Traduire/Ubersetzen

Volume 33 Number 1 January-February 2021

Featured Articles: 

Alpine Revolution: Three years that transformed skiing

Author: 
By Seth Masia

Photo above: Walter Amstutz led the transition from free-heel to locked-heel skiing. In 1928, he pioneered a spring to control heel-lift, soon known as the “Amstutz spring.” Reduced heel-lift helped spark the parallel turn revolution. Photo courtesy Ivan Wagner, Swiss Academic Ski Club

The Day They Threw Cow Chips in Las Vegas

Author: 
By Jeff Blumenfeld

Photo above: At its finest, skiing is both an art and a science—as is effective marketing. In 1993, Killington commissioned six artists to customize 45 cabins as part of the launch of the Vermont resort’s new Skyeship gondola. The public relations score was hauling a cabin to the Whitney Museum in New York City for an evening of celebration and national exposure. A legal kerfuffle ensued when an enterprising illustrator artfully claimed that his work had been exhibited at the Whitney. Mark D. Phillips photo

History of an X-Rated Phenomenon

Author: 
By Jay Cowan

Arguably nothing has had a bigger impact on skiing and snowboarding during the past 25 years than the Winter X Games.

Gordi and Karen Eaton

Author: 
By Edith Thys Morgan

US Ski Team training at Aspen, 1967. Karen Budge is front center, Gordi Eaton far right.

Team Players: Gordi and Karen Eaton made skiing a living and a life. 

As senior supervisors of “Team Chaos,” Gordi and Karen Eaton juggle many roles. Helping shuttle and care for three active grandchildren, ages eight to eleven, all learning remotely while pursuing the available sports and activities in Hood River, Oregon, including ski racing, is logistically daunting.

Walter Mosauer: Father of Southern California Skiing

Author: 
By Ingrid Wicken

Photo: Walter Mosauer earned a medical degree, taught zoology and found planted seeds of a vibrant ski industry in Southern California.

Departments: 

Readers Respond: West Mountain race program, revisited

Paul Post’s “Back to the Future” (November-December 2020) brought back fond memories of the early days at West Mountain, of which my family was a major part. I faintly recall the opening day, December 25, 1961, when the first rope tow started spinning. The Brandt brothers (Mike, Claude and Paul) had commissioned my father, Tom Jacobs, to open the ski school and ski shop. The following season he started the junior race program at West and helped organize the Southern Adirondack Junior Racing League.

Short Turns: Redford Sells Sundance Resort

Author: 
By Everett Potter

Sundance Mountain Resort, the iconic ski resort that Robert Redford developed in Utah, has been sold. Redford announced the deal on December 11, 2020. Broadreach Capital Partners and Cedar Capital Partners were the buyers and the sale includes all assets of Sundance Mountain Resort, including the resort buildings, ski lifts, on-site dining venues, and event spaces. It did not include the Sundance Institute, Sundance Film Festival, Sundance Catalog, Sundance TV, or the Redford Center.

Resorts Then and Now: Mt. Otsego

Author: 
By Jeremy Davis

Cooperstown hit two fouls, then a 380-foot home run.

Photo above: Kate and Chris Mulhern at the base of Mt. Otsego in 1958. The main slope is visible behind the sign, with the rope tow to the right. Courtesy Barbara Harrison Mulhern

Cooperstown is, of course, forever the home of baseball, hosting the National Baseball Hall of fame since 1939. But it’s also the center of a pioneering New York ski region. Here, community leaders and volunteers created skiing opportunities at four locations for over 40 years.

ISHA Donors Set New Record, 2021 Awards

Author: 
By Seth Masia

During the Covid19 shutdown, ski resorts went into shock, and at this writing have not yet recovered. Nonprofit organizations of all sorts faced financial crisis as corporate sponsors retrenched. ISHA faced a cash-flow crunch: we couldn’t be sure of the revenue to support production and mailing of the magazine, the website and the next round of ISHA Awards.

Bill Spencer, Pat Doran, Elfriede Shane

Please go to https://www.skiinghistory.org/lives

Sponsor Page: Polartec

We are grateful to our corporate sponsors. 

Ads from the Past: Tobin's First Prize Hot Dogs

If you drove the family to a New England ski area in the 1950s and ’60s, lunch might be hot dogs. This ad from the Eastern section of SKI Magazine (January 1961) pitched Tobin First Prize frankfurters. The firm was founded by Fred Tobin in Rochester, New York in 1921, and by 1957 he’d built additional plants in Albany, then two locations in Iowa, then Buffalo. Tobin weathered a post-war meat rationing crisis to become the largest maker of hot dogs in the Northeast. After Fred Tobin’s retirement in 1969, the company suffered chaotic management and declared bankruptcy in 1981.

On the Cover: 

W. Rivers made this silkscreen poster for the Yosemite Ski School at California’s Badger Pass, which opened in 1928. The undated poster sold for $1,750 at the annual sale of vintage ski posters at Swann Auction Galleries in New York City on February 13, 2020 (swanngalleries.com).

Digital Magazine Flipbook: 
Volume 33 Number 1 January-February 2021