Nicholas Howe - Prolific ski writer

Nicholas Sheldon Howe, 85, died April 4, 2019, after an extended illness.

One of the most prolific ski writers of his generation, Howe began his skiing career as a member of the Sun Valley Ski Patrol in 1952. He turned to teaching school in the 1960s in New Hampshire, an in 1977 began writing ski racer profiles for Skiing Magazine. In 1981 he became publicist for the U.S. Ski Team, a job in which he wrote features about life on the ski racing circuit that became a fixture in the newspaper Ski Racing. Howe later joined Skiing, where he remained for 16 years, writing a yearly feature on the women’s season and more than 40 profiles of leading international racers. In the mid-1990s Nick began writing for Skiing Heritage (now Skiing History). His profiles on Katy Rodolph, Anderl Molterer, Toni Sailer, Tamara McKinney, Brooks Dodge and others are as entertaining as they are masterfully researched. He earned ISHA’s Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism in 2006.

Nick was born in Greenfield, Mass., and attended the Bement School and Deerfield Academy, where his father taught history. He worked as a hutman in the Appalachian Mountain Club trail system, attended Middlebury College in the 1950s and then took a year off to ski bum in Sun Valley, where he worked his way onto the ski patrol and befriended Dick Buek. In 1960 he graduated from Goddard College. In 1963 he helped to found Franconia College, where he taught philosophy until 1976. A talented banjo and fiddle player, he was featured on several string band albums and in 1965 performed at the Newport Folk Festival.

After leaving Skiing, Nick became a freelance journalist, writing for Yankee, Backpacker, Outside, the Conway Daily Sun and others, on a wide variety of topics. He published a coffee-table book, Barns, in 1998. A second book, Not Without Peril, a chronicle of accidents in the Presidential Range of the White Mountains, was published by the Appalachian Mountain Club in 2009.

He is survived by his brother, John Howe (Mary) of Jackson, N.H., and several nieces, nephews and cousins.

Please consider a donation in Nick’s name to the New England Ski Museum. A reception in Nick’s memory will be held at the Eastern Slope Branch of the New England Ski Museum in North Conway, N.H., on April 27 at 4 p.m.