Dakin, LeMaster, Rietz, Thoren, Upham and Bleiler to be honored August 21.
The Colorado Snowsports Hall of Fame has announced its Class of 2022, to be formally inducted on August 21 at the Gerald. R. Ford Amphitheater in Vail, Colorado. They are:
John Dakin
John Dakin, Sport Builder
John served as spokesman for the organizing committee of Vail’s FIS World Ski Championships in1989, 1999 and 2015. He told Colorado’s story with worldwide impact. His impact is befitting recognition in the Colorado Snowsports Hall of Fame.
Ron LeMaster
Ron LeMaster, Inspirational
Over five decades, Ron brought his engineering and science acumen to the analysis of ski technique, to the benefit of skiers, ski coaches and instructors all over Colorado and the world. His writing and photographic skills, published in national magazines and in his own books, enabled a clear understanding of expert- and racing-level skiing. Colorado-born and educated, LeMaster was widely respected as a racing coach and PSIA advisor.
Paul Rietz
Peter Rietz, Sport Builder
Peter served as special counsel for the National Ski Areas Association for 13 years and was a founding member and past president of the Association of Ski Defense Attorneys, a global group networking amongst attorneys that defend ski areas. Peter was a contributing author on the last two amendments to the Colorado Ski Safety Act and a co-author of “Your Responsibility Code.” He has devoted countless volunteer hours contributing to the safety of employees and guests of ski areas.
Jeannie
Thoren
Jeannie Thoren, Sport Builder
For four decades, Jeannie has worked to perfect skis and boots to help women ski better. In 1986 she built Blizzard's first women-specific ski at the factory in Mittersill, Austria. In 2005, Dynastar/Lange hired her to perfect the Dynastar Exclusive Carve ski, honored as a Gear of the Year selection in 2006-'07. In 2009 she opened Vail’s first women's ski shop. Since 2018 Jeannie has partnered with the Steadman Philippon Research Institute’s Biomotion Lab in Vail to study the effects of ski boots in relation to ACL injury risk in women. Jeannie has elevated the skiing experience for women worldwide.
Chet Upham
Chester (Chet) Upham, Sport Builder
Chet was the owner (with family) and “hands-on” president of Loveland Ski Area for more than fifty years, and the resort remains the longest operating privately owned ski area in the state. Chet’s vision created this iconic mid-sized ski area and influenced the industry through many Loveland alumni who went on to work key jobs at other Colorado resorts. Five of his former employees are Colorado Snowsports Hall of Famers.
Gretchen
Bleiler
In addition, the Colorado Snowsports Hall of Fame is excited to welcome Gretchen Bleiler to the stage at this year’s celebration. Gretchen was inducted as an athlete in 2019 but could not make the induction ceremony. In a professional career that spanned nearly 20 years, Gretchen was the top star in snowboard halfpipe from 2002 through 2010, winning four X Games gold medals, World Superpipe Championships gold and two Vans Triple Crown titles. She dominated qualifying for the 2006 Olympics, going on to win Olympic silver. Following her Olympic medal, she used the platform to speak about her firsthand experiences with climate change around the world.
These films were honored at the 30th Annual ISHA Awards in Sun Valley.
In Pursuit of Soul
Teton Gravity Research
The timing of this 34-minute film is prescient. In a year when skiers across the country have been frustrated by overcrowded and overpriced “corporate” resorts, In Pursuit of Soul portrays ski areas that have chosen to remain independent, relaxed and, perhaps, underdeveloped. These resorts, many of them family owned, seem rooted in an earlier time, one for which many skiers feel deep nostalgia.
The producers interviewed skiers, employees, managers and owners at Saddleback, Maine; Cannon Mountain and Black Mountain, New Hampshire; Bolton Valley and Magic Mountain, Vermont; Berkshire East, Massachusetts; Lost Trail, Montana; Brundage Mountain, Idaho; Snow King, Wyoming; and Mission Ridge and 49° North, Washington.
The typical independent resort is vital to the local economy. Without seasonal employees and visiting skiers, restaurants and retail stores fail, property values sink, and the tax base evaporates. These areas also teach local kids to ski, often for free through public school programs, assuring a new generation of customers and resort employees.
Some of these resorts have closed, then reopened. The challenges are many: snow drought, insurance premiums, capital investment and maintenance costs. They can’t afford to compete with destination resorts on luxurious lodges and high-speed lifts. But they can offer $40 daily lift tickets and affordable season passes. Local skiers forge friendships with resort staff and become loyal supporters, often over two or three generations. While some 60 percent of mom-and-pop ski resorts have disappeared over the past two or three decades, the roughly 400 survivors are beloved by their communities. Their owners are determined to persevere despite 100-hour work weeks.
The independent local ski hill is a sweet concept, and this is a sweet movie.
View at skiinghistory.org/resources/video/pursuit-soul
The Vladimer Sabich story
Spider Lives: The Untold Story of an American Skiing Super Hero
From the Bob Beattie Ski Foundation
An hour-long tribute film, Spider Lives is a journey into the rich history of ski racing. It chronicles Spider Sabich’s career trajectory from racing phenom to Olympian to World Cup victor to pro racing luminary, including the epic season-long battle with Olympic triple-gold-medalist Jean-Claude Killy for the 1973 World Pro Ski title. Previously untold stories recount the talent, charisma, generosity and celebrity of a once-in-a-generation superstar who seemed destined to become an industry icon in his post-competitive life. He was tragically killed in his home in Aspen at age 31.
The film, along with Sabich’s recent induction into the Hall of Fame, places the legendary skier in his rightful place among the pantheon of great American ski champions. According to the producers, the film was created because of the great love Sabich’s friends still hold for him. While financial constraints have made this production rough, it meets ISHA’s criteria for an award because of its oral-history content. A dizzying array of skiing colorfully illuminates not only Sabich’s life but explains the spirit of the decade during which he was at the top of our sport.
The Jake Carpenter story
Dear Rider: The Jake Burton Story
An HBO Documentary
Director: Fernando Villena
Producer: Ben Bryan
This 90-minute documentary recounts the life and work of Jake Burton Carpenter, who turned the Snurfer snow-toy into the billion-dollar snowboarding industry. After bailing on a Wall Street career, Burton began making laminated hardwood snowboards in a backyard shed in 1977. He learned that in order to sell product, he needed to build a sport and set out to do just that by organizing snowboard competitions and signing young athletes.
With wife and partner Donna, he realized that his target market was teenagers. Then, facing institutional inertia at ski resorts, the company cannily seized on the rebellious spirit of a new generation as Burton’s marketing theme. Today, two years after Burton’s death at age 65, Donna runs a company with annual revenue of about $400 million.
Jake and Donna loved shooting home movies. The documentary makes great use of intimate family footage, handheld scenes of early snowboarding and, notably, high-quality audio interviews with Burton himself. What comes through, in addition to his passions for family life and riding, is his focused, territorial approach to commercial competition. This manifested in his feud with Tom Sims, a grudge against mainstream media and pugnacious opposition to letting FIS and the IOC take charge of snowboarding competition. Burton was a creative force of nature on a par with a character like Yvon Chouinard—able to strike out in a new direction, unify a culture and pull millions of customers along for the ride.
The title “Dear Rider” comes from the salutation Burton used at the top of his annual letter to snowboarders, published in the company catalog and read in the film by Woody Harrelson.
Stream Dear Rider on HBO
Arlberg's Hannes Schneider
120 Years Ski Club Arlberg
Blue Danube Media
In German, with English subtitles
Founded by six passionate mountaineers in 1901, the Ski Club Arlberg became the cradle of Alpine ski teaching and racing in Austria.
In 1907, at age 17, Hannes Schneider joined St. Anton’s Hotel Post, and the area’s ski club, as the first professional instructor in town, and after World War I his influence spread worldwide. With Arnold Lunn, Schneider organized the first Arlberg-Kandahar downhill race in 1928, when Alpine skiers still free-heeled on edgeless skis. As ski equipment improved and the sport grew popular, Schneider sent disciples across the globe—particularly to North America—to spread the gospel. When American friends liberated him from a Nazi jail in 1938, Schneider fled to New Hampshire.
This 24-minute film begins with a color portrait of the ski club as it exists today—as a training ground for local kids headed for international competition and as a social center for more than 9,000 skiers around the world. It then paints the history of skiing in Lech, St. Cristophe and St. Anton in broad strokes. Along with old footage of the Schneider days and of champion racer Karl Schranz, the film features interviews with Olympic champions from Trude Jochum-Beiser to Patrick Ortlieb.
See the film at skiinghistory.org/resources/video/120-years-ski-club-arlberg
Your recent article “Lifts that Went Nowhere” (May-June 2022) reminded me of an uphill lift I experienced in 1959. The nearest big mountain close to my home in upper Austria was the Feuerkogel. Once one took the gondola up the mountain you ended up on some snowfields with several huts. I walked about two hours to the Rieder Hütte, named after the town I lived in. After an overnight stay I toured back. But then I approached a lift that reminds me now of a T-bar. The main difference was its size. There was space for about 10 people, lining up next to each other. In front of us was a wooden beam on the ground attached to a cable. We all grabbed the beam, and after a nervous wait an attendant gave the command: los geht’s! (let’s go!) and off we went, similar to the Roca Jack lift in Portillo, Chile. Whoever was not alert was left behind or was being dragged along for a while. After a few hundred meters travel we reached the top. I assume that beam was then dragged back for the next load of daring skiers. I survived it and am still skiing at the age of 81.
Heino Nowak
Manchester, Vermont
Coach Schaeffler
Celebrating Willy
I would like to add to “The Original Rebel” story (May-June 2022) about Willy Schaeffler. The airbags used around towers and other immovable objects on or near the course of the Hahnenkamm in Kitzbühel are today still called Willy Bags. This came about when Willy was setting the course in 1982. He designed the bags after realizing the tower protection had been hay bales, which could freeze at night,
turning them into cement.
During my nearly 30 years in the ski industry with Roffe Skiwear our paths would cross, and we would dine together. His stories were fascinating. He told me he was in front of a firing squad three times. Your story told of one of them. And he told me he loved pork because Dr. Michael DeBakey, the famous heart surgeon, put a pig valve in his heart.
Shortly before his death, I attended a private celebration of life for him at the Fairmont Hotel in Denver. Many of his past University of Denver and U.S. Ski Team members were there. The last speaker was one of his team members and spoke for all of them. He relayed that Willy would make them run up the stairs of the university grandstand with a fellow team member on their backs. If someone failed to do it, the punishment was sucking a raw egg. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out an egg. “Suck this, Willy,” he shouted. It was a solid gold egg!
Wini Jones
Bainbridge Island, Washington
T-bars, not chairlifts.
T-Bar Timeline
I have a correction to make about the Sugarloaf poster in the “Many Gems at Swann’s” (May-June 2022). Those are all T-bars, not chairlifts on the poster. The poster was created later than 1955. The lower of the tandem T-bars was built in the summer of 1956; the upper T-bar was built the next summer. The lower left T-bar was built later.
Jean Luce
Carrabassett Valley, Maine
Correction
The photo of Killington’s customized Skyeship gondola cabin in “Lifts that Went Nowhere” (May-June 2022) was taken by Mark D. Phillips.
Ski Jumping in Washington State A Nordic Tradition
By John W. Lundin
Ski jumping, once Washington’s most popular winter sport, was introduced by Norwegian immigrants in the early 20th century. In the Pacific Northwest, competitive jumping began at Rossland, British Columbia, in 1898. The sport migrated to Spokane’s Browne’s Mountain in 1913 and Seattle’s Queen Anne Hill in 1916, moved to midsummer tournaments on Mount Rainier in 1917 and expanded statewide as new ski clubs formed. Washington tournaments attracted the world’s best jumpers—Birger and Sigmund Ruud, Alf Engen, Sigurd Ulland and Reidar Andersen, among others. In 1941, Torger Tokle set two national distance records there in just three weeks. Regional ski areas hosted national and international championships as well as Olympic tryouts, entertaining spectators until Leavenworth’s last tournament in 1978.
Big-hill ski jumping in the Northwest suffered a major blow when the Milwaukee Road Ski Bowl at Hyak burned down in 1949 and was not rebuilt. By the 1970s, public interest had faded and the Northwest’s historic facilities were all dismantled. Leavenworth’s really big jump was the last to go. Unsustainable maintenance and insurance costs contributed to the demise.
Seattle-based lawyer, historian and award-winning author John W. Lundin re-creates the excitement of this nearly forgotten ski jumping heritage. The book was written in conjunction with an exhibit put together by the National Nordic Museum and the Washington State Ski and Snowboard Museum. This is the author’s third ISHA Skade Award: He was honored in 2018 for Early Skiing on Snoqualmie Pass and in 2021 for Skiing Sun Valley: From the Union Pacific to the Holdings. –Seth Masia
Ski Jumping in Washington State: A Nordic Tradition by John W. Lundin, History Press, 226 pages. $32.99 hardbound, $23.99 softcover.
ISHA’s 30th Annual Awards Banquet, held March 23 at the Sun Valley Inn, welcomed ski historians from Canada, the United Kingdom and Austria, plus New England, Colorado, Wyoming, Seattle and California. Photos by David Moulton.
Jeff Leich with Rick
Moulton.
Jeff Leich (left), retiring executive director of the New England Ski Museum, received a Lifetime Achievement Award for research, writing and museum stewardship.
Lowell Skoog with
Seth Masia
Lowell Skoog received his second ISHA Award from ISHA President Seth Masia. This award is for Written in the Snows: Across Time on Skis in the Pacific Northwest.
Ingrid Christophersen
Ingrid Christophersen received an Ullr Award for To Heaven’s Heights: An Anthology of Skiing in Literature. A retired ski coach and FIS delegate, she travelled from her farm near Brighton, England. ISHA Chairman Rick Moulton presents the trophy.
Chic Scott
Mountaineer Chic Scott won a Skade Award, plus the first John Fry Award for Excellence, for his book Mount Assiniboine: The Story. He travelled from Banff, Alberta.
Knaus, Ravanelli
Producer Marcus Knaus and screenwriter Allesandra Ravanelli received an award for their film 120 Years Ski Club Arlberg. They travelled 5,500 miles from Vienna to join us. Their next project: a video biography of Hannes Schneider.
Vintage fashions. Bernie Weichsel photo
Before the awards banquet, ISHA Vice President Wini Jones staged a raucous vintage fashion show. Participants included (left to right) Bill Sanesh, Terri Smith, Wini Jones, Bryce James, Dave Valenti, Taylor Valenti, Susan Crist, Juli Webb and James Sunstad. Mike Vowels in front. Not shown: Janet White.
News from the New England Ski Museum, U.S. Hall of Fame and Bob Beattie Foundation.
25th Running of the Hannes Schneider Meister Cup Race
After a year’s hiatus due to Covid, the Hannes Schneider Meister Cup Race returned to Cranmore Mountain Resort in North Conway, New Hampshire, on March 4 to 6. After a Friday evening reception and dinner, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu led Saturday’s Opening Ceremony by honoring Cranmore owner Brian Fairbank, who would be inducted into the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame that evening at the OMNI Mount Washington Hotel. There followed two runs of a dual GS format team competition, a silent auction, a fashion show featuring vintage skiwear, an awards ceremony and a Sunday morning breakfast with ski history presentation—were held in superb weather and snow conditions.
Twenty-eight teams of five competed, as well as a handful of individuals whose teams did not fill up. In tribute to the 10th Mountain Division, six of those teams were active-duty or retired military teams trained in mountain operations. The race was founded in 1996 as a benefit for the New England Ski Museum. —Jeff Leich
(Photo above: The team from Eastern Mountain Sports won the 2022 edition of the Schneider Meister Cup race. Left to right: Marcus Schneider, Kamden Burke (also fastest man in the race), Carter Tasker, Trevor Tasker, Keegan Burke, Tim Simoneau, Hannes Schneider. Fastest woman was Olympian Leanne Smith. Marcus and Hannes are great-grandsons of Arlberg School founder Hannes Schneider.)
Hall of Fame Bretton Woods Induction
The U.S. Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame on March 5 inducted Seth Wescott, Barbara Alley Simon, Howard Peterson, Holly Flanders, Brian Fairbank and Kristean Porter. Also inducted was Sherman Poppen (deceased).
Art Clay and Ben Finley. Tyler Macleod
photo.
Hall of fame Sun Valley Induction
On March 26, the Hall of Fame inducted Hank Tauber, Greg Stump, Johnny Spillane, James Niehues, Kit DesLauriers, Art Clay and Ben Finley and Scott Brooksbank. Bobby Burns was also inducted.
(Photo left) At Sun Valley, Art Clay (left) and Ben Finley were inducted into the Hall of Fame, Class of 2019. In 1973, the duo organized a holiday in Aspen for 13 Black ski clubs; the following year they founded the National Brotherhood of Skiers, which today coordinates 54 ski clubs with more than 3,500 members. The NBS Summit drew 1,200 skiers to Snowmass, February 5-12, 2022.
Spider Sabich induction at Snowmass
Right: The Hall of Fame and Bob Beattie Foundation staged a special induction ceremony on April 8 for Spider Sabich. Left to right: Justin Koski intones the official induction, while Spider’s daughter Missy Greis waits to receive the Hall of Fame Medal of Honor from Mike Hundert. The evening featured a showing of the limited-release one-hour film Spider Lives!, produced by the Bob Beattie Foundation.
Celebrate Winter An Olympian’s Stories of a Life in Nordic Skiing
By John Morton
A Middlebury College graduate and Vietnam War veteran, John Morton participated in seven Olympics, twice as an athlete for the U.S. Biathlon Team. He served as chief of course for Biathlon events at the Salt Lake City Olympics, and for 11 years was head coach for the Dartmouth College Ski Team. In 1989 he founded Morton Trails, designing cross-country trail systems.
Much of this book is taken from Morty’s radio broadcasts for Vermont Public Radio. The chapters cover a range of topics, elucidating the history of American Nordic skiing in the 1970s and ’80s. Celebrate Winter is an encyclopedia of sorts. Morty writes of his adventures coaching and acting as a team leader at Olympic Games and World Championships. Much of this stuff is hilarious, including “Victory in the Sauna” and “The Joys of Roller Skiing,” while other chapters convey key aspects of cross-country, such as the “The Art and Magic of Waxing Cross-Country Skis.”
Morty is at his best when he waxes philosophical. Few authors describe so well the benefits of international competition. He writes about his friendship with the top Russian biathlete, Alexander Tikhonov. Morty raised money from his athletes to buy a U.S. rifle (of all things!) for his Russian friend. I, too, was very friendly with the Russians on their XC and Nordic combined teams, and even helped them out with some waxing needs. I’m sure we were both criticized by our conservative friends, but Morty covers the idea of friendship among athletes from different countries.
It’s a wonder that U.S. skiers ever moved ahead in the results during these years. “Nordies” had no full-time paid staff. Coaches were assigned as needed at the Olympics or the World Championships, given a plane ticket and sent on their way. Most of the money went to Alpine. I was the cross-country coach for the U.S. Ski Team during this period, and I can corroborate or even expand on Morty’s text.
This is a must-read for skiers of any sort. And you can find out what Morty has been doing all this time. –John Caldwell
Celebrate Winter: An Olympian’s Stories of a Life in Nordic Skiing, by John Morton. Independently published. 6 x 9 inches, 260 pages. Paperback $14.95 (Kindle edition $2.99).
By Lowell Skoog
Written in the Snows Across Time on Skis in the Pacific Northwest
By Lowell Skoog
Written in the Snows is a comprehensive history of skiing—mainly of ski mountaineering—in the Northwest. Well-researched and sustained by a gripping narrative, the book takes the reader on an exhilarating ride as the backcountry skiing reaches ever higher elevations and levels of difficulties to the point where even the best practitioners are forced to recognize their limits.
Surmounted by Mt. Rainier, the high peaks of the Cascades trapped every drop of moisture brought by prevailing winds off the Gulf of Alaska. The profound snowfall was impassable in winter, until, in 1887, the Northern Pacific Railroad crossed Stampede Pass. The Great Northern crossed Stevens Pass in 1893, and the Milwaukee Railroad crossed Snoqualmie Pass in 1909. Seattle-area skiers, rich with Scandinavian immigrants, quickly pioneered ski trails branching off the rail lines, building small hotels and ski cabins in promising high meadows. In 1906, 151 women and men chartered The Mountaineers. The club has organized outings, winter and summer, ever since and served as a locus for jumping tournaments, racing, and exploratory expeditions.
Lowell Skoog, an ardent practitioner of high-altitude, self-propelled skiing, brings dozens of key events to vivid life, going so far as to replicate, on his own and with friends, some of the pioneering routes and early races. He explains how skiing has been shaped by larger social trends, including immigration, the Great Depression, war, economic growth, conservation and the media, and recounts the adventures of local characters like Milnor Roberts, Olga Bolstad, Hans Otto Giese, Bill Maxwell, Gretchen Kunigk, Don Fraser and John Woodward.
There are excellent photo illustrations throughout and a useful appendix covering ski mountaineering highlights, plus a very useful glossary, valuable listings of references and resources, and a superb index.
As a skier, climber, writer and photographer, Skoog has been a keen observer of Northwest mountaineering since the 1970s. He is the creator of the Alpenglow Gallery and founder of the Northwest Mountaineering Journal, websites that celebrate local mountain culture, and he was a key member of the team that launched the Washington State Ski and Snowboard Museum. Skoog is the chairman of The Mountaineers History and Library committee. He lives in Seattle.
This is the author’s second ISHA Award. He won the 2010 ISHA Cyber Award for alpenglow.org. –Seth Masia
Written in the Snows: Across Time on Skis in the Pacific Northwest, by Lowell Skoog. Mountaineers Books, 7 x 9 inches, 336 pages. Paperback $29.95 (Kindle edition $14.99)
Dan Egan & Eric Wilbur
Thirty Years in a White Haze Dan Egan’s Story of Worldwide Adventure and the Evolution of Extreme Skiing
By Dan Egan & Eric Wilbur
Dan Egan’s autobiography is a colorful inside look at the evolution of “extreme” skiing into what we now call big-mountain free-skiing. Dan was a multi-talented athlete with a good business head. Emerging from a large, devout yet unruly Catholic family, he found success in skiing, soccer and sailing. But sports, and the related party scenes, interfered with academics. It took a sporadically heroic effort of self-discipline to complete a college degree in marketing.
After joining his older brother John as a star of Eric Perlman and Warren Miller films, Egan’s talent for marketing enabled him to line up lucrative sponsorships. He seized on emerging VCR technology to become a video-distribution mogul as president of Egan Entertainment Network. Twenty-five years later, after digital technology made VCR distribution obsolete, Dan had to reinvent himself. He went on to careers in ski resort management and marketing; coaching skiing; soccer and sailing; journalism; and consulting on a wide range of video and sponsorship projects in skiing and sailing.
Sibling rivalry was brought to a crisis in 1990, after Dan survived a fatal 38-hour storm high on 18,500-foot Mt. Elbrus in the Russian Caucasus. The brothers went on to collaborate on many more projects, including their X-Treme ski clinics held across North America, and in Chamonix, Val d’Isère and other European destinations. Dan and John Egan were elected to the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame in 2016.
Co-author Eric Wilbur is a journalist who has been covering the New England sports, travel and skiing scenes for nearly three decades. His written work has appeared in the Boston Globe, New England Ski Journal, Boston.com, Boston Metro, and various other publications. He fell in love with skiing at an early age, a dedication to the sport that only increased upon moving to Vermont during his college years. He lives with his wife and three children in the Boston area. This is his first book. –SM
Thirty Years in a White Haze: Dan Egan’s Story of Worldwide Adventure and the Evolution of Extreme Skiing, by Dan Egan & Eric Wilbur. Degan Media, Inc., 6 x 9”, 418 pages, paperback. $39.95 (Kindle edition $9.99)
By John Lundin
Ski Jumping in Washington State A Nordic Tradition
By John W. Lundin
Ski jumping, once Washington’s most popular winter sport, was introduced by Norwegian immigrants in the early 20th century. In the Pacific Northwest, competitive jumping began at Rossland, British Columbia, in 1898. The sport migrated to Spokane’s Browne’s Mountain in 1913 and Seattle’s Queen Anne Hill in 1916, moved to midsummer tournaments on Mount Rainier in 1917 and expanded statewide as new ski clubs formed. Washington tournaments attracted the world’s best jumpers—Birger and Sigmund Ruud, Alf Engen, Sigurd Ulland and Reidar Andersen, among others. In 1941, Torger Tokle set two national distance records there in just three weeks. Regional ski areas hosted national and international championships as well as Olympic tryouts, entertaining spectators until Leavenworth’s last tournament in 1978.
Big-hill ski jumping in the Northwest suffered a major blow when the Milwaukee Road Ski Bowl at Hyak burned down in 1949 and was not rebuilt. By the 1970s, public interest had faded and the Northwest’s historic facilities were all dismantled. Leavenworth’s really big jump was the last to go. Unsustainable maintenance and insurance costs contributed to the demise.
Seattle-based lawyer, historian and award-winning author John W. Lundin re-creates the excitement of this nearly forgotten ski jumping heritage. The book was written in conjunction with an exhibit put together by the National Nordic Museum and the Washington State Ski and Snowboard Museum. This is the author’s third ISHA Skade Award: He was honored in 2018 for Early Skiing on Snoqualmie Pass and in 2021 for Skiing Sun Valley: From the Union Pacific to the Holdings. –SM
Ski Jumping in Washington State: A Nordic Tradition by John W. Lundin, History Press, 226 pages. $32.99 hardbound, $23.99 softcover.
The November–December 2021 issue’s “Whatever Happened To” explored the ruade technique, developed in France in the 1940s and introduced to the U.S. by Emile Allais. There is an interesting story about Allais, ruade and Sun Valley.
(Photo above: Emile Allais (second from left) at Squaw Valley, 1949, with instructors Dodie Post, Warren Miller, Charlie Cole and Alfred Hauser. Courtesy Palisades Tahoe.)
In 1947, Otto Lang became head of the Sun Valley Ski School. In his autobiography, A Bird of Passage, Lang said it was time to revitalize the ski school and it needed “a celebrity with the charisma of a superior ski racer who could also teach.” In 1948, he brought in four-time world champion and Olympic medalist Allais, famous for devising the French direct-to-parallel teaching technique, in opposition to the stem-based Arlberg system that was the mainstay of the Sun Valley school. Hannes Schneider, godfather of Arlberg, approved the hire, since “only time will tell which of the techniques deserved to last.” Allais worked out well and was a popular instructor.
Lang described ruade as “a christiania with the skis held parallel, and in order to initiate the change of direction, one lifted the tail ends of both skis off the snow and started the turn in midair to head the skis in the opposite direction.” He found it “a physically taxing maneuver, but very useful under certain conditions, such as a crusted or deeply rutted snow surface. The sight of a bunch of skiers doing the ruade reminded me of a flock of bunny rabbits hopping around and frolicking in the snow.”
That spring, Allais was hired to launch the Squaw Valley Ski School. When Lang saw Allais years later, he asked “What about ruade?” Allais replied, “Extinct as the dodo bird.”
John W. Lundin
Seattle, Washington
Cover Blurb Blunder
Ingrid Christophersen has delivered a valuable anthology to the international skiing community with To Heaven’s Heights. She deserves the recognition of ISHA’s Ullr Award for her extensive research and translation achievement and this addition to the skiing literature canon.
Readers of Skiing History also should know that the back cover of the volume highlights an entry by Leni Riefenstahl, the German filmmaker best known for glorifying Hitler and the Nazi regime. The 438-page volume contains entries from 100-plus authors. Singling out Riefenstahl for the back cover suggests a naivety or tone-deafness, especially during this time of growing anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism. To the author’s and publisher’s credit, the Riefenstahl reference, included in the book’s early publicity materials, was removed from subsequent promotional materials when the issue was brought to their attention. It remains on the back cover.
Jon Weisberg
SeniorsSkiing.com
Salt Lake City, Utah
Correction
Due to an editing error, on page 20 of “The Legacy of Spider Sabich” (March-April 2022), the site of Spider’s first WPS race—and victory—was misidentified. The race was held at Buffalo, New York, not Hunter Mountain. A caption on page 22 misidentified the woman in the photo. It’s Missy Greis, Spider’s daughter, not her mother Dede Brinkman.
