Monday, March 22, 2010

Sixty-five Years on Skis

March 22, 2010

Note from Old Lyme                                                                             Sydney M. Williams

Sixty-five Years on Skis
“Skiing is a dance and the mountain always leads.”
Author unknown

In my barn in Old lyme hang a pair of Stein Eriksens’, skis that were given to me when I turned fifteen in 1956. At the time, they were state-of-the-art with a black and white laminated top and multi-grooved base. At 214 centimeters, they are roughly a third longer than the skis I use today. The toe binding had a clasp that when pushed forward levered your boot back; the heels were held down by a six foot leather strap (called a long thong) anchored to the base of the ski that wrapped around your boot to hold it firmly in place. The bindings, for obvious reasons, were called ‘bear traps’. The skis cost my parents $85; with the DJIA roughly 20 times higher than it was that January, the comparable price today would be about $1700.
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My first skis appeared on Christmas 1944. With my father headed to Italy with the 10th Mountain Division, my mother, who was not a skier, decided the gift was appropriate. She had moved back from New Hampshire to her parents’ home in East River, Connecticut; fortunately there was enough snow on the ground that I was able to walk around; so began a lifetime love affair with the sport.

After the War and back in Peterborough, New Hampshire my father took my sister, brother and me to Whit’s Tow. It was located just north of the village on the road on which we lived – Middle Hancock Road. Mr. Whitcomb had established a rope tow that skiers gripped and which then carried them four or five hundred feet to a point on the edge of the Peterborough Golf Club. The rope ascended what seemed a steep pitch and then flattened as it neared the top. The rope became very heavy as it went over the crest and was ideal for snapping off girls (or our teachers) who might be riding behind. The idea was, once over the crest, to swing out to the left several feet and let the rope go. It snaked back sinuously making it almost impossible, for those hanging on behind, to remain upright. By the time the victims had picked themselves up, we were back at the bottom of the hill, our faces angelic, as we gripped the rope for the next trip.

One of my earliest memories of skiing at Whit’s was in the winter of 1946 or ’47. A smaller, children’s tow carried skiers about fifty feet up a small slope. That rope tow was powered by a Model A Ford engine housed in a shed located at the bottom of the hill. I ran into the shed, broke off the tip of my ski and, in tears, went to find my father. I found him, and shortly thereafter the shed housing the engine was moved to the top of the rope tow.

While skiers today would thumb their nose at Whit’s, the hill offered an opportunity to learn to ski.

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Nick Paumgarten, in a piece entitled “The Ski Gods” (The New Yorker, March 15, 2010) writes that archeological finds in Norway indicate that skiing goes back thousands of years: “Skis predate the wheel; we ripped before we rolled,” he wrote. In America, skiing was introduced early in the Twentieth Century. One of the early promoters was the Dartmouth Outing Club, founded in 1909. During the next ten years, Dartmouth men skied forty miles to Mt Moosilauke, a 4802 foot peak, where the college owns 4600 acres (about a third of the mountain above 2000 feet.) They climbed Mt. Washington and, with Carl Shumway as the President of the D.O.C., were the first on skis into Tuckerman’s Ravine on March 9, 1913. The 1920s saw more skiers take up the sport, including Al Sise of Wellesley, MA (formerly of Vermont), whose daughter, Nancy, I once raced. Al Sise had the longest racing career on record, from 1928-1981. A “Snow Train” would leave Boston’s North Station, taking skiers to North Conway, NH. In the very early 1930s, my father, then in college, could take an early morning train, ski on Mt. Washington, and return the same day, or the next, in time for a hearty dinner at Durgin Park. The number of skiers expanded during the 1930s, but given the depressed economy it remained a “rich man’s” sport. Those two decades, between the end of World War I and the start of World War II, saw a number of Europeans, like Austrians Hannes Schneider and Toni Matt, escape the Nazis and come to this Country.

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The “big” hill near Peterborough was Temple Mountain, near the town line with Temple. This area had perhaps twice the vertical drop as Whit’s and was owned and operated by Charlie Beebe, a classmate of my father’s from Harvard. It was there, on New Year’s Eve 1961, that my sister, Mary, introduced me to Caroline, the girl who would become my wife.

It was also at Temple that I first used my Stein Eriksen’s. Eriksen was born in Norway in 1927 and won a gold medal in giant slalom at the 1952 Olympics, becoming the first skier not from the Alps to win gold in the Olympics. Following the Olympics he moved to the United States and is director of skiing at the Deer Valley Resort and host of the Stein Eriksen Lodge. At the age of 83, he continues to ski.

The heavy, black skis with their distinctive four white grooves on top – two in front and two behind – were fast and the envy of my friends. My first races were on those skis and then, in 1958, on a pair of Kästles. Anton Kästle made his first pair of skis in 1924 in Austria; by the mid 1950s they became the favored ski of those on the World Tour and, in fact, every member of the 1956 U.S. Olympic ski team used Kästles.

My Kästles Kombinations, with their marker bindings, also hang in my barn, the now-frayed leather long thongs still attached. These were the skis I used in the mid 1950s during a down hill race on Mount Sunapee’s Flying Goose. Sunapee is a state-owned property about 40 miles north of Peterborough and the race was one in a series for those competing in the Eastern Juniors. The area was served by a single chairlift; however, as racers we had to walk up the course, carrying our skis so as to better learn its turns and its contours. It was during this hike up that I realized my racing career would be short; for discretion, in the face of fear, is a motto to which I adhere. In those days a downhill race consisted of a starting point and a finish gate. There were no control gates. The fastest skier down the hill won. As we walked up the Flying Goose, I noted some of the boys marking trees, so they could cut corners by skiing through the woods. I thought they were crazy and I have no memory as to who won the race, other than it sure wasn’t me.

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It was also about this time that my father took my brother Frank and me to Tuckerman’s Ravine on Mt. Washington, a place my father first skied in the late 1920s. The Lodge at Pinkham Notch, which is still there, now designated the Joe Dodge Lodge – somewhat enlarged, but looking pretty much the same – is where we stayed. At that time, Joe Dodge was the proprietor. His son, Brooks, skied for Dartmouth and in the 1956 Olympics. The base of the Ravine is about two and a half miles up from Pinkham Notch. We put seal skins on the bottoms of our skis; the fur reversed allowing one to glide forward, but preventing the skis from sliding back. Releasing the cable bindings in those days allowed one to lift one’s heel making the ascension easier. The climb up took a couple of hours.

My first view of Tuckerman’s was breathtaking. It is difficult to imagine its enormity. It resembles a third of a tea cup. One climbs over the “little headwall” and into the bowl, with no trees and a couple of large rocks, one of which, on the right, was known as the “lunch rock”. Facing the Ravine, on the right is Lion’s Head Trail; on the left is Boot Spur. It is about a mile from one side to the other. The snow reaches depths of about one hundred feet.

The air was crisp and cool, the sky blue. Distant skiers appeared as black specks against the snow-white background. The slope begins gradually before steepening sharply as it terminates at the “lip”. Walking up, carrying your skis, stretching out your arm you touch the slope before you. While I never skied over the lip of the Headwall (I climbed to a point just under it), I could see the two rocks you had to avoid when skiing off the top. One of America’s most famous early races was called the Inferno; it went from the top of Mt. Washington to the Pinkham Notch Lodge, a distance of eight miles. And the most famous of the Inferno races occurred in 1939 when Tony Matt, an Austrian skier who in poor visibility schussed the Headwall. His time was just over six and a half minutes, eclipsing the skier who placed second by six minutes. It has been estimated that he must have hit speeds of 85 miles per hour, as he came over the Headwall and down the Ravine – an unbelievable feat in those days and on that equipment.

We had time for three runs on the Headwall, eating a packed lunch on “lunch rock” before heading back down. The next day, across Pinkham Notch, we climbed Wild Cat Trail, which had been cut out by the CCC in 1933. Another classmate of my father, Bob Livermore, who in 1931 had been the first to ski over the Lip of Tuckerman’s ravine, won the first race down its slope in 1934. Twenty-eight years later, on March 12 1962, my wife broke her leg on the mountain, as she and I headed down on our first (and last) run of the day – her last time on downhill skis.

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Despite my mediocre performance racing in the Eastern Junior races, I joined the ski team at Williston Academy in 1956, becoming its captain in my second year. The school had a ski area on the west slope of Mt. Tom serviced by a rope tow. We had to participate in all four disciplines – downhill, slalom, cross country and jumping. I liked downhill and slalom. Cross country was too much like work. Jumping, however, was totally new to me. The skis were longer, wider and heavier than regular skis, with four or five grooves on the bottom side for stabilization. The school had a small, perhaps twenty meter, jump, reached by climbing a steep pitch, down which you slid, then over a man-made lip, landing on a second steep slope. My first time down I attempted to jump, sprang forward at the edge of the jump, somersaulted and landed on the back of my neck. I slid down the hill in frustration and chagrin, but unhurt. The next time I just coasted off the jump. Fortunately, during my three years at the school, we never had to jump in competition.

Most of our meets were held at similar, skier-challenged and snow-deprived schools. I remember one multi-school meet on Mt. Greylock in Williamstown, MA. It was snowing and visibility was poor. I was slotted to be the first racer down. One of the fore-runners had a bad accident in the descent and the race was called. Fortunately the young man was not seriously hurt; relieved, I skied to the bottom.

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During those same years – mid to late 1950s – my father began taking us further afield – day trips to Sunapee, Hogback and Mt. Snow and overnight ones to Stowe, Mad River Glen and Cannon. Hogback, which opened in 1946, was unusual in that the car park was midway up the slope, so you skied down to buy your ticket and at the end of the day you took the T-Bar up and skied back to the car. On warm spring days, when sap from maple trees flowed, maple taffy served on a bed of snow was available to those waiting in line. Mt. Snow was a more recent ski resort. Walter Schoenknecht, a tall, slope-shouldered man, came to Vermont about 1955 from Mohawk Mountain in Connecticut. When we first went there Mr. Schoenknecht was always around, asking how everybody was; he knew us by name. Since my father usually had four to six children in tow, we were a memorable and recognizable sight.

Stowe was exciting and glamorous with people arriving from all over the east coast. A single chair served Mt. Mansfield; so on very nice days, during holiday weekends, the wait in line could take up to an hour. But the length and steepness of the trails justified the wait. At the top was the Octagon serving overpriced $0.50 hamburgers. The Nose Dive, with its seven turns, was the oldest, trickiest and best known trail. It started slightly above the top of the lift and was narrow and steep. On icy days it was treacherous. I remember once, on a very icy day, watching, wonderstruck, as Christian Pravda, a dual medalist in the 1952 Olympics, swooped down like a giant bird. The other trail at Stowe that I remember well was the National, steep and wide. Once on the National, with visibility so poor that you could only see a few feet up or down the slope, out of the fog a skier appeared – and then disappeared like a phantom. It was Marvin Moriarty, a member of the 1956 U.S. Olympic team. On another trip, again on the National, my father discovered the hard way he needed new boots. He had skied for years in boots and on skis recovered from German alpine troops after the war. For years, as children, we had been growing increasingly embarrassed by his brown leather ski boots. So when he fell, his boot peeling from the sole, we cheered.

Mad River is (and was) a skier’s mountain (“ski it, if you can” is still their motto), a place with no frills. We usually stayed at a place called Tucker Hill Lodge, built, owned and run by another classmate of my father, Franny Martin. (As I write, it seems as if the Harvard class of 1932 was all over the Northeast at the time!) In those days, Mad River conducted an annual family ski race. The winning family was based on times, but more importantly on the number of combinations. With the exception of mother combinations, we had them all – father-son, father-daughter, sister-sister, brother-brother, and sister-brother. A Vermont family, whose name I have forgotten, had more combinations and for years were winners of the race. I remember the great satisfaction when we finally won and then kept the prize for the next year or so.

We went to Cannon Mountain a few times, staying in Franconia with the Hannah’s. A second cousin of my father, Pauline White, had married one of skiing’s legends, Seldon Hannah. Seldon Hannah, who skied for Dartmouth in the early 1930s, had been named to the 1940 Olympic team, the games which were cancelled because of the war. Pauline was also a very accomplished skier and an Olympic prospect, but contracted polio around 1940 and was confined to a wheel chair for the rest of her long life. Polly’s Folly, one of the two steepest trails at Cannon, was named in her honor. Their daughter, Joan, skied in the 1960 Olympics at Squaw Valley and in the 1964 Olympics at Innsbruck.

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By the mid 1960s, while I continued to ski every year, I did so less frequently. Marriage to a non-skier, children, and a tough stock market consumed the rest of the 1960s and much of the 1970s. Every year I would ski somewhere, generally in New Hampshire with family, once or twice out west. It wasn’t until the later 1980s and early 1990s that I started skiing more regularly; the past several years I have skied between fifteen and twenty days, half the time out west. A change in equipment and skiing in the west have added new dimensions. New skis are shorter and more user-friendly, clothing is warmer, the bindings are easier to put on and safer, as are helmets, and the slopes in the west have more powder and the bowls, on sunny days, are Nirvana.

For the past several years I have taken, annually, a couple of trips to Vail with friends, both old and new. These trips mean a lot, not only because of the skiing, but also because of the camaraderie. Ten or eleven months go by between visits, yet conversation restarts remind me of the opening line from Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table, “I was going to say, when I was interrupted…” We ski hard; we laugh hard and we wine and dine with great gusto.

Twenty or so years ago, one of my siblings came up with the idea of a family ski day, at Sunapee, the first major ski area we were taken to as children. It has become a wonderful tradition, for a family, not widely scattered from a geographical perspective, but ones whose lives have taken different paths. We gather as the children of our father, talking of days which each year are more distant, of a time when our responsibilities were none, other than how many runs we could make, and of a time when the skiing community was much smaller and more intimate. Our skiing reunions have, themselves, now provided great memories. None of us who were there will ever forget the moment in 1996 when my older sister, Mary, who five years earlier had been diagnosed with breast cancer which then metastasized to her bones, skiing down Hanson Chase caught air as she crossed a cat walk. Those of us who saw her were concerned that her bones, grown fragile with cancer, would break if she fell. However, she landed on her feet, skied to the bottom and with the exhilaration of an excited child, turned breathlessly toward us, “Did you see me take air?!”

In the past three years, my grandchildren have begun learning to ski. I watch with swelling pride, in their developing improvement, as they ski down slopes with élan and determination. They are a marvel to witness.

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A feature of skiing, perhaps unique in the sporting world, is that it is something one can do alone (although wiser with a friend) and one can do for many years. This has been my last winter skiing as a sextogenarian; next January I turn 70; so age is something I do think about. My skiing days will end when they end, but the memories I have accumulated will always be with me: hot chocolate and a doughnut in the warming hut at Whit’s; a warm, spring day at Temple, skiing in shirt sleeves. Whenever I ski down the Lynx at Sunapee, in my mind’s eye I watch my father in his inimitable style, skiing while standing erect; I recall gate keeping at a veteran’s race at Waterville Valley and his coming down the course, smoke curling from a pipe clenched in his teeth; entering the old lodge at the base of Sunapee, I see him speaking to other men who wear the insignia of the 10th Mountain. I see some of the giants, skiing pioneers like Joe Dodge, Seldon Hannah, Bob Livermore and Al Sise, all of whom I met.

I think of the heaviness of rope tows on warm wet days and the chill when riding a single chair on a very cold day with a heavy blanket draped across my lap. I recall my early teens and the evening chore of replacing steel edges after a long day’s skiing, and the wise-cracking on the bus ride back to Williston after a practice on Mt. Tom, with our coach, David Stevens. I remember gliding on my cross country skis across the Back River in front of my house and over the marsh on a cold February day, and dropping into Genghis Kahn at Vail and skiing down the Slot, also at Vail, with powder up to my chest.

Seal skins, bamboo poles with baskets ten inches across, skijoring behind a horse on Middle Hancock Road, holding a rope as a “cat” pulled us up Pack Monadnock are all memories I cherish. Those memories stretch back to that Christmas of 1944, in East River, Connecticut walking around on my first pair of skis, and they reach forward to three weeks ago, skiing with two granddaughters at Ski Sundown in northern Connecticut.

In that March issue of The New Yorker, Nick Paumgarten wrote of Fridtjof Nansen, a Norwegian who crossed Greenland on skis in 1888. He quotes Nansen: “it is better to go skiing and think of God than to go to church and think of sport.” My sentiments exactly.

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