Museum News: Intermountain Hall of Fame honors three

Spence Eccles and Alan Engen at the 2019 Intermountain Ski Hall of Fame ceremony. Eccles won the 2019 Crystal Award for his decades of leadership and support for the Engen Museum.

The Intermountain Ski Hall of Fame, located at the Alf Engen Ski Museum in Park City, Utah, inducted three new honored members at its annual banquet on September 25, 2019.

As part owner and vice president of marketing at Park City Resort, Badami staged the first alpine World Cup race in Utah in 1985. For the next four years, Park City kicked off the season’s World Cup circuit with the “America’s Opening” races — a critical component in the state’s successful bid to host the 2002 Winter Olympics. He died in a helicopter accident near the Park City base area in 1989.

Darrell “Pinky” Robison moved from Peoria, Illinois to Salt Lake City at age 12 and fell in love with skiing.

Less than a decade later, he won the Harriman Cup at Sun Valley in 1951, the Snow Cup at Alta in 1953 and the slalom in the Pan American Games in Bariloche, Argentina in 1954. The pinnacle of his career came in 1952 when the U.S. Olympian finished 22nd in slalom at the Oslo Games. 

Erik Schlopy amassed one of the longest and most successful careers in U.S. ski racing history. He is a two-time Junior Olympic champion, a seven-time U.S. national champion, and three-time U.S. Olympian. He was named to six FIS World Championship teams, capturing a bronze medal in giant slalom in 2003.

Schlopy is the only ski racer in history to successfully go from World Cup skiing to the Pro Tour and back to World Cup ski racing. In his first pro season, Schlopy was the 1995 Serengeti Rookie of the Year

Gramshammer Day in Vail

Hundreds of people packed the Ford Amphitheater in Vail, Colorado on September 20, 2019 to celebrate the life of Pepi Gramshammer, the Austrian ski racer who became the town’s leading and legendary innkeeper. In 1962 he helped to found the fledgling resort’s ski school and, with wife Sheika, in 1964 opened the Austrian-style Gasthof Gramshammer. (Gramshammer died on August 17, 2019; see the September-October 2019 issue of Skiing History or read online at skiinghistory.org/lives). Colorado Gov. Jared Polis presented Sheika and family members with a citation declaring September 20 as “Pepi Gramshammer Day” in perpetuity statewide.