Lives

Burton Snowboards founder

Jake Burton Carpenter
Passing Date: November 20, 2019

Jake Burton Carpenter, founder of Burton Snowboards and a key early promoter of the sport, died November 20, 2019, in Burlington, Vermont. Cause of death was complications from testicular cancer, for which he was first treated in 2011.   To the snowboarding culture, Carpenter shares founding-father...

Columbia Sportswear president

Gert Boyle
Passing Date: November 3, 2019

Gert Boyle, the Holocaust refugee who built Columbia Sportwear into a giant corporation, died November 3 in Portland, Oregon. She was 95 years old. Born Gertrude Lamfrom in Augsburg, Germany, she was brought to the United States at age 13, in 1937, when her family fled Nazi Germany. Her father...

Modernized Kitzbühel's ski school

Karl Koller
Passing Date: October 26, 2019

Karl Koller, the 1946 Hahnenkamm combined champion who went on to revolutionize ski instruction for kids and adult beginner, died October 26 in his home town, Kitzbühel. He turned 100 last April. (For a full biography, see the January-February 2019 issue of Skiing History) Koller grew up in...

Alpinist, extreme skier

Davo Karničar
Passing Date: September 16, 2019

Davorin Karničar, Slovenian alpinist and the first person to complete a ski descent from the summit of Everest, died September 16 in a tree-cutting accident, at age 56. Karničar grew up climbing and skiing with his father in the mountains around Jezersko, an alpine village a few miles from Slovenia...

Iconic cross-country competitor, pioneer and promoter

Joe Pete Wilson
Passing Date: September 13, 2019

Joseph Peter (“Joe Pete”) Wilson, Sr., an iconic figure in winter recreation, died September 13, 2019, in Lake Placid, New York. He was 84. He’ll be remembered as a tireless cross-country skiing promoter and longtime proprietor of the Adirondack’s Bark Eater Inn. Born and raised in Lake Placid,...

Jackson Hole ski pioneer

Bill Saunders
Passing Date: September 13, 2019

William Dale Saunders, a cattle rancher who drove the development of ski racing in Jackson, Wyoming, died September 13 after a traffic accident near his home in Bondurant. He was 93. Born on a ranch in Jackson, Saunders grew up skiing the local hills. As a teen he was a rodeo cowboy, worked on...

Six-time Olympic biathlon medalist

Halvard Hanevold
Passing Date: September 3, 2019

Halvard Hanevold died September 3, 2019, at age 49, at home in Asker, a town on the west bank of the Oslo Fjord. In his competitive career he won six medals in the Winter Olympics, three of them gold (1998 Nagano, 2002 Salt Lake City, and 2010 Vancouver). In the Biathlon World Championships, he won...

Pioneering knee surgeon, ski team doc

John Feagin, MD
Passing Date: September 1, 2019

Dr. John Feagin, a pioneer of arthroscopic knee surgery who served as U.S. Ski Team physician during the 1992 Albertville Olympics, died September 1 at his home in Jackson, Wyoming, at age 85. A 1955 graduate of West Point, Feagin served two years as an artillery officer, then entered Duke...

10th Mountain vet, Vail volunteer

Sandy Treat, Jr.
Passing Date: September 1, 2019

Sanford Morris “Sandy” Treat Jr. died at Vail Health Medical Center September 1, at age 96. Raised in New York City, Treat learned to ski during winter vacations at Lake Placid. At Deerfield Academy he became fluent in Spanish and French, and raced on the first ski team. He was a freshman on the...

Olympic bronze medalist

Blanca Fernández Ochoa
Passing Date: August 24, 2019

Blanca Fernández Ochoa, bronze medalist in slalom at the 1992 Albertville Olympics, died August 24 in the mountains near Madrid, at age 56. Ochoa grew up in a family of ski racers, children of a ski school director. Five of the kids became Olympians, and her oldest brother Francisco won slalom gold...