Hall of Fame ski historian, journalist and editor

Hall of Famer Morten Lund, acclaimed ski journalist and skiing historian, died on December 21, 2018 at his home in Accord, New York , at 92. He had a distinguished writing and editing career spanning six decades at Sports Illustrated, SKI, Snow Country and as co-founder and editor of Skiing Heritage (now Skiing History, the official journal of the nonprofit International Skiing History Association).

The son of Norwegian immigrant parents, Anton M. and Helga Lund, he was raised in Augusta, where his parents instilled in him a love for the water and for skiing from an early age. Lund attended Augusta’s Cony High School, where he lettered in three sports, football, basketball and track, graduating in 1945 as class salutatorian. After serving a year in the Navy at the end of World War II, he entered Bowdoin College, graduating in 1950, A.B. cum laude, and went on to Harvard Law School before deciding to return to his first loves, skiing and boating, and writing. 

After working at New Hampshire newspapers, Lund joined Sports Illustrated reporter before its first issue in 1954. He earned respect for his knowledgeable coverage of sailing and skiing events and personalities.

A husky six-foot-two, Lund possessed a subtle, sly humor, more evident in his writing than in his conversation. The latter was invariably punctuated by a high-pitched laugh followed by silence or, if you were on the phone, by his softly hanging up the receiver. He possessed a head of shaggy hair and notoriously unkempt clothing. Once, on assignment for Sports Illustrated to do a story on Arapahoe Basin, he arrived at the Colorado Divide lodge at nightfall wearing a moth-eaten raccoon coat and dragging a canvas bag through the snow. An A-Basin employee opened the door for him. Alarmed by Lund’s appearance, he cried, “Please, sir! Would you move to the back of the lodge? We have an important writer from Sports Illustrated arriving any minute.”

At SI, Lund worked under Ezra Bowen, the magazine’s ski editor and the son of the writer Catherine Drinker Bowen. Lund bridled under Bowen’s abrasive management style, and in 1962 he quit to become a freelancer, mainly for SKI Magazine. Lund became the magazine’s most prolific writer, moving energetically from travel stories to profiles of Stein Eriksen and Warren Miller, to short items in the front-of-book Ski Life section. He interviewed Robert Redford the year Downhill Racer premiered. 

Lund wrote the first articles on learning to ski on short skis, collaborating with Clif Taylor. At Killington, ski school director Karl Pfeiffer coined the term "Graduated Length Method," and Lund abbreviated that to “GLM". GLM was adopted by leading ski schools and by the Professional Ski Instructors of America (PSIA), helping legions of skiers adapt more quickly to advanced ski techniques.

From 1988, Lund wrote for the new publication Snow Country, and in 1993, he co-founded Skiing Heritage, the first national publication focused on skiing history, where he continued as editor and writer for another fifteen years. 

Lund received numerous honors for his career in skiing journalism and was inducted into both the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame and into his native Maine’s Ski Hall of Fame. In 2000 he received the International Skiing History Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Over the course of his career, he wrote well over 400 features and sketches and 14 books, e.g., Inside Passage to Alaska, Cruising the Maine Coast, Eastward on Five Sounds, Ski GLM and Adventures in Skiing.

Predeceased by his longtime companion, Elizabeth Aprea, he leaves his brothers Jon Lund and wife, Joan Sturmthal, of Hallowell, ME, and Erik Lund and wife, Sandra Lynch, of Boston, MA, and numerous nephews and nieces.