Lives

Longtime Alta Lodge and NASTAR stalwart

Naomi Wain
Passing Date: June 14, 2015

Naomi Wain died on June 14, 2015 at age 93 while attending the Ojai Music Festival in California. After discovering skiing at age 40, Wain quickly became a well-loved fixture at the Alta Lodge in Utah for 50 years, staying there for two weeks each month during the ski season. Wain was a NASTAR...

Killy's mentor and ski guru

Michel Arpin
Passing Date: May 30, 2015

  Michel Arpin, 80, was a mythic figure in France, where he was coach and mentor to Jean-Claude Killy for several decades.   Born Dec. 29, 1935, in Ste-Foy Tarentaise, 10 miles downstream from Val d'Isère  to a family of hotelkeepers, Michel Arpin joined the French national ski team in 1956....

NCAA champion and 1952 nordic combined Olympian

Paul Wegemen
Passing Date: May 30, 2015

Alvin Paul Wegeman, a collegiate four-way champion and 1952 Olympian, died in Colorado Springs on May 30, 2015 at the age of 88. Born in Denver in 1927, Paul first strapped on skis at the age of three and began jumping when he was 13. As a teenager, he worked in his father’s ski shop and was a...

Influential Vermont ski instructor

Bill Jenkins
Passing Date: May 25, 2015

Bill Jenkins died on May 25, 2015 at age 90. He taught at six Vermont areas — from Snow Valley to Pico —and also co-founded Birdseye Mountain, managed five areas, and invented several ski lifts. He is best-known for his long career at Green Mountain College in Vermont, where he founded a ski-...

Influential ski instructor and author; sportswriter, autoracer

Denise McCluggage
Passing Date: May 6, 2015

Denise McCluggage, influential ski instructor and writer, died May 6, 2015, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She was 88. McCluggage grew up in El Dorado, Kansas, where she got her driver’s license at age 14. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Mills College in Oakland, California, then landed a job...

President of USSA, NESM

Bob Thomson
Passing Date: April 13, 2015

Robert B. Thomson, president of the New England Ski Museum from 1995 to 1997, died peacefully April 13, at his home in Brooksville, Maine. A lifelong skier and outdoor adventurer, Bob was active in skiing throughout his life as a competitor, coach, official and volunteer, serving as president of...

Dartmouth racer, ski retailer

Bob Skinner
Passing Date: April 11, 2015

Robert A. Skinner, Dartmouth downhiller, U.S. Army ski instructor, retailer and racing promoter, died April 11, 2015, at age 96.  Born in 1918, Skinner attended schools in Manchester, New Hampshire, graduating from Central High in 1935 and Phillips Exeter Academy in 1936. He graduated from...

10th Mountain veteran; Stowe resort executive

Gordon Lowe
Passing Date: March 28, 2015

Gordon Lowe, a 10th Mountain Division veteran and longtime Stowe resort executive, died on March 28, 2015 at his home in Shelburne, Vermont, at the age of 94. Lowe was born in May 1920 in Schenectady, New York, and raised in North Adams, Massachusetts, where he was a ski racer and caption of the...

Mountain Guide

Robson Gmoser
Passing Date: March 10, 2015

Robson Gmoser, 45, was killed in an avalanche March 10, near Sorcerer Lodge, a fly-in ski cabin above Golden, B.C. The son of climbing guide and heliski pioneer Hans Gmoser, Robson was a well-known and widely-respected mountain guide in his own right. With his wife Olivia Sofer he owned and...

Northland executive and Minnesota ski-area founder

Walter Spidahl
Passing Date: March 7, 2015

Walter Spidahl, 95, a longtime ski rep, sales manager and ski area founder, died March 7, 2015. Spidahl grew up in Norwegian Grove Township, Minnesota, a rural community 40 miles southeast of Fargo, North Dakota, and learned to ski as a child. While attending Gustavus Adolphus College he enlisted...