Skiing History

kthnxbai.

kthnxbai.

Active member
I did a quick search and found the thread that wh@t started about ski history, but I was looking for something more in depth about our sport. Here is a link to the other thread

https://newschoolers.com/web/forums/readthread/thread_id/437801/

The reason that I wanted to create a thread like this really has to do with the recent law suit involving Level 1 and Warren Miller Entertainment. It is really sad to see what Warren Miller Entertainment has done, and how they are a misrepresentation of what our ski community really is. (Go Level 1!) Warren made the first ski movie that I ever saw “Born to Ski” and I won’t forget that so hearing him in "Refresh" was quite an experience.

I wanted to take a look a little deeper into skiing history and where it has all come from, but first a little background on me. I grew up skiing in Connecticut at my local mountain Ski Sundown (wheew!). I started skiing when I could walk and my Mom was head of our middle schools ski club. I was too young for the club, but she had to do something with me so I ended up on the mountain, or hill I should say, every night and day riding. I never looked back from then on. I rode as much as I possibly could until 2006 when I moved out to Colorado.

When I was a little kid my Mom got a job working for a man named Mason Beekley. Which I am sure a lot of you have never heard of. Mason Beekley owned the world’s largest private ski library and ski art collection. Mason also founded the International Skiing History Association (ISHA). When my mom started working there I was too young to stay home alone so I would head up to the Museum (which was connected to his house) with her. I spent the summer at his house looking through the museum, swimming in his pool, and talking about skiing with him when he had the time. I feel truly privileged to have had the chance to hang out with Mason and talk skiing with him. I didn’t know what a big deal his was at the time. Walking around his museum was amazing there was over 2,500 books on skiing, beautiful ski paintings covering the walls, and ski sculptures everywhere. Two paintings that always stick out in my head were the ones he had that were painted by Eric Sloane and Norman Rockwell. If you don’t know who they are you should look up their work. The Eric Sloane painting was a huge painting of people skiing in what he told me he thought was Chamonix. I remember watching my first ski movie with Mason and it was a Warren Miller movie as I mentioned earlier. He showed me “Born to Ski” and I was mesmerized the entire time. Mason talked about Warren quite often seeing as Warren was such a huge influence in the skiing industry. I remember later on Mason showed me some of Warren’s older work and even a movie done by John Jay. John Jay was really noted as the man who started the ski movie revolution and was also a huge influence to Warren.

My new favorite quote from Otto Schniebs - “Skiing isn’t a sport, it’s a way of life”. Otto was quoted saying this in 1932 when he was a ski coach at Dartmouth. Otto was one of Mason’s biggest influences and told Mason to read as many Ski Books as he could. Mason took that literally.

Well that is just a tiny view into the world of skiing and some of my experiences with it. I re-wrote this entire thread because I am an idiot and deleted it on accident so there are some parts missing from it. I would like to spend some more time to go a little more in depth on John Jay and Otto Schniebs when I get the time.

Here are some links to the people I mentioned.

Warren Miller

http://www.warrenmiller.net/ec/index.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Miller_(director)

Mason Beekley

http://www.skiinghistory.org/bioa.html

http://www.skiinghistory.org/Sliding.html

John Jay

http://www.johnjayskifilms.com/

http://www.skiinghistory.org/John%20Jay.html

Otto Schniebs

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,758640,00.html

http://www.skiinghistory.org/SkiHumor5.html

Please feel free to critique this, add comments, add stories and more importantly add more History to this!

-Matty

 
myself I was actually starting to compile info to make a "History of Freeskiing" document. something I found interesting to do in my spare time. so far I've only scratched the surface with what could be written.

I was thinking what could be a good idea for Newschoolers would be an attached 'wiki' of skiing. that would encompass pretty much everything skiing related, from the specs and opinion on the '10 Invaders to articles on skiers themselves etc. pretty much everything having to do with the freeski part of the sport.
 
that would be really sweet. how long have you been working on that?

anybody else have anything to add about skiing history?
 
If anyone is in Europe especially Austria, you must visit the Arlberg region, a hotbed of skiing history and tradition. The best of these are the Ski Club Arlberg (oldest/largest ski club in the world) museum in St. Anton and the house of Hannes Schneider in Stuben who developed the Arlberg technique (stem turn) in early downhill skiing times.

I have more brochers about it which I will go look for later and post here.

 
That's funny. We have a lot in common. I started skiing on the East Coast at age 2. My Mom was an instructor. My Dad was the Architect for Snowshoe in W.VA. We were the first family that ever lived on top of the Mountain formerly know as Cheat Mountain. We moved out to Colorado in 1980 and my Mom has worked for the Colorado Ski Museum for over 10 years.

I think what you are doing is awesome. You should head over the pass and check out the Colorado Ski Museum. There is some cool stuff there.

One of the best stories I heard and know to be true is how Nordic Ski Jumping evolved. The Nordic Jumpers used to jump in a superman type position with their hands out in front of them. They thought that helped them get more distance. Erik Windisch was a jumper who crashed separated his shoulder. He insisted on still competing but his one arm was in a sling. He found that jumping with one arm in front and one at his side was too messed up and threw in sideways in the air. He put both arms down by his side, jumped and won the competition with a separated shoulder. All the jumpers then switched to having their arms down at their sides.

Guys like Erik were the Gangstas of their day.
 
wow, thats crazy. Is your mom still working for the Colorado Ski Museum? I actually just had a chance to check out the Museum which is a great place. Everyone should check it out if they have a chance.

Also after just finishing watching Swift. Silent. Deep that is a must see. I think I was already almost certain I was going to be a ski bum for a few years, but that made me positive.
 
Yep, she still works there. It's pretty great to see how things have progressed sometimes by accident. This friend of the family was one of the first ski instructors when Vail first opened. He is this incredibly genius German guy who came up with the idea for shape skis 5 years before anyone made one. He presented his idea to Head Ski in Austria and they blew him off. Head was never a real "think outside the box" company. I hope some of Jon is rubbing off on them.
 
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