United States Military and Skiing

Quaggy

Quaggy

Active member
1007601.jpegDoes anyone here have experience skiing while in the United States military? (or some other country)

I'm not talkin' about skiing around with a machine gun (Simon Dumont has me covered), but considering the hand of Uncle Sam seems to be in every corner of the world, has anyone managed to get some turns in while serving their country?
 
I never skied in the military most of my service was in Very hot environments. I talked to a soldier from the 10th Special Forces at the state fair a couple years ago that had a couple pairs of skis and boots on display at their Army booth. Two different pairs ; cross country and all mountain. I forgot what brand the Xc skis were but the others were Romp Skis with skins . They have a contract with the Special forces to make skis for them. I believe the boots were Scarpa.

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I was stationed in fairbanks, ak. Ft. Wainwright actually has a ski hill with night skiing on base. I didn't go much though, no real park and very mellow terrain. Skied a decent amount at moose mountain (maybe 10-15 days a year?) And would make it down to alyeska a time or two every season. Had a lot of friends with snowmachines and had some fun in the bc but fairbanks is pretty flat and you had to travel some ways for decent terrain.
 
I was stationed at Fort Drum for a few years. We cross country skied and snowshoed a lot, all while wearing a 35lbs ruck. None of it was tactical or field training just our leadership mixing up PT. No mountains close to drum even though it’s the home of the 10th MTN. Used to drive to whiteface a good bit though.
 
i managed to use my leave and ski garmish and over to insbruck when stationed in aschefenburg outside frankfurt

if your stationed in yurp taking the train to ski is easy

afrc made it cheap and easy

me and a few friends mounted about 300 pairs of black diamond aspects with silverttas for the



and they styled me up with a nice man cave wall hanger
 
I bought some skis from a US Marine who works at the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center in Bridgeport CA. His job is to train Marines how to cross-country ski over gnarly terrain. He showed me a pair of his cool military-issue fishscale cross-country telemark skis. The topsheets are white like the snow for camouflage. Pretty cool.

He said he and the other officers take their military sleds out into the backcountry and build booters out there. He had probably 20 pairs of Moments in his garage - most mounted to tele bindings. If you wanna ski in the military, that's where I'd try to go
 
topic:Quaggy said:
View attachment 1007601Does anyone here have experience skiing while in the United States military? (or some other country)

I'm not talkin' about skiing around with a machine gun (Simon Dumont has me covered), but considering the hand of Uncle Sam seems to be in every corner of the world, has anyone managed to get some turns in while serving their country?
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Not personally but I work for a ski resort where we bring in the 10th Mountain Division for their high alpine training. They come here and do a week of intense training on the slopes. Pretty sick if you ask me.
 
14308083:bennisolomon said:
Not personally but I work for a ski resort where we bring in the 10th Mountain Division for their high alpine training. They come here and do a week of intense training on the slopes. Pretty sick if you ask me.
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You would be amazed how this doesn’t happen anymore with the 10th MTN.
 
I think theres military personnel who do training outside snowbird/alta in the periphery BC, like snake creek canyon and stuff. Have seen them on occasion a few times throughout the years skiing over there.....I was told they do a multi-day backpacking trip in snake creek canyon below. Pretty interesting stuff nonetheless.

**This post was edited on Jul 29th 2021 at 5:31:27pm
 
14308188:b0ss said:
Joining the 10th mountain division is nit that hard actualy.
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It’s not a special unit that you join. If you get stationed there you get stationed there. It’s not like ranger bat or special forces group.
 
One of my buddies was stationed, in Bridgeport CA as a corpsman the place was mentioned before. He gets to ski at June mtn and put up in a hotel for like 2 weeks while just ripping up the mountain. Sounds like a super sweet gig. I skied a bit at Mt Baldy in Socal when I was stationed at 29 palms, forsure jealous of my buddy though he has it made up there.
 
14307854:Biffbarf said:
I was stationed in fairbanks, ak. Ft. Wainwright actually has a ski hill with night skiing on base. I didn't go much though, no real park and very mellow terrain. Skied a decent amount at moose mountain (maybe 10-15 days a year?) And would make it down to alyeska a time or two every season. Had a lot of friends with snowmachines and had some fun in the bc but fairbanks is pretty flat and you had to travel some ways for decent terrain.
Click to expand...

I also forgot University of Alaska Fairbanks had a small little hike/shuttle park on campus. That was pretty neat. Not my edit just one I found, but this kid's gotta be on NS somewhere.

[video]https://youtu.be/B-7As8C3cEw[/video]
 
My dad was a Marine in the 80's and 90's, he was the only one in his company who was an avid skier, so he told me that there was one guy from Tampa who thought speed was the way to go and he crashed into big wooden ski rack and knocked every ski over and broke his tooth. This dude was so drunk he got back on the lift and kept skiing while laughing it off. this was in japan btw

**This post was edited on Aug 1st 2021 at 8:59:15pm
 
I got my Hoji Frees off a 10th Mountain guy who had used them once. They were like 1/2 price new
 
14309009:MaimHelp said:
[tag=131005]@.frenchy[/tag] skied in Germany and shit. I’m sure he knows how to go about it
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yessir. plus you get a couple weeks every winter to go and do whatever the fuck you want. loved skiing in the alps
 
Used to have a ski buddy that was Special Forces. We would usually go backcountry skiing, but I met up with him one day at Loveland while he was teaching about 12 Army Rangers how to ski for an upcoming patrol near the Arctic Circle.

Romp makes them some special white skis that mostly resemble their FH skis. They all ride Scarpa boots with Dynafit pin bindings.

I guess in practice they do more flat skate-skinning than anything else, so the skis were real lightweight with like 70-80 something underfoot and like a length to their noses.

It was pretty cool, they were all riding around in camouflage outfits, and I took a few laps with them. They ran like 5 miles before and after the ski day.

I imagine much of the use for these skis while they're deployed is that they use these skis to do these morning and evening PT "runs" through the snow. That, and certainly combat training exercises where they have to "run" around wintery mountain terrain on those skis.

When me and dude were skiing backcountry, he had a custom pair of Factions that the company sponsored to him. They were more like Super-G skis than anything else. He was like so ridiculously big and physically elite, that Super-G skis to him are like normal skis to the rest of us.

Funny enough, saw a dude at Timberline with some custom Romp skis and hollered. He was Ex-Special Forces and I told him the story about skiing at Loveland with those dudes.

What a nice guy! He remembered what those white skis were called, but I forget. His skis were these massive Super-G style skis that he was about to tour up to the top.

It seems like those military dudes in their leisure time like to charge around on big mean damp skis like that. While on their working time, they run around on those nimble Romp skis.
 
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