 product quickly found its way into the waxing kits of World Cup technicians, and was used in a number of medal-winning performances. However, because he never joined the national team pools, he has never been able to publicize or even document the use of his products in FIS racing. Swix, Toko, Holmenkol, Briko, Maplus and Dominator, the large European wax companies who comprise the supplier pools for ski wax, don’t talk about the advanced technology they may be using on World Cup skis.

The end of fluorinated waxes

PFC molecules don't break down in nature, and when they get into groundwater can accumulate in plant and animal tissue. That reality led large industrial users of PFCs (manufacturers of Teflon, for instance), to scale back their use beginning in 2006. Ski waxes used tiny doses of PFCs, and much of it is scraped off in the ski-tuning process, so it was long assumed that the amount of PFC going into the snowpack was insignificant. However, fluorinated hydrocarbons, when heated above 250 degrees Celsius, are unsafe to breathe. The wax companies that used PFCs long warned waxing technicians against burning the wax and most waxing irons are set at a maximum of 140 degrees C.  Nonetheless, in 2011 researchers in Norway and Sweden found elevated levels of  PFC derivatives in the blood of cross-country ski coaches and waxers. Then, in 2016, the U.S. Congress amended the Toxic Substances Control Act, requiring the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to control chemicals deemed harmful to human health. As one result, starting in early 2018 the EPA notified all companies using fluorocarbons in their products to document the specific chemicals and amounts used. For ski wax manufacturers and importers this meant reporting all chemicals – dyes, scents, waxes, hardeners and fluorines, retroactively. Most  wax companies couldn’t afford the testing and reporting procedures and quickly withdrew PFC waxes from the market. During the following two winters, ski tuners relied on stocks of PFC waxes already in hand. The European Uniorn planned to ban he most common industrial PFCs starting in July 2020. In this context, in 2019 the International Ski Federation (FIS) announced in October, 2019 a ban on all PFC waxes in all forms of ski competition, beginning with the 2020-21 season.

But now there are rumors of a “nano wax.” Maybe it’s marketing horse-hockey. It’s fun to think it might contain those submicroscopic carbon spheres called buckyballs. I have my own concept for a quantum wax: its antimatter particles would repel both ice crystals and air molecules. The ski would therefore levitate into its own micron-thin and entirely frictionless vacuum. Investors should write to me directly.

Thanks to Mike Brady, David Lampert, C.J. Mueller and Terry Hertel for help with this article. Some technical data was derived from an academic thesis by Leonid Kuzmin.

Pine tar: Skis, ships and sailors
Viking shipwrights and house builders used oakum soaked in pine tar to seal the joints between planks. They mixed pine tar, linseed oil and turpentine to make a preservative. Shipwrights applied the stuff liberally on the inside of a new hull and watched to see how it infused through to the outside. That told them where the planks needed better sealing. Then the outside could be stained. Scandinavian stave churches built of wood last for centuries because they’re stained black with pine tar.

In different parts of the world, different species of pine produced pine tar of varying qualities. The shipbuilders of Northern Europe considered that the world’s best pine tar came from the forests of Scandinavia, and specifically from northern Sweden. Beginning in 1648, the Wood Tar Company of Northern Sweden had a royal monopoly to export pitch, and its biggest customer was the British Royal Navy. When a Russian invasion of Sweden cut off the source of supply around 1705, the Admiralty turned to the American Colonies, and by 1730 pine forests in Georgia and the Carolinas provided about 80 percent of the pitch used to waterproof His Majesty’s warships. Hence the term Tarheel for North Carolinians, not to mention the reference to any British sailor as a Tar.

This article first appeared in Skiing Heritage magazine, June 2010 (page 42). It has been updated several times.

Boyne Mountain, the Midwest’s largest ski resort, has a further distinction: it is virtually a museum of lifts. The collection started in 1948, according to lift historian Kirby Gilbert, when Boyne’s shrewd, machinery-savvy owner Everett Kircher bought the original 1936 Dollar Mountain chairlift, the world’s first, from Sun Valley. He had it dismantled and then moved it by rail car to his brand new Boyne Mountain ski resort in northern Michigan.

Three years later, Kircher converted the lift from a single to a double chair. You can still ride it up the Hemlock Run, as former President Gerald Ford used to do when he was a Michigan Congressman in the 1950s. The top and bottom terminals are the originals made for the world’s first chairlift.

One day in 1962, as Kircher was planning his new Boyne Highlands ski area, he and his wife found themselves squeezed on a double chair with their six-year-old son John, who today is president of Montana’s Big Sky ski resort. Why shouldn’t there be a three-seater chairlift? Kircher asked. And so the Riblet company made one for him. You can still ride it today on the Heather Run at Boyne Highlands.

The triple chair was so popular that Kircher decided to ratchet the chairlift up by another seat, and a year later the Heron company installed the world’s first quad lift on Boyne Mountain. It’s still in service on Boyne’s Meadow run.
Not to be outdone, even by himself, Kircher in the early 1990s learned of a six-seat chairlift in Quebec, and for the winter of 1992-93 the Doppelmayr company built the first six-seater in the U.S.A. at Boyne Mountain. Today, you and five friends can ride it up the McLouth slopes.

Although the spiritual roots of “modern” skiing are found in the 19th century in Norway, it was the British, fascinated by the image of the naturally virtuous mountain folk and the alpine scenery—described among others by Jean-Jacques Rousseau—who pioneered alpine sports. They arrived in the Alps in the 18th century and from 1850 to 1865, were the first to have climbed more than 30 Swiss mountain peaks.

As for winter sports, Johannes Badrutt, owner of the Engadiner Kulm Hotel in St. Moritz, was a key figure. In 1864, he told his English summer guests that winter was even more beautiful and that he would pay for their lodging if they didn’t love it. Four aristocratic families came back for Christmas and found the winter wonderful. As a result, the station welcomed some years later more visitors in winter than in summer. The British liked, besides whiskey and betting, sports and competition. It all started with the “Lake Run” for sledges in 1872, followed by the “Village Run” in 1873, curling in 1880, artistic skating in 1882, the “Cresta” toboggan for sledges in 1885, Canadian snowshoes in 1886, Bandy (the forerunner of ice hockey) in 1887, skeleton in 1888, bobsleigh in 1889, the “Alpina Ski Club” in 1903, the oldest international Christmas jumping in 1904, skijoring in 1906 and the White Turf in 1907.

Pioneers

Organized skiing in Switzerland can be dated as of 1893. Before, skiers are recorded in Saas-Fee (Pastor Johan Joseph Imseng – 1849), St. Moritz (1859), Glarus (Konrad Wild – 1868), Davos (Carl Spengler – 1873), St. Bernard hospice (1873), Airolo (Giocondo Dotta – 1879, who learned to ski in the U.S while searching gold, fabricated a ski in order to supervise his cows when the traditional snow shoes where of little use because of extreme snow conditions), Arosa (Otto Herwig – 1883), Les Avants (Louis Dufour – 1890), Adelboden (Peter Oester – 1890), Meiringen (Knocker – 1890).

Interestingly, ski development did not start in St. Moritz or in another well-known mountain resort but in Glarus (a small town located halfway between St. Moritz and Zürich). 1893 was the year: born were a Ski Club, a ski factory, skis put at disposal to postmen in Davos as well as to militaries at the Gotthard and thirteen ski tours recorded. A key figure was Christof Iselin (1869-1949), from Glarus. At the age of 22, probably inspired by Fridtjof Nansen’s book “The first crossing of Greenland”, he had made his own skis. Not happy with the results, he arranged the following winter for two Norwegians, Olaf Kjelsberg (a relative of the writer) and Ja Krefting, to come with three pairs of Flickfeld & Huitfeldt skis, equipped with cane/leather bindings, to instruct him and some colleagues. The single bamboo sticks were 210 cm long with small steel disc close to the bottom and weighed 1.5 kg.

To demonstrate the ability of skis, Iselin, a Lieutenant, later a Colonel in the army and Jacques Jenny climbed in January of 1893 from Glarus to the Schilt Mountain (5 hours for a height difference of 1820 m). End of the same month, Iselin organized a race from Glarus to Schwyz to prove that skis were faster than snow shoes (at the time used by farmers, alpinists and military). With Kjelsberg, Naef and von Steiger, latter with snow shoes, they went over the Pragel pass (up to 5 hours for the 10 km with a difference in elevation of 600 m). The skiers were slower uphill, faster in flat sections and obviously much faster downhill. Iselin was also the initiator of the first Swiss ski race, the one of the “Ski-Club Glarus” in 1902 from Glarus to Untersack (8.5 km cross-country with 500 m altitude difference; 14 participants), preceding by 3 weeks the “Erstes Grosses Skirennen” in 1903 at the Gurten close to Bern (10 km cross-country, 1.4 km downhill with altitude difference of 200 m as well as jumping). He was also originator of the first jumping competition of the Swiss Ski Federation in 1904 (with already 15 clubs and 700 members) as well as the first Swiss Championship in 1905 (by the way attended by 10,000 onlookers) which Iselin won. Latter also developed the “Iselin-Bernina” snow shovel which of duralumin weighted only 350 g; the shovel was used worldwide and some models could even be coupled to a ski stick or an ice axe.

Ski manufacturers

The man behind the above mentioned ski factory was Melchior Jacober, a carpenter, also from Glarus. As of 1893, he fabricated Telemark and Mountain skis, latter shorter (180 to 200 cm) and wider (10 to 12 cm) of ash and elm, all branded with his name, one called “Glarona”. The bindings were made by his cousin, Josef Jacober, a saddler of the same town. At the end of the season, Melchior had sold close to 100 pairs, the following year 300 at a price of 20 Swiss Francs compared to 30 for Norwegian skis – the cost of two days full board in a good hotel!

As apparently there was more money in skis than in bindings, Josef Jacober began producing skis from 1896 on (until 1967). He launched a ski branded “Gotthardsoldat” (soldier of the Gotthard mountain range) in 1900, which became so successful that several armies as far as Chile, Persia and Russia purchased them. Josef was very productive: after 20 years he had sold over 250,000 pairs.

Already the year before (1895), the brothers Rudolf & Christian Ettinger founded the “Wagnerei & Skifabrik zur Mühle” (cart making & ski factory to the mill) in Davos-Glaris. Rudolf opened a sport article shop and moved the business to Davos Platz in 1906 where he also made all kind of carts and sledges, among other the Canadian rescue as well as the famous “Davos” sledge. During World War I, they sold yearly over 10’000 pairs of skis to the army. Likely with some of the proceeds, Ettinger acquired in 1919 a ski factory from Herald Smith (founded in 1912), located in Diessenhofen. Andreas, one of Rudolf’s sons managed the center which took over the ski production and added to the assortment wooden wheels for cars. The skis were then sold under “R. & Ch. Ettinger”. Jack Ettinger, the youngest son, was member of the Swiss National Ski Team and slalom champion of 1936. Two years before, he developed the “Jack Ettinger” edge. Later he headed for 25 years the Ski School Davos and founded in 1939 the first Swiss Ski School in Argentina. Jack Ettinger also suggested end of the 30’s to Ernst Constam, the inventor of the J-bar ski lift, to use T-bars. The Ettinger family still own three sport article shops in Davos.

At the turn of the century, Switzerland had at least three ski factories: the two Jacober cousins and Ettinger. After the WW1, the industry boomed to a point that at the end of the 30’s there were at least 40 manufacturers such as Amrein & Weber, Attenhofer, Authier, Badan, Beerle, Beusch, Brangs, Britt, Daffry, Erba, Ernst, Firn, Grässli, Gribi, Homag (which Duplex model was a sophistically laminated ski, raced among other by Edy Rominger, who won 7 medals at World Championships of 1936, 1938 & 1939), Inglin, Kaufmann, Kuehler, Mathys, Müller (# 1 re cross-country skis), Murgenthal, Nidecker, Rebell, Robert-Tissot & Chable, Roth Frères, Säntis Forrer, Scheller, Schenkel, Schraner, Schwendener, Seiler, Siegenthaler, Skissa, Smith, Spozio, Staub, Stöckli, Streuli Frères (which sold among other, learning sets to ski schools to start with 120 cm length, than moving up to 130 cm and finally to 160 cm, Sutter, Swiskis, Test, Thorens, Tödi, Toko (cross-country skis only), Valaiski, Wanderswo, Weber, Wehrli (which “NO-SPLIT” model of 1938 sold as break free due to the small layer celluloid between the upper ash and the lower hickory part), Wiesmann, Wisa-Gloria, Zogg (which launched around 1930 a 130 cm glacier ski which as a particularity had two grooves) – besides most likely several others. In 1934, Schraner patented a folding ski (CH144392) for touring and at the New York World’s fair of 1939 and unknown manufacturer exposed an all metal-bottom ski.

Alfred Badan began manufacturing skis in 1908 in a shop located between Bursins and Gilly, close to the lake of Geneva. The low cost skis were of ash, the expensive ones of hickory. In the 30’s they also produced laminated wood, some with celluloid edges and base.

Alfred II, the son of the founder, developed an alpine ski with an entire green celluloid fish-scale pattern base, called “SAHY” – which allowed moving uphill (patent CH189670 and CH19326, both of 1936). He also experimented with aluminum skis. They manufactured alpine, racing, cross-country, jumping as well as water skis – and exported even to the U. S. During World War II Badan diversified into sledges, carts and even military barracks. Because of lacking business they stopped production in 1948.

The big manufacturers were Authier, Attenhofer and Schwendener.

In 1910, John Authier opened a shop for the manufacture of wooden articles for farmers located in the village of Bière, close to Geneva. Anticipating a ski boom, he built a factory there in 1927. Their first models featured the name of Swiss mountain peaks: “Matterhorn”, “Diablerets” and “Muveran” and all carried the logo “Suiskis” (Suisse skis) with three fir trees and the armories of the town of Bière.

Authier’s first racing success was at the prestigious Arlberg-Kandahar downhill race in 1935. With the model “FIS-Super”, Swiss champion Willy Steuri won. During the war, they changed the logo to a patriotic and Swiss quality symbol: the crossbow with on top of it, Authier and on the bottom the armories of Bière. In 1948, Authier launched the “Vampire” (named after the first jet airplane of the Swiss army, made by the British De Havilland factory). Alfred Ueberschlag, head of manufacturing, had the idea to insert loose stainless steel laminates of 1 mm thickness, 60 cm long and 2 cm wide at the front of the ski and of 40 cm x 2 cm at the rear, leaving open parts in the middle.

The Vampire was great in races and commercially. As the ski was already well placed during the Olympics of St. Moritz (1948), the officials of the Swiss team selected the “Vampire” for the World Championship of Aspen (1950). With it, Georges Schneider won Slalom gold, later silver in Banff, then again gold at the Harriman’s-cup in Sun Valley. Madeleine Berthod won a gold medal in the downhill and the combined at the Olympics in Cortina d’Ampezzo (1956). After the 5th medal, all of them were reproduced on the top of the “Vampire”.

“The golden Vampire book” with all results obtained with that ski. At about Swiss Francs 100 (which represented around 100 hours of a workmen’s salary), it sold for three times less than a Head “Standard”, even though it was a much better ski – except in deep snow.

In 1960, the “hayfork factory”, named so by the village people, burned down. The same year, Authier built a new factory equipped with the latest technology for metal, synthetic material and wooden skis, the biggest in Switzerland. Authier introduced in 1962 the anti-break guarantee and began also producing water skis for Britt as well as ski-bobs. Neither successful was their “Lilliput”, a full wooden, inexpensive short ski – it came 10 years too early!

In 1968, Authier sold 46,000 pairs sold (70% metal, 20% fiberglass, 10% wood), number one in Switzerland before selling the business the year after in1969 to Olin Corporation, a U.S. chemical firm which wanted to diversify. After building its own ski factory in Connecticut, Olin decided at end of 1972 to sell the Stans factory to Rossignol & Haldemann. Rossignol, the world market leader, invested in what would be Europe’s most modern ski factory with a capacity of 65,000 pairs annually. Racing skis were made under the Rossignol brand, those for world speed records were labeled Authier. With an “Authier-Compétition”, Pino Meyer, an Italian racer realized over 194 Km/h in 1975; two years later they broke the record with almost 196 km/h – with 2.5 meter long skis.

Rossignol, which had collaboration with Lange and Killy, reached an agreement to manufacture Lange skis at the Stans factory. Nonetheless Rossignol & Haldemann announced the close of the factory in 1988 and to transfer the production to France and Spain. Authier/Stans was bought by Pierre-Alain Blum of Ebel Holding Finance (owner of Ebel watches, movie production, medias and golf tournaments) with participation of MBD (Marc Biver Development – sport sponsoring). They diversified in mountain-biking, snowboard, sport clothing and invested heavily in sales, marketing and research. In view of the coming 80 years of Authier, a modern replica of the “Vampire” was launched – with on top its logo with 5 medals.

The Authier brand belongs presently to AEFFE, a leading Italian multi-brand fashion and luxury group (see www.Aeffe.com for a résumé with some pictures of Authier). They bought it in 2006 from the Mazzotto group, another Italian fashion company which had bought it in 2002 from Arabian.

Henri Nidecker began ski manufacture in 1912 at Etoy, close to Lausanne. The skis were of ash and hickory until 1946 when the company also offered laminated wood. In 1962, they introduced metal and in 1963 fibreglass skis. In 1982 Nidecker launched the first mono ski, an instant hit in France and Switzerland. From 1984 on, they specialized in snowboards and were # 2 behind Burton.

Adolf Attenhofer won the Swiss Championship in 1917 while working for Ettinger where he developed skis. He also elaborated a method to determine the place of the toe iron in relation to the skier’s ability. From 1915 to 1957, Attenhofer patented many inventions regarding skis, bindings, edges, even clothing. In 1925, he quit Ettinger to start manufacturing skis in Zumikon close to Zürich. Besides skis, Attenhofer offered also folding skis as well as among other a fast red base called “Temporit”, harder than hickory. In the 30’s, they acquired the Alpina bindings. The firm was particularly famous for their laminated wooden skis introduced in 1936 (license of the Norwegian “Oestbye Splitkein”). In 1947, Attenhofer merged to form A.K.A. (Allais, Kandahar, and Attenhofer). At the Olympic Games of 1948 in St. Moritz, a large number of medals were won on Attenhofer – at the time the Rolls Royce of skis. Among other, Swiss champion Karl Molitor, 11 time winner of Lauberhorn races between 1939 and 1948, slalom and combined medals winner at the Olympics of 1948 – incidentally with the same, 220 cm long pair of full hickory skis, at that time an obligation of the Olympic Committee. In the 50’s the company introduced the “A15” metal ski, in the 60’s the “Kurzski” (170 cm long, 9/8/8.5 cm wide). After Attenhofer’s death late 50’s the factory inclusive brand was acquired by Emil Preisig who sold it in the 70’s to a manufacturer of plastic belonging to the FIAT automobile group.

Schwendener, an apprentice carriage-builder in that resort, opened a shop in Buchs (close to Austria) in 1931. The first year, they produced 74 pairs, in 1942: 1,500, in 1950: 10,000, in 1968: 100,000, many of them exported to U.S. (as of 1936, Sears as biggest customer), Canada (Eaton), Australia, Austria, Belgium, Chile, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, Italy, Netherlands, Norway and New Zealand. The US army placed in 1970 a large order for their Alaskan troops.

In 1971, the sons of the founder, Hans and Fritz, build a modern factory with a capacity of 100,000 pairs in 2 shifts at a cost of Swiss Francs 3,000,000 (over USD 5,000,000 at today’s value). During the bad years of the 70’s (oil crisis, little snow, fall of the USD), they cooperated with Kneissl to produce skis in Austria at a lower cost. As sales did not improve, the business stopped in 1979.

Schwendener’s most successful skis were the “Touring” (1953) as shown on the left, a wooden ski with a metal base, excellent handling in all kind of snow and the “Caravelle” (1954) their first metal ski, a sophisticated construction with a rubber layer between the steel edges and an aluminum plate for shock damping.

Hans (John for his many U.S. friends), the salesman, had memories of skiing and stories of places like Crystal Mountain, Washington, Colorado and Alberta as well as close to hundred stations in Europe. Unfortunately, his only son, Jean-Luc, died 2003 in an avalanche in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Hans died in 2004, Fritz in 2009.

Josef Stöckli began fabricating ash skis in the family’s carpentry shop in 1935 in Wolhusen, close to Lucerne, selling the same year 50 pairs of ash. By 1945, the Company also offered laminated wood, some with celluloid edges on top, by 1957 metal, by 1965 fibreglass skis. In 1967 Stöckli started to retail bindings, poles, ski boots, cross-country skis as well as accessories. At the same time, they changed its vending practice to selling directly to customers; as a consequence they were excluded from the “Swiss Ski Pool” (an association of specialised shops) with the result that they could not supply the Swiss racing teams (until 1994). In the 60’s they patented (CH407 836 &CH408 734) covering steel crampon respectively skis with inclined borders.

The first Stöckli skis raced in the World Cup were in 1991 by Marco Büchel, member of the Liechtenstein Ski Pool. Meanwhile, they won many international races with the “Laser” SL, GS, SG & DH models with Didier Plaschy, Urs Kaelin, Ambrosi Hofmann, Andrej Jerman, Fabiene Suter, Alois Mani, Mike Smith, Ashleigh McIvor (CAN), Tina Maze (SLO), Audun Gronvold (NOR) including 2 medals at the World Ski Championships in Garmisch-Partenkirchen (2011) and 5 at the Olympic in Vancouver (2010). In 1998, Stöckli launched the “Stormrider”, their first Freeride ski, developed and promoted with Dominique Perret, who at Mount Alberta, Canada, established a world record negotiating 120,000 m difference in elevation within 14 hours. In 2000, the company founded the “Stöckli Bike Team”, highly successful in Marathon, Cross-country, XTerra, iXS and Triathlon. They won their first Downhill World Cup ski race in 2007. The same year, the company changed to “Stöckli Swiss Sports AG” and the logo to . At present, they have 14 chain stores in Switzerland and are represented in 31 countries.

After World War II, the Swiss manufacturers were able to produce at full capacity whereas their alpine neighbors, Austria, France, Germany and Italy had to rebuild their factories. Between 1960 and 1995 however, most Swiss ski factories closed as production cost, because of the high salaries, were too high to be competitive. Only Stöckli remained as a large manufacturer.

However, new business appeared at the turn of the century: RTC (Ready To Carve) in 1995, AK (Aldo Kuonen), in 1996, Movement in 1999, Faction in 2002, Birdos, Zai in 2003 (priced up to $10,000!), Core in 2004, Blackcrows, Kessler and SCHUETZSPORTS, all three in 2005. As a particularity, SCHUETZSPORTS offers custom made logo and/or design – and even sold 500 pairs to the Russian elite army), Heidiskis in 2007 (with a branch in Sun Valley). All are expensive high-tech skis, produced in small quantities and sold exclusively through specialized shops.

A word on the most successful ski developed and made in Switzerland, the Rossignol “Equipe Suisse”. Besides many downhill and giant slalom races, it helped to win at the Olympic Games of Sapporo (1972), gold (Bernard Russi and Marie-Thérèse Nadig), silver (Roland Collombin and Marie-Thérèse Nadig) and bronze (Werner Mattle)

Bindings

Mueller developed in 1903 a binding with pivoting toe irons, each with a spring pushing the shoe down to the ski.

Jules Sessely (patent CH38425 of 1907) had automatic adjustable toe irons with an interlocked spring in front to which a flexible cable was attached to leather straps around the shoes. The binding allowed easy up and downwards movement of latter as well as removable toe irons, this without any tool. Mueller developed in 1903 a binding with pivoting toe irons, each with a spring pushing the shoe down to the ski.

Eduard Beetschen (patents CH47968 of 1909, CH62886 of 1913, CH118245 of 1925, CH159185 of 1932, CH172106 of 1934) consisted of a hook screwed on the front bottom of the shoe which was engaged in a tightening lever fixed to the skis.

For more than one generation, the “Alpina”, introduced in the 1920’s,   was the least expensive and thus the most common on the market. It   boasted adjustable, screwed on toe irons to which leather straps were attached to a “Hoyer-Ellefsen” tension lever. In the late 20’s, Alpina was sold by Attenhofer.

Adolf Schiess (patent CH93314 of 1920 & CH108294 of 1924) covered conventional bindings but patent CH108294 of 1925 may be the first safety binding worldwide. Similar to the Beetschen, it had a hook screwed on the front bottom of the shoes, steel rods attached to the toe irons for fixing the shoes and buts in front. These allowed the shoes to move upwards and to disengage from the toe irons. The binding was sold by “AS” Geneva for Swiss francs 25 claiming 16 advantages including a 5 year guarantee.

Anton Kolarik patented in 1927 (CH128762) the binding shown on the left. A heel strap attached to steel plates under the shoe was hooked to a tension lever, latter screwed on the ski in front of the toe iron. The lever, incorporating a spring, permitted to push the shoe into the toe iron.

Guido and Henry Reuge (grandsons of Charles, the founder of the music box manufacturer in Ste-Croix in the Jura Mountain range, still in business today), both passionate skiers experimented in 1929 with bindings. Guido, a mechanical engineer of the Swiss Technological Institute (ETH), early member of the Swiss Academic Ski Club (SAS) and ski racer, patented in 1932 (AT137011 & CH175818) the first one really fit for downhill. It consisted of adjustable toe irons, steel cables instead of leather straps, attached to serpentine springs at the heel and a tightening lever, in 1932 in the back, thereafter in the front. To suit boot sizes, the cables could be anchored into different emplacements of the lever. Further, due to different hooks at the toe irons and at the side of the skis, the heel could be left free as required for “Telemark” turns and touring, or fixed down for slalom and downhill.

The 1938 “Kandahar” (named in reference to the prestigious Alpine races) needed a screw driver to remove the cables so as to prevent stealing them It revolutionized skiing, became highly successful and was licensed – and copied – worldwide. As market leader, “Kandahar”, belonging to Attenhofer offered in 1952 nine models (Boy, Baby I, Baby II, Junior, Monopol, 3 kind of Super, Automatic, Supersport, latter with two springs in front). “Kandahar” was still sold in the 1960’s, some with two small springs in front as well as with safety pivot toes.

Together with his brother Henri, they owned over 10 patents covering bindings besides much more covering ski equipment, music box and others.

Walter Amstutz, a friend of Guido Reuge, also mechanical engineer ETH and ski racer, brought on the market in 1929 the “Amstutz-spring” (patent CH140454), attached to the skis behind the shoes and to the upper part of latters to give a certain halt for the modern “Vorlage” Ski Technique”.

Gustav Ruchser patented in 1930 adjustable toe irons, locked by two toothed wheels fixed under the irons. He also invented from 1910 to 1954 several equipment parts of skis, poles as well as climbing skins.

Different binding came up in the 30’s, several with tension levers in the back. On the upper left, the “Hespi” with serpentine springs at the back, in the middle the “Bernina” with small diameter spring cables instead of leather straps; the front part of the cable could be locked in a    horizontal or inclined position for either walking or descent. On the right the “Universal” which even had three positions to set desired inclination. Underneath, a “Thorens” which manufacturer made also skis.

Adrien Lador, patented the Labrador, a binding similar to the “Kandahar” but without springs. Possibly because of its simplicity, it equipped the skis of the Swiss Army. The tension lever of some models is pulled to the front, of others to the back.

Labrador, Reuge, and Thorens were all made in the small village of Sainte Croix in the 30’s

The “Belmag” of 1938 (patent CH 205566) had two parallel serpentine in front and became the main competitor of the ”Kandahar”. In 1943 they replaced the two springs by one located under the tightening lever.

Ernst Gertsch, the initiator of the Lauberhorn races in Wengen, patented various quick-release binding (CH354012, CH412672, CH412672, CH457235, CH462017) – some already with incorporated ski stopper. From 1967 onwards he began selling release plate bindings too.

At one time Gertsch covered almost half of the plate binding market, the “G70” being their top model. Also in 1967, the “Su-Matic” provided a downhill and a touring mode. It was good in the downhill mode, but with only 11/2″ heel lift, limited in ascent. As a complex piston/spring binding it was rather heavy – and as sales lacked, abandoned in the 80’s.

Albert Fritschi opened in 1960 an engineering shop in which he manufactured as of 1966 the Gertsch binding before taking over in 1979 latter’s patent and distribution rights. In 1977, Fritschi launched their first plate model for alpine touring. His sons, Andreas and Christian, developed the company to become today the global market leader of ski tour and freeride bindings with walking function. They launched the “FT-88” in 1980 of which not less than 70,000 were sold to the army. The company designed their first binding for snowboards in 1988, the “Verton” but abandoned it early 2000.

Fritschi reached a milestone in 1995 by launching the “Diamir”, a new generation of touring bindings, lighter, safer and easier to handle. Recent models are the “Diamir Eagle” for touring, the “Diamir Freeride Pro” for Freeride Mountaineering and the “Diamir Experience”, an all-round touring binding for price sensitive customers. In 1996, they presented the “Rave”, the first real carving binding with integrated rod height and free moving bond bridge, followed the year after by the “EVO 2” and in 2002 the “EVO 3” with the models “Powerride”, “Freeride” and  “Easyride”. Their first Telemark binding came on the market in 2000 and included safety feature. In 2005, the company introduced the steel crampon “Axon”, fastened to the binding which can be activated or deactivated with the pole. Fritschi is presently represented in 32 countries and equips the French, German and Swiss army. Since 2009, they are integrated into the Nordeck International Holding group.

In 2001, some ex staff of Fritschi started up the “Naxo®” company. Their model NX01 and NX02, mountain and freestyle bindings had as a particularity, double pivots. Naxo was bought by Rottefella, Norway in 2006 but as latter could not gain the critical mass, discontinued the binding in 2009.

Edges

In the 30’s appeared edges of steel, aluminum, duralumin, brass, messing, blue celluloid, even horn, of different size and forms, screwed-on or glued, base or side mounted. The most familiar were named “Ideal”, “Jack Ettinger Spezial”, “Lauberhorn”, “Rubi”, “Parsenn Schuss”, “Parsenn Spezial”, “Parsenn Firn”, “Silberhorn”. Beerli patented in 1935 the blue celluloid edges, often used for the ski’s upturn. Of special design were: the “Staub” of brass, without screws, held by small staves introduced from the sides, the “Bärlocher” combi-edges, violet celluloid with on the side of the skis screwed-on 5 cm steel ones, the “Staehli GS”, 5 cm with acute bevel and tongue requiring one screw only, considered best by many racers, the “Rominger” of one piece with a small steel surface enlarged with blue celluloid (which provided faster skis). In 1972, Inter Montana Sport (IMS) sold the exclusive rights for cracked “VCE” edges to Olin-Authier.

Boots

There was a time when Switzerland was the largest shoe and boots production center in the world, with the Bally Company over 150 million pairs since inception. Its founder, Carl Franz Bally (1821-1899) and his brother established in 1851 the “Bally & Co”, manufacturing among other, high fashion silk ribbons in Schönenwerd. In 1854, they set up a factory for foot wear, the “C.F. Bally” and employed some year’s later more than 500 people. Within another decade it had built an international reputation for quality and design and expanded operations to Europe and America. In the 20’s, they launched ski boots, in the 30’s the well-known models “Oslo”, “Winner”, “Arosa” (latter of brown scotch grain leather with a storm proof lacing), “Olympic”, in 1951, one of the first double ski boot, the “RADAR”. As the ski boot business was not profitable, Bally entered a joint venture with Koflach in the 60’s. In 1999, Bally went into the hands of the American investment fund Texas Pacific Group and since 2008 they make part of the Labelux Group, Austria.

Matthäus and Andreas Henke with Johann Georg Storz, three Germans, set up a shoe factory in Stein on the Rhine, Switzerland in 1885. They employed in 1889 56 persons, in 1911 130 but collapsed in 1936 and changed to a trading company. Henke specialized later in ski boots, for example in 1955 the “Stein Ericksen”, a successful two-lace model.

In 1956, they were the first to introduce buckle boots (with 4 metal hooks) on their “Speedfit” model. Hans Martin, a Swiss stunt pilot invented it, still used today. In the 60’s, Henke was the largest boots producers in the world (represented in the U.S. by Bernie Murith in Scarsdale, NY) producing up to 1’200 pairs a day – but went nonetheless broke in 1973.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bally_Shoe – cite_note-0

Franz Heierling, a Davos shoemaker made his first pair of leather boots for skiers in 1885. He copied the “Laupar” shoes of some Norwegians who had been teaching skiing to a few locals. Years later, his family fabricated what became known as the Rolls Royce of hand-made leather ski boots. For the Olympic Games in St. Moritz (1948), even the French team (under Emile Allais) had special braze-reinforced boots, made by them. Many racers trusted Heierling boots: among other, they helped the US and the Swiss team to win six medals at the Olympics of Squaw Valley (1960) and four of Innsbruck (1964). Heierling is still a family business.

Louis Raichle founded his company in 1909 in Kreuzlingen, close to the German border. It became world famous for ski, climbing and recreation boots, represented in the U.S. by Frank Kerner. For the 1980/81 season, they launched the “Flexon 5”, a 3-piece boot, an improved three-piece design developed by Sven Coomer and commercialized by Erik Giese of Aspen’s Comfort Products. One of the first pro ski racers and freestylers to compete in the boot was Billy Shaw on a prototype in 1979/80 and hot dog freestyle skier Peter Ouellette. The boots quickly caught on and became one of the top boots of choice by Olympic racers and freestylers. Bill Johnson won a gold medal at the Olympic downhill of Sarajevo (1984), Nelson Carmichael was a two-time World Cup Grand Prix Mogul champion and won a bronze medal at the Olympics of Albertville (1992).

In 1983, Raichle built a new factory on the other side of Kreuzlingen. Their president, who owned the company, sold it to Peter Werhan (a grandson of Konrad Adenauer, the chancellor of Germany). Sales grew worldwide due to podiums of Olympic and World Cup race as well as freestyle competitions and as Raichle held strong patents. After Werhan died, the business went down. In 1996, the business was purchased by Swiss banker Dr. Grosnick who bought companies in distress such as Kneissl skis. Latter became Austrian Kneissl, renamed in 1998 to Kneissel & Friends. Their marketing concept was Kneissl for skiing and ski boots, Raichle for climbing and hiking shoes, and the new brand DeeLuxe for snowboard boots. This strategy resulted however in sales decreases and as a consequence the company was sold in 2003 to the Mammut Sports Group; later was founded by Swiss Kaspar Tanner in 1862 for ropes is now worldwide known for mountaineering, outdoor pursuits and snow sports products.

Other ski boots manufacturer in the 20’s and 30’s were among other Chodan, Doelker & Walder, Lüscher & Laber.

The hand-made boots crafted by Fritz von Allmen, a shoemaker, ski instructor and racer in Mürren, were famous for their material, workmanship and design. The members of the local Kandahar Ski Club (named after Field Marshal Earl Roberts of Kandahar) appreciated the boots so much that von Allmen named the company he founded in 1932 “Kandahar”. He was likely the first to extend the lacing to the toe and to introduce a sponge-rubber tongue. Von Allmen also came up with a leather belt at the top, around the leg, for firmer stability and traction. The family business abandoned ski boots at the time plastic replaced leather and sells after-ski boots, which are to this day handcrafted in Gwatt, close to Bern.

Fritz Molitor, a saddler in Wengen (the sration of the famous Lauberhorn races) , started repairing shoes for tourists before making hand-made ski boots in the mid 20’s. His son Karl launched the “Molitor” boots, with which he and others won many races. After his two medals at the Olympics of St. Moritz (1948), he was the first to export hand-made boots to the U.S.

At the other side of the valley, Fritz von Allmen, a ski instructor, a racer and a shoemaker in Mürren, crafted famous boots known for their material, workmanship and design. The members of the local Kandahar Ski Club (named after Field Marshal Earl Roberts of Kandahar) appreciated the boots so much that von Allmen could name the company he founded in 1932: “Kandahar”. He was likely the first to extend the lacing to the toe and to introduce a sponge-rubber tongue. Von Allmen also came up with a leather belt at the top, around the leg, for firmer stability and traction. The family business abandoned ski boots at the time plastic replaced leather and sells after-ski boots, which are to this day handcrafted in Gwatt/BE.

Georg Spini of St. Moritz/GR manufactured “Vorlage” boots, thus forcing a forward position. It served some of the Swiss ladies team, such as Niny von Arg-Zogg (slalom silver medal winner of the Ski championship of 1938). These boots were ultimately sold by Löw. In the 40’s several racers used a “Rominger” wedge shaped platform to be laid between binding and boot, this again to force a “Vorlage”.

Climbing skins

In 1905, a Swiss trade journal carried a lengthy article about various attempts to use strips of skin fixed from the tip of the ski to the binding so as to permit climbing slopes. In the 30’s “CHEVA”, “PAMIR” and “Pomoca” sold conventional, later also adhesive (glued) skins. Subsequently, the “TRIMA” became the mostly used skins for more than a generation. They consisted of 3 small metal plates riveted to the skins which could be easily inserted to 3 metallic hinges fixed in the groove of the skis. By 1968, Tödi Sport in Glarus/GR introduced the “Colltex®” adhesive skins, still widely used to this day.

Bases & waxes

In 1916, the Schoop Company, specialized in metal spraying, prepared 3 skis, 2 with aluminum, the other with copper sprayed base. They were tried out by the Ski Club Bern in the region of Lenk – the results were disastrous.

In the 30’s, many varnishes were developed such as “Authier Competition gold-yellow”, “A21”, “B.S.33”, “Gsellin”, “Lucendi”, “Maissen yellow, “MIWI”, “OP1”, “Säntis”, “SKIBO”, “Skiwa”, “Temperol green”, “Rulack”, “TEMPEROL 3”, “Vernisvert”, “Wesco”, “Unikum”. The “Beerli” base helped several racers to win at the Olympics of 1948. In the 50’s, Müller (the founder of Montana Sport, better known as IMS) introduced the highly successful P-Tex® polyethylene base to oxidize the surface (a patent of 1952 by Dr. Kreidl, U.S.).

TOKO, well known by alpine and cross-country skiers, was founded by Jakob Tobler in Altstätten (1916) for products caring footwear and leather goods. Its first ski product was “Skigliss”, a red-colored varnish and “Skimont” for ski bases sold under the Toko brand (1933). It was followed by “rub-on wax 1-3-5” (1940), Olympiawax Combi blue-red-green” (1948), “Paraffin-Skiwax” (1969), “System 4” (1974), “hot waxes” (1975), “System Elite” (1979), “World Cup Wax” (1985), “Wet Jet”and Streamline” first fluorinated wax (1989), “Dibloc” (1991), “Nordlite Molydenum” (1996) and “HelX” (2002). Several Olympic and World Champion-ship winners in alpine, Nordic as well as snowboard disciplines relied – and rely – on Toko. They also sold wooden cross-country skis as of 1971 and fiberglass as of 1974, both made in Sweden. Toko was absorbed in 2002 by the Mammut Sports Group. In 2010 it became part of the Swix Sport, a Norwegian company with products for tuning skis and boards as well as accessories for outdoor activites.

Poles

In 1905, at a time most skiers used one pole only, a manufacturer offered one which could separate in two pieces so as to permit skiing with one or two poles. Gustav Ruchser, patented in 1931 (patent CH150336) a pole characterized by a basket attached without piercing the pole and which hand strap could easily be exchanged. Guido Reuge of 1932 featured adjustable length (patent CH165184).

In 1930, Walter Amstutz and Max Lüthi convinced Arnold Lunn to introduce hinged slalom poles for the Kandahar races. The “Müro” pole was on the Himalaya expedition of 1936. An interesting invention of 1948 was the “Labor”; it had spring suspended basket rings which always maintained the baskets in place. In 1960, Borda’s “Lawinensonde” was designed for searching people buried under avalanches. One handgrip and the two baskets could easily be taken off which allowed both poles to be pushed together so as to get a long stick. The “Tele pole” (1971) was particular in that it had variable spikes capable to adapt itself to different snow conditions.

Synthetic materials

Worbla, mentioned earlier, manufactured blue celluloid edges from 1935, celluloid bases from 1950 and polyethylene bases from 1956. Later, their extruded polyethylene flame treated base became the famous “P-Tex®” base. In 1962 followed the pressure sintered polyethylene bases, known as “P-Tex 2000®”. Head, an early customer for “P-Tex®”, acquired the exclusive rights for this fast base – and won many races with it. Since 1976, Worbla is a part of the Inter Montana Sport which itself belongs to the Gurit Composite Technologies group both Swiss firms. Gurit is today a leading supplier of semi-finished materials and sub-assemblies to the winter and summer sports industry.

Gaston Haldemann and his brother Willy made some fiberglass/epoxy skis with wood core as of 1957. Former patented a hollow ski in 1958 (patent CH351205, one of over 40) which would become famous. “Kaiser” Franz Kneissl looked at it, but did not believe in the new technology. As a consequence, Gaston sold the license to Rossignol and got engaged by them in 1960 to develop the technology with the required moulds and presses in France. However, as Rossignol began to develop non hollow fiberglass/epoxy skis in 1963, he quit for Inter Montana Sport (IMS).

In 1965, he nonetheless founded a company with Rossignol (Haldemann-Rossignol AG) located in Stans, Switzerland. After disappointing downhill results, Haldemann had the idea to incorporate 1 mm Zicral (an aluminum alloy) plates on top and bottom of the 3 fiberglass/epoxy channels again without wood core. In 1969 tests were made in Zermatt – initially without the knowledge of Rossignol. The results were spectacular, the skis later branded “Equipe Suisse”, mentioned earlier.

Also in 1960, Cellpack in Wohlen began to produce fiberglass/epoxy reinforced plastics. They convinced Kneissl to adopt this material for the top and bottom layers of their skis. The result was the famous “Kneissl White Star” with which, among other, Karl Schranz won many races.

Mountain railways, cableways including ski lifts

Due to its liberal economy, early industrial development, wealth, scenery and tourism, Switzerland has more mountain railways and cableways in relation to its size and population than any other country. The first ones were an aerial cableway used to ferry workmen across the Rhine at Schaffhausen (1866), a rack railway up to the Rigi (1871), a cable railway (funicular) in Lausanne (1877) and the world first mountain aerial cableway for public passenger to the Wetterhorn in Grindelwald (1908).

There are still several cableways manufacturer in business: Bächler Top-Track, BMF Bartholet Maschinenbau AG, Borer Lift AG, CWA Constructions SA, Garaventa/Doppelmayr AG, Inauen-Schätti AG, NSD Niederberger AG, Rowema AG Swissrides AG and Von Rotz Seilbahnen AG. Others stopped manufacturing, sold on or disappeared such as Annen, Baco AG, Bell Maschinenfabrik AG, Brändle, Constam, WBB Bühler, Elbag, GMD-Müller, Georg Fischer AG, Garaventa, Giovanola Frères SA, Habegger AG, Küpfer Maschinenfabrik, Lauber Seilbahnen, MWB Metalwerke Buchs, Odermatt, Oehler Eisen- &Stahlwerke Co, Norro, Rickenbach, Rowema, Sameli-Huber, Skimag Ski- und Sessellifte, Streiff, TEBRU, Vogler, Von Roll AG and WSO-Städeli.

1934 will be remembered as the birth of history’s most influential ski lift design. Ernst Constam, an engineer from Zürich, built the first “J-bar”, later a “T-bar” at Bolgen in Davos (patent 179310). In 1940 he immigrated to the U.S. where he further developed the business of ski, chair lifts, and gondolas. All over the world he must have sold over 200 installations – many more copied. There are still today thousands of T-bars in operation worldwide. These lifts had a strong impact, not only on the ski industry, but on tourism.

Also in 1934, Gerhard Müller a rope ski lift (CH174250). One year later, Beda Hefti built the first ski lift which permitted curved sections. Instead of bars, there were belts around the hips. In 1946, Heinrich Vogler invented the ski lift “Trainer”, a lightweight removable, inexpensive lift, ideal for short slopes; it could cope with lengths of up to 1000 meters and height differences up to 300 meters and is still highly popular.

Currently, Switzerland has around 900 ski lifts (not including 570 lightweight, removable lifts), 350 chairlifts, 120 gondolas, 130 aerial cable trains, 60 cable railways and 30 rack railways.

Ski Instructors in North America

Emile Constant Cochand (1890-1987), after two years as a ski instructor in Switzerland, was invited by the Montreal Ski Club in 1911. He came with 100 pairs of skis and poles, six bobsleds and 20 sleds. At Ste-Agathe in Quebec, he founded the first North American ski school. Cochand taught cross-country, Telemark, cross jump, jumping, bob sledding, snow shoe and organized competitions. In 1914, he opened the first resort hotel on this continent at Ste-Marguerite. The lodge burned down shortly after its completion but, he rebuilt the lodge by 1917. Chalet Cochand still exists today.

John (Jean) Monod, from the French speaking part, a world class ski racer in the 1930’s immigrated to Banff, Canada in 1947 where he met fellow Swiss Bruno Engler. Monod was an adventurer, a mountaineer, above all a man with a vision to bring Banff a winter life through the sport of skiing – even showed ski movies that he filmed. By 1949, he set up Monod Sports at Sunshine Lodge (now Village), making it one of the first ski shops in Western Canada. With his brother Jerry and Bruno Engler they were ski instructors at the Mt. Norquay ski area for most of the 1950’s. Monod also led the ski schools at Mt. Norquay for 4 years and at Sunshine for 11 years. After a fire destroyed his business in 1956, he reopened Monod Sports in Banff. Monod sons, Peter, Phillip, and his step-daughter, Stephanie Townsend raced on the World Cup Circuit. Phillip was Canadian Junior Champion and Peter was seven-time Canadian Champion and one-time U.S. Champion. Today, the store is managed by Monod’s sons.

Hans Thorner (1908-2004), from Einsiedeln, a ski instructor, emigrated to the U.S. in 1932. There, he became a PSIA first class certified ski Instructor. During the 40′s he owned and operated the Thorner House in Franconia, NH. It was an inn of some renown and one of the first in this country where you could “ski all the way home.” He also ran the Hans Thorner Ski School on Cannon Mt., filmed the 1948 Olympics and went on to make ski movies for Swissair including sequences of himself. Thorner dreamed of a Swiss village at the base of a mountain. As a consequence, he chose Magic Mt. VT (1960) with its steeps, trees and cliffs – on the upper half even frightening skilled skiers today. The Thorner family operated Magic Mt. until in 1985. Fortunately, the area remains a refreshing change from the scene of the crowded and expensive mega-resorts.

Walter Prager (1910-1984), from Arosa, became the first FIS Downhill Champion (Arlberg-Kandahar race) at Mürren in 1931 and two years later won the FIS world downhill championship at Innsbruck, Austria. Prager became the Dartmouth Ski Team coach in 1936 and occasionally also taught skiers at Pico VT. He was named U.S. Olympic coach for the men’s and women’s team at St. Moritz (1948) where Gretchen Frazer won gold in slalom and silver combined – to become America’s sweetheart. In 1941 Prager volunteered and was given the rank of Sergeant in the 10th Mountain Division. He retired from Dartmouth in 1957.

Alfred (Freddy) Pieren (1911-2003), from Adelboden, became in 1939 a battalion guide before emigrating to the U.S. in 1941. Two years later, he joined the 11th Mountain Brigade, served as an instructor of the 10th Mountain Division at the Allied Mount Warfare School. After the war, he settled in Sun Valley. Pieren, an ingenious ski instructor, developed among other, a machine for ski waxing and as a consequence opened a shop for waxing and storage. In 1961, Howard Head offered him a job as chief technician of the Head Ski Company where he played a major role in developing the highly successful 360 model. Pieren represented Head at the Olympics of Innsbruck (1964) as a technician of the U.S. and Canadian teams. On his return, he joined Voit Co., which began developing fiberglass skis in California. After Voit discontinued ski manufacture, Pieren worked for Olin Ski from 1966 on.

Fred Iselin (1914-1971), from Glarus (the son of Christof, the pioneer mentioned on page 1), became known as a skier before he went 1930 to Chamonix in France. He stayed there 8 years as a ski instructor, film actor, racer, trainer of some women of the French ski racing team. Iselin won impressive victories at the Grand Prix de Chamonix, the Brevant-Chamonix, and the Lognon Downhill. His most impressive win was the time record at the Grand Prix de l’Aiguille du Midi – a race discontinued because too dangerous. Iselin arrived in the U.S. in 1939, met in San Francisco by chance Friedl Pfeifer, one of Colorado’s notable ski school directors and designer of the Mt. Baldy ski area at Sun Valley. Latter offered him to teach the top class. In 1947 they both moved to Aspen. An instructor “par excellence” for over 40 years, his achievements include ski school director for Aspen Highlands, author of bestselling book on ski techniques “Invitation to Ski” as well as “The New Invitation to Skiing and Invitation to Modern Skiing” and movies such as “Snow Carnival” starring Gary Cooper and “The Wonderful World of Color” with Walt Disney.

Bruno Engler (1915-2001) from Lugano, a mountain guide and professional photographer arrived in Canada in 1939. After working as a ski instructor for Jim Brewster at Sunshine Village, he obtained his first guiding job at Chateau Lake Louise where he operated with the legendary mountaineers, Ernest Feuz and Rudolf Aemmer. In the mid-1940s, Engler taught survival and mountain warfare for the Canadian army and upon returning to the Rockies to teach skiing, organized the first Veteran’s Ski Race – an annual event over which he presided for many years. In his long career, Engler was also an actor, cameraman, photographer, as well as one of the Canadian Rockies’ great story-tellers. In the mid-1950’s, Engler created Alpine Films, which offered cinematography and location/mountain safety consulting to the film industry. He worked with Disney, Universal Studios, the National Film Board and both Canadian and American television networks. Engler photographed such Hollywood stars as Jimmy Stewart, Paul Newman, Charles Bronson and Margot Kidder, many of whom remained his friends. During more than 60 years of still photography, he compiled an unprecedented collection of magnificent black and white photographs, which represent a remarkable portrait of a period of intense change in Canada’s National Parks. In 1996, The Alpine Club of Canada celebrated his extraordinary life by publishing Engler’s first book, “A Mountain Life: The Stories and Photographs of Bruno Engler”.

Karl Acker (?-1958), from Davos, a slalom racer, was recruited in 1939 by Brad and Janet Mead (the founders of the Pico VT resort) to head their ski school. While in Davos, the Mead’s were impressed by Constam’s T-bar ski lift and ordered one right away, as a matter of fact the first in North America. Acker joined the 10th Mountain Division during World War II to develop the mountain troop ski program. He also initiated the Pico Ski Club. Acker was trainer of young Andrea Mead, the daughter of Brad and Janet. At age 19, she captained of the U.S. women’s team at the Olympics of Oslo, Norway (1952) – and became the first American skier to win two Olympic gold medals (slalom and downhill). A trained mechanic, Acker also designed and built a single chair to be attached to the Pico T-bar lift for summer rides. He managed Pico resort before buying it from Jane Mead in 1954. Acker suffered a heart attack in 1958, and according to his wish, was buried at the Peak of Pico.

Paul S. Valar (1920-2007), from Davos, spelled Valär there, was a ski instructor, mountain guide as well as Swiss decathlon champion – besides fluent in German, Italian, French and English. As a member of the Swiss National Ski Team, Valar was invited to compete in the U.S. National Ski Championship of Ogden, UT in 1947. There, he placed second in both the downhill and the combined – met a beautiful Austrian-born member of the U.S. National Ski Team, Paula Kann (working for Hannes Schneider at North Conway, NH). In 1949 he coached the men’s Swiss National Ski Team, later decided to follow Paula to the U.S. where he became the director of the Cannon Mt. Ski School in Franconia. From the 1940s to the 1980s, Valar was a founding force and guiding light for New Hampshire ski instruction. In 1977, he became the first President of the New England Ski Museum. For his manifold contributions to the sport of skiing, Valar was honored with lifetime membership in the Professional Ski Instructors of America (P.S.I.A.) in 1974 and was elected to the National Ski Hall of Fame in 1985.

Walter Haensli (1921- ), from Klosters (a ski friend of the writer) was already at the age of 17 member of the Swiss National Ski team. Because of bad luck however, he could not join the Swiss team at the Olympics in St. Moritz (1948), at that time some selected by drawing lots! Haensli’s second chance came when US Coach Walter Prager hired him to train the women – and Gretchen Frazer became the first American to win gold and silver. Jack Heinz, from the Heinz Ketchup fortune, admiring Haensli, managed to have him hired by the prestigious Sun Valley Ski School for the next season.

During the 1949/50 season, Haensli tested new kinds of skis, Howard Head had sent to the Sun Valley ski school for appreciation. They consisted of blank aluminum plates on top and bottom, bonded to a thin core of plywood. He found the skis excellent in powder, made trials, recorded these and wrote to Head suggesting improvements. Invited to visit latter’s “factory” – located in a basement garage in Baltimore, Haensli suggested steel edges, bending the ends slightly upward and adding for esthetics a plastic material. Head chose phenol, a black material to eliminate the glare of the metal, a distinctive feature of his early skis. Head, not a rich man, asked Haensli how he could recompense him. Latter asked for the right to sell Head skis in Europe. During the next 30 years he sold: 18 pairs in 1950/51, in succeeding seasons 57, 186, 1500 and more than 20,000 in 1958 – over a third of Head’s annual total production. Haensli was also a key figure in setting up Head’s production center in Kennelbach, Austria after U.S. production was stopped because of a long strike.

Bryan Todd, a rich New Zealander, met Haensli in Sun Valley in 1949. Todd persuaded Haensli to come to New Zealand to look for a skiing area. After investigating different sites, he recommended the Ruapehu Mountain. There, Haensli founded a ski club, run a ski school and set a ski and two chair lifts. Even today, he is honored by the yearly “Haensli Cup” race. Karen Williams covered his life in her biography “Barrel Staves to Carving Skis – A Skier’s Story: Walter Haensli of Klosters”.

Art Furrer (1937- ), from Greich, a local ski racer, member of the National B-Team at the age of 17, instructor at 20, examiner of the Ski School Association at 21 (however suspended at 23 because he liked to ski as he said: the other ways). In 1959, he left for the U.S. and was hired by Paul Valar as a ski instructor at the Cannon Mt. Ski School in Franconia. There, he invented the “Franconia Super-Dooper Wedeln”, and later, under contract of Hart skis, used trick techniques such as the Butterfly, the Reuel, the Charlston, the Twist, the Javelin Reverse, the Hinge-Hop Helicopter and others. Furrer also starred in films such as “The crazy Swiss”. He moved to Penny Pitou in Laconia, NH where he taught the 1961/62 season. Furrer returned to Switzerland where he received an unexpected attractive offer from Henke ski boots as their representative in the U.S. (1963). Two years later he became ski school director at Bolton Valley, VT. Furrer became the number one public relations figure of Hart skis, doing acrobatics shows and films. From 1966 on, he invested his savings in condominiums at Riederalp, next to the Aletsch Glacier ridge where he returned in 1973, bought a hotel and became its leading resort entrepreneur. Furrer, who began penniless, is now a rich man, a personality, politically and on TV. In his restaurant “Tenne“, are the twelve-foot long skis from the German broadcast “Can you take a joke?” displayed.

Roger Staub (1936-74), from Arosa, ski racer, ice hockey player and ski instructor won three races of the Swiss Junior Championship (1955), followed by three medals at the World Championship in Badgastein, Austria (1958). His biggest success however, was the goldmedal (GS) at the Olympics in Squaw Valley (1960). Thereafter he signed on to promote Hart skis. After the season 1960/61, Staub retired from racing and opened a ski school in Arosa. There he did also acrobatic ski shows, in part together with Art Furrer (both on Hart skis), culminating in the movie “Die Snowboys aus Arosa”. Staub was ski school director in Vail from 1965-69. A deep powder run is named after him and he participated   in the movie “Ski the Outer Limits”. Staub died 1974 in a delta wing accident in Verbier, Switzerland. His Roger-Staub cap, enclosing the head with small openings for the eyes, continues to live.

Among other instructors, racers or mountain guides from Switzerland, there were C. Bezzola, Herb Bleuer, Ernst Buehler, Beat, Hans and Otto von Allmen, Rudi Gertsch, Stefan Kaelin, Hans-Peter Stettler, Peter Schlunegger, Sepp Renner, Ernst Salzgeber, Kobi Wyss as well as many others.

Patents:

They can be viewed and printed at http://ep.espacenet.com

Contacts:

Luzi Hitz, Cyprès 4, CH-1802 Corseaux, Switzerland (close to the lake of Geneva); lhzlhz@bluewin.ch. You can visit the collection of about 120 pairs of alpine skis from around 1900 to these days beside consult a large documentation.

Ski and Wintersportmuseum Noldi Beck, Fabrikweg 5, FL-9490 Vaduz, Liechtenstein (1½ hours’ drive from Zurich); www.skimuseum.li. One of the largest European collections of winter sport articles

Laurent Donzé, CH-2336, Les Bois (about 60 miles from Bern); l.donze@bluewin.ch. Most likely the largest collection of cross-country skis (about 2000) in the world as well as over 200 pairs of antique alpine skis.

Collection of Schwendener skis: Rainer Geissmann, Renkwiler, FL-9492 Eschen, Liechtenstein; Geissmann.Rainer@adon.li

At first a gimmicky convenience, the boot buckle took ten years to earn its place among the sport’s enduring inventions.

In 1955 a former stunt pilot and Swiss inventor named Hans Martin sold the world’s leading ski boot company, Henke, his patent for using metal buckles rather than laces to fasten leather boots.

Dolomite double lace boots (Vintage Ski World photo)

Skiers needed such a convenience. The number of lacing hooks and eyelets on a pair of boots had skyrocketed to as many as 90 with the introduction around 1950 of the inner boot and rear lacing. The digitally challenged skier could now spend as long as 10 minutes lacing the equivalent of four boots before setting out on the slopes, to say nothing of fine-tuned re-lacing adjustments during the day. Time wasn’t the only inconvenience. Tightening the laces of the hard, stiff outer boot, unless you used a hook-like device to draw them taut, caused raw, sore fingers. And pity the racer who attempted to adjust his laces on a raw frigid January day before stepping into the starting gate. It was an experience comparable to that possibly felt by Scott penciling his dying thoughts in Antarctica.

The buckle boot surely would be the answer. “No more frozen fingers!” claimed Henke. “Flip it open. . .flip it shut. Keep your gloves on!” But when Henke’s salesmen began to show their $49.50 Speedfit boot to dealers in the 1955, they were often laughed out of the shops. At the time buckles were associated with the galoshes worn by folks to walk through slushy streets. “Who would want to wear galoshes to ski?” sneered skeptical shop owners.

Henke Speedfit

Nor did skiers invade shops demanding the revolutionary lace-less boot. They were reluctant to give up lacing’s comfortable close fit, especially when the hard outer boot contained a soft separately laced inner boot. The infinite adjustability offered skiers the most personalized fit they would enjoy until the arrival of custom-foamed liners 20 years later. By contrast, buckles created stresses and painful pressure points on the foot where they attached to the leather.

Racers — usually the first to seize on new technology — didn’t begin to adopt the buckle boot until the early 1960s when other bootmakers improved on Martin’s original design, and offered hand-lasted inners and better-designed tongues to even out the pressure.  Even then, a top racer would wear out a boot in a few weeks as the leather stretched beyond repair. What the performance-oriented skier awaited was leather’s replacement by indestructible, stiffer plastic. In Dubuque, Iowa, plastic boot inventor Bob Lange made his early prototypes using laces, but it was almost humanly impossible to cinch tight the hard, unpliable plastic. Only buckles, Lange discovered in 1965, would enable his new boot to work. Fortunately for him, the buckle had already been invented. . . and the design and making of ski boots changed forever.

Heinz Herzog, long-time president of Raichle-Molitor USA, adds this comment:

It was not uncommon to suffer frostbite as a result of wearing seamed leather boots without interior padding or insulation. To cinch a long thong around the boot, I remember having to thread it through a couple of steel rings with bare fingers. Hans Martin, a Swiss, invented the buckle. Part of his patent covered the method of mounting each buckle on the boot, a challenge because it was leather. Need to spread pressure, not create pressure points. Martin sold the patent to the Swiss boot company, Henke. Others tried to design their own, but Martin’s design was the only one that worked, so the other boot companies like Molitor paid Henke for the right to use the Martin-designed buckle. Le Trappeur had the greatest success in racing. Instead of having the two buckles going laterally across the shaft, they attached one diagonally at the heel.

Martin spent tens of thousands trying to make a one-buckle boot.