For six decades, West Mountain in upstate New York has been bringing skiers—and racers—into the sport.
By Paul Post
Spencer and Sara Montgomery moved east to West Mountain, where they’re pursuing the adventure of a lifetime in his hometown of Queensbury, New York. They’ve given the Southern Adirondacks
resort a $17 million makeover since purchasing it in 2013, including three new chairlifts, 40,000 feet of snowmaking pipeline, 200 new snow guns, four groomers and a 500-foot lift for the tubing park.
It’s quite a change for a couple who met on the Chicago trading floor and spent 10 years in Colorado, skiing at some of the world’s most famous resorts.
West Mountain has been a family-oriented resort since the founding Brandt clan opened it on Christmas Day 1962. By installing lights for night skiing, they quickly attracted local curiosity seekers and developed a strong customer base throughout the region. The
Adirondack Northway (Interstate 87) opened in the early 1960s, providing a direct link from the Albany area, about an hour away. While small in size, with a 1,000-foot vertical drop, the center has made a big contribution to the sport.
“It’s a feeder mountain,” Spencer said. “I’m willing to bet that West Mountain has taught more people how to ski and is one of the top training mountains in the United States. We have 1,600 kids in after-school programs. That’s our history and our future.”
The site’s steep trails have hosted competitive racing since 1966, when Tom Jacobs and Isadore “Izzy” Ture founded the program (see “Remembering,” page 33). With on-mountain upgrades complete, the Montgomerys are now turning their attention to developing a full-time ski racing academy. One of their first moves was to hire Steve Lathrop, a former five-year World Cup competitor on the U.S. “A” Ski Team, who previously worked at Stratton Mountain School in southern Vermont. Lathrop is starting his third year as West Mountain’s alpine race director.
A New Hampshire native, Lathrop learned how to ski on a rope tow built by his father, who served with the 10th Mountain Division during World War II. At one point, Lathrop was ranked 16th in the world in slalom. If not for injury, he would have gone to the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan, so he knows what a good racing program needs and believes West Mountain has all the key elements.
In January 2020—prior to the COVID-19 shutdown—West Mountain hosted a four-day FIS event including two huge U-16 and U-19 races, with 225 racers each day from all over the East. A full slate of high school, masters and New York State Racing Association competition is on tap for the 2020–2021 season.
This fall, West Mountain also opened a brand-new ski racing academy that allows student-athletes to train
full time. Those from outside the area, a half-dozen from western New York and New York City, take classes remotely through Queensbury High School or their own home school. Next year, plans call for having a full-fledged lodging component as well.
“The academy is for older kids who are able to live on their own and handle their studies and ski training,” Sara Montgomery says. “A lot of kids at that U-19 level drop out of ski racing because it becomes unaffordable for their families, with all of the travel and the high cost of equipment. This gives them the opportunity to continue racing at a competitive level at a more affordable rate.”
With good coaching and top-notch facilities, it might just be a matter of time before a West Mountain racer achieves international success. “I really believe this mountain has everything needed to develop world-class ski racers,” Lathrop says.
(photo: Architects Charlotte Perriand, Pierre Facheux and Jean Prouve at Les Arcs, fifty years ago.)
When Les Arcs closed down last spring, senior managers reflected on the very purpose of ski resorts. “The current crisis . . . made us take more time to rethink our new projects,” said press officer Cecile Romualdo. “What actual purpose does a ski resort serve? What is its use for society?”
Managers revisited the rationale for building the four modern high-alpine villages. The first of these, Arc 1600, opened in 1968. According to Romualdo, “We re-read the documents left by those who created the resort from nothing, . . . building a resort on virgin land. We discovered that they asked themselves all the same questions.”
The original architectural team, led by Charlotte Perriand, was inspired by Le Corbusier’s city-planning philosophy, emphasizing human-scale but concentrated development in order to leave open space for recreation within walking distance. In the resort context, Romualdo said, “A holiday in the mountains should be an opportunity to leave behind one’s social habits and mingle with other circles. The mountain environment, outdoor activities and holiday atmosphere offer the context to facilitate this.”
Today the complex is served by 171 lifts and until the Covid19 shut-down hosted 2.3 million skier visits each winter. Going forward, social distancing dictates that the crowds not be forced indoors. Based on the original philosophy, Les Arcs now hopes to bring people together in the wide-open space of the mountains. --Patrick Thorne
From Olympic racing to elite coaching, this once-and-future family has had a powerful impact on the sport.
By Peter Oliver
The Caldwells are America’s first family of cross-country skiers. As elite athletes, coaches, ski technicians, organizational founders, retailers and advisors, the family and the sport have formed a multi-generational bond that goes back 70 years. In U.S. skiing, only the Cochrans come close.
On a breezy June day in Peru, Vermont, three generations of Caldwells—grandfather John, son Sverre, granddaughter Sophie and her husband, Simi Hamilton—gathered on the porch of Sverre’s home, with its sweeping view south to Stratton Mountain. They pieced together a family history that begins with John’s journey from the Putney School to Dartmouth College to the 1952 Olympics, stretches through Sverre’s seminal coaching gig at Stratton Mountain School, and strides into the present with Sophie and Simi’s leadership on the U.S. World Cup team.
The family legacy has humble roots in late-1940s Vermont. Although a gifted downhill skier, John was a cross-country neophyte as a high-school athlete at Putney. In his first nordic race, he borrowed his sister’s clunky alpine skis (because they were smaller and lighter than his) and “basically ran around the course on skis,” he recalls. He finished in the top 15. Yet by the time John reached Dartmouth, his skills—and equipment—had improved sufficiently to enable him to compete as a four-event skier, in cross-country, jumping, slalom and downhill. He was named to the 1952 Olympic nordic combined team...
Looking back nearly 60 years, this Sohler Ski ad, featuring thick-rimmed white sunglasses, hoody ski parka and a glamorous wind-blown milieu, could be selling today’s hip outdoor fashion, as well as “the ski for those who want the best.” The ad, from the December 1961 issue of SKI magazine, touts the German ski manufacturer’s “Spyder-Downhill” as the “fastest metal ski in the world.” No exaggeration, there. Sohler was the ski supplier for Luigi DiMarco’s speed-skiing world record set in Cervinia, Italy, in August 1960, at more than 101 mph. With his record run, DiMarco became the first human to officially break 100 mph on skis. (DiMarco was back in 1964 to raise the record to 108 mph.) The current record? In 2016, Italian speed skier Ivan Origone blazed down a course at Vars resort, in the French Alps, at more than 158 mph—in a fashionably bright red speed suit.
COMING UP IN FUTURE ISSUES
Decisive Moments (Part 2)
Paul Ryan searched through his archives to find the most captivating images from his career as a globe-trotting
ski photographer.
We Need More Cowbell!
A brief history of the clanging bells that cheer on alpine racers.
Where Are They Now?
Pernilla Wiberg, Sweden’s all-time record-holding female alpine ski racer, is still giving back to the sport.
Quantum Leap
Alpine skiing took a big step forward between 1930 and 1932 with the introduction of steel edges and locked-down heels, paving the way for its introduction to the 1936 Winter Olympics.
After a career covering skiing, photographer Paul Ryan has seen it all.
Above: Ryan looks for contrasts when shooting. The dark shadows help visually pop the red-suited racer, next to the red gate, in this image from the 1968 Grenoble Olympic Games. Also, “I liked the sense of launching into the unseen downside of the jump.” Right: Jean-Claude Killy flashes his inimitable style on course in Stowe, Vermont in 1966. The following year, Killy earned the first World Cup overall title, winning 12 of 17 races. Next up: winning the triple crown of alpine skiing, with a sweep of all three Olympic golds at that time (downhill, giant slalom and slalom) at the 1968 Grenoble Winter Games. On skis or off, Killy was as photogenic as they come, says Ryan, who worked extensively with the champ over the years.
"I always was kind of a frustrated ski racer,” admits Paul Ryan, who dabbled in competitive racing in the 1960s. Raised in Newton, Massachusetts, Ryan played hockey for Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York, and after graduation headed north to Stowe, Vermont, to work and follow his racing dreams. In Stowe, racer Marvin Moriarty, of the Moriarty ski hat family, gave Ryan his first camera.
As young ski racers of that generation were likely to do, “a bunch of us decided to abandon career expectations and head out West, eventually landing in Aspen,” he recalls. Ryan and buddies made the racing rounds, competing at various Western resorts, including Mammoth Mountain, where “Dave McCoy let us sleep in the unfinished lodge.”
In the early 1960s, a career beckoned, so Ryan went to graduate film school in San Francisco, but continued to race. He found himself at Sugar Bowl Resort in California for the final race of the season, where he received the career advice of a lifetime. “You are not getting anywhere racing,” Ed Siegel, Sugar Bowl’s general manager told him. “But you’re a pretty good photographer. Come work for us.”
Working a ski camp at Sugar Bowl, California, two-time American Olympic racer Chuck Ferries entertains campers with card tricks. A youngster’s hero-worshipping stare across the frame illustrates Ryan’s “Decisive Moment” philosophy of photography.
He did. “It was my first job getting paid to take pictures,” Ryan says with a laugh. Skiing remained a passion, but he found the time to pursue his craft in San Francisco, and made a name for himself chronicling the 1960s counterculture there. But he had found a home in skiing, and John Fry hired him as the staff photographer at SKI magazine for several years. He traveled the world shooting for SKI and other periodicals.
Ryan’s personal lens was always wider than just the sport of skiing. He studied under the greats of the time, including Minor White and Ansel Adams. His photography has been honored in international shows, with recent exhibits including “The Sea Ranch, Architecture, Environment, and Idealism” at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Ryan has always moved fluidly between still photography and cinematography. His cinema credits include Robert Redford’s A River Runs Through It and The Horse Whisperer. His documentary work includes Gimme Shelter, Salvador Dali, and recently a film on George Soros.
Ryan has always found his way back to the mountains. This photo essay illuminates an era in skiing’s history and also the progress of photography, which has changed as much as the sport that Ryan covers.
“Photography has evolved enormously since the years when I was very involved in photographing the ski world,” Ryan, now 83, says from his home in Santa Monica, California. “Cameras and iPhones have become very mobile and everyone can take photos of anything.”
A racer studies “the labyrinth of a seemingly random maze of slalom poles” in Aspen. The solitude of the racer attracted Ryan, as did the vertical orientation of racer to poles. The image reminded Ryan that “Billy Kidd always prided himself on being able to memorize every nuance of a slalom course as well as the terrain. He said to me ‘I can memorize the position of 120 poles. Not only the absolute position but the relative distances between the poles.’”
With the new mobile technology, “images are abundant and personal moments are revealed every day,” he notes. Ever the artist, Ryan sees these advancements not as a threat to his craft, but as new tools to use. “Photoshop makes possible the transformation of photographs into our own impressionistic images, and expressions of our thoughts superimposed onto the events in front of the lens,” he says. “It’s a visually exciting time.”
These images here are from a different time, “when on the side of the mountain, I had to pre-visualize the end result, often not seeing the processed film until days later,” Ryan says.
Though the technology has changed, what constitutes a powerful image has not. Ryan says there are two main components to a successful photo: What he calls “the graphics” or the visual structure of the image, and “the human element,” or the emotions that are shown in the photograph.
Great photography combines both to reveal “Cartier-Bresson’s ‘decisive moment’ in time,” Ryan says. The art is in recognizing that instant. “A compelling photograph is not what happened a second before or a second after. It’s a single moment,” Ryan says. “A photographer’s goal is to capture that decisive moment.”
This is Part 1 of a 2 part photo essay series from Paul Ryan, with the second installment in the November/December issue. View this photo essay as a mini-master class in photography, as Ryan explains his approach to his craft and the intriguing backstories to each image.
When shooting point-of-view images while skiing, such as at Mount Tremblant, Que, Ryan slows down, “so the skiing becomes intuitive and all the thought goes into what the shot will look like.” He favors wide-angle lenses when moving, and reverts to a kind of point-and-shoot mode, as “looking through the lens is unwise and restrictive.” After years on skis, the veteran gunslinger admits “I got pretty good shooting from the hip.”
One of Ryan’s first assignments for SKI was a story on St. Moritz, Switzerland. “This scene was probably routine for the Palace Hotel, where we were staying, but the iconic cultural juxtaposition caught my eye immediately,” he says. The curve of the elegantly dressed woman’s hand accenting the flip of her hair and the curve of the tea pot’s spout, with a majestic peak as a backdrop for good measure, add up to a striking narrative.
After filming Jean-Claude Killy, Leo Lacroix and other racers in St. Moritz, Switzerland, for a Lange film, Killy invited Ryan to visit him at his home in Val D’Isère, France, to unwind, which included riding motorcycles together. With Killy, Ryan always had his camera at the ready. Not surprisingly, Killy was as aggressive on a motorcycle as on skis.
Wherever Killy went, “crowds would gather,” Ryan says. Word got out that Killy was riding in the foothills, so the locals came to watch. Ryan liked the closeup of a local boy trying the controls with Killy, with the crowds forming a wall in the background.
Ryan was leaving an ISHA gathering at Stowe, when he pulled over on a side road to snap this scenic view of Mount Mansfield. He liked the dark fence line silhouetted against the snow at the bottom of the frame, bracketed by the white snow-covered slopes at the top, with the bare trees in between.
What’s now called a “selfie” has its roots in the professional self-portrait. A self-portrait reveals both a mastery of the artist’s craft and self-image. “Occasionally when skiing an interesting trail, I would just put a wide angle lens on my motor drive Nikon and fire off a few backlit shots of my own shadow while skiing,” Ryan says. “I like that effect.”
This ad for the Pontiac GTO was published in the January 31, 1969 issue of LIFE magazine. It was the official car of the U.S. Ski Team, which had been formally organized just a few years earlier, in 1965. The same month this ad ran, the footage for the iconic ski movie Downhill Racer was shot. Karl Schranz and Gertrude Gabl won the overall 1968–1969 World Cup titles, and American racer Marilyn Cochran won the women’s GS globe.
Coming up in future issues
CARTOON CLASSICS
From the Road Runner and Bugs Bunny to Wile E. Coyote, skiing was often used as a prop for mayhem in TV’s classic animated cartoon series of the 1960s and 1970s.
CROSS-COUNTRY CALDWELLS
Over 70 years, America’s first family of nordic skiers have formed an inseparable bond with the sport
WE NEED MORE COWBELL!
A short history of the clanging bells that cheer on alpine racers
NEVER-SEEN SKI SCENES
Ski photographer and cinematographer Paul Ryan searched through his archives for surprising, captivating images of Olympic stars and celebrities from the 1960s
1969: Modern ski techniques place much importance on pole planting for both long parallel turns and short swing. However, many advanced skiers have limited success in assimilating the latest refinements into their own skiing because their ski poles are too long. Long poles tend to set a skier’s weight back on his heels and interfere with setting up a good rhythm for short swing.
The old rule of thumb—that poles should reach up to the armpit—is obsolete, in the opinion of many instructors who now advocate shorter poles, particularly for advanced skiers. To check for proper pole length, place the tip of your pole in the snow as if you were about to make a turn. If your poles are short enough, the wrist-to-elbow section of your arm will be parallel to the ground. Checking proper length in a ski shop or in your home, place the pole grips on the floor, grasping the shafts just below their baskets. Again, your lower arm should run parallel to the floor. —Stefan Nagel (Certified, U.S. Eastern Amateur Ski Association)
2020: In September 1969, when this tip appeared in SKI, the method it described might have been new to some, but was already current practice. Since then, good skiers have gradually migrated to shorter poles. A person who skied with 52-inch poles in the 1960s was probably using 50-inch poles in the 1990s, and might be skiing with 46-inch poles today. Competitive mogul skiers are likely to use poles even shorter than that.
But even though poles have gotten shorter, the method described in this tip still works. The key is to place the tip of your pole in the snow as if you were about to make a turn. In the illustration above, the skier is in a tall stance. For various reasons, the stance of good skiers at the moment they plant their poles has typically gotten shorter over the years, especially when making short turns. Keeping your forearm level to the snow dictates a shorter pole.
In the 1960s, skiers typically up-unweighted to start their turns. Today, they’re more likely to avoid actively unweighting, and in high-performance turns will flex through the transition between turns to absorb forces that would otherwise launch them off the snow. Competitive mogul skiers are at the extreme end of this spectrum, always deeply flexed at the moment they plant their poles. —Ron LeMaster
In the 1960s, skiers generally stood taller when they planted their poles than they do today — as demonstrated in the photomontage (right) by Michael Rogan, current coach of the PSIA National Alpine Team. So while pole length has gotten shorter, the rule of thumb described in this timeless tip still applies. Photomontage by Ron LeMaster.
This advertisement, from the Winter 1966–1967 issue of LIFE magazine, featured happy
skiers motoring uphill near the Sun Valley Lodge in Idaho.
COMING UP IN FUTURE ISSUES
TO CHINA ON SKIS
In 1980, John Fry, Ned Gillette and Jan Reynolds were among the first Westerners to ski in China, which will host the 2022 Winter Olympics. Here’s what they found 40 years ago.
ALL-NATURAL, ALL-ALPINE
A brief history of gelande jumping—the art and sport of hucking off a hill.
SHORT TURNS
Ski news from around the world, viewed through the lens of history.
RESORTS THEN AND NOW
An intrepid journey to Björgafall, a small ski area in Swedish Lapland
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Extreme ski pioneer Glen Plake: The evolution of a rebel
After a career covering skiing, photographer Paul Ryan has seen it all.
In the 1960s, skiers generally stood taller when they planted their poles than they do today — as demonstrated in the photomontage (right) by Michael Rogan, current coach of the PSIA National Alpine Team. So while pole length has gotten shorter, the rule of thumb described in this timeless tip still applies. Photomontage by Ron LeMaster.
