To appreciate Aspen’s ski history, you must imagine yourself in the present of the past, and understand how, in historian Howard Zinn’s words, “the future is an infinite succession of presents.” Fairly new on the scene, Aspenites started as skiers flailing on wooden boards torn from the side of their cabins and evolved into hotshot locals, second-home owners, and tourists, all gliding on sophisticated instruments that respond precisely on a variety of snow conditions. As you read this historical timeline of skiing in Aspen, stay mindful of how the present-day experience carries so much of the past. And congratulate yourself: you represent the dreams of others come true.
When people around the world think of Colorado, many conjure idyllic images of skiers and snowboarders gliding down pristine, snow-covered mountains. Skiing is thought to have arrived in Colorado in the 1800s, long before the area achieved statehood in 1876. However, early skiing in the state looked far different from what it does today. Luckily, miners who had traveled to the state overseas, all the way from Scandinavia, taught their peers how to construct skis and use them to travel.
Is this week's snow a sign of things to come in the high country? Then, few people get as excited about ski season as John Dakin; now he's been inducted into the Colorado Snowsports Museum Hall of Fame. Plus we get a tour of that museum in Vail, which shares the history and stories of the state's outdoor snow industry.
Early Days: From Transportation to Recreation
A 4,000-year-old rock carving above the Arctic Circle depicts a skiing hunter. The Romans encountered “sliding Finns” when trying to conquer northern Europe some 2,000 years ago.
While skiing was rapidly gaining popularity in Europe as a stylish recreational activity, it was first introduced to Colorado miners as an easy way to get around in the snow. Headed by men eager to find their fortunes by way of gold and silver, families traveled far and wide to the state’s High Country.
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1880-1890s: Scandinavian silver miners nail leather foot straps to curled ten-foot wooden boards, introducing “Norwegian skees” as a transportation tool. They schuss with a single steel-spiked pole dragged between their legs as a brake.
1900s-1930s: Aspen locals rip up hardwood floors of deserted buildings to make skis, curling the tips with steam and fashioning straps from rubber inner tubes. West-end townspeople climbed and skied down Aspen Street from where Lift 1A now stands.
Local racing and jumping contests emerged as ways to help locals cope with the dark winter days. Established in the winter of 1914 in the then-young community of Steamboat Springs, Howelsen Hill is North America’s longest continuously operating ski area. Carl established the ski area less than a decade after settling in Colorado.
Though skiers had been a regular sight on the mountains west of Salida since the early 1900s, the first formal ski area founded there was Monarch Mountain, which was established in 1939.
1880: In February, through some seven feet of snow, B. Clark Wheeler “skis” into town from Leadville on Norwegian snowshoes to complete the first survey of Ute City.
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With skiing continuing to boom in popularity around the state, technological innovations were developed to make the sport easier and safer, while local and international competitions like the 1932 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, gave it huge boosts in visibility.
As you can imagine, not every ski area formed in the state has made it over the years.
Feeling nostalgic about neon ski-suit onesies? Intrigued by ski bindings from the 1930s and curious how their users made it downhill alive? The Utah Ski and Snowboard Archive holds the answers. This comprehensive archive takes us from the 1870s to the mid-2000s, documenting the region’s ski competitions, the founding of its major resorts, the growing understanding of snow safety and avalanche control and the evolution of equipment and style. The 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympic Games are covered, as are cross-country skiing, backcountry skiing, freestyle skiing and even the relative newcomer on the scene - snowboarding. Incredible stories are woven into the collection.
Ski runs at Snowmass
The 10th Mountain Division and Its Impact
During the Second World War, Colorado’s skiing legacy took on an entirely new and important identity with the formation of the 10th Mountain Division in 1941. military officials traveled to ski clubs across the country and invited talented skiers to join the Division.
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Located between Red Cliff and Leadville on US-24 in Eagle County, Colorado, Camp Hale was founded to train and accommodate the new Division.
The Division was sent to Alaska’s Kiska Island for its first mission, but it went so poorly that the Military considered shutting it down. However, after two more years of training, the 10th Mountain Division was redeemed during a dangerous mission of monumental significance.
The 10th Mountain Division stealthily climbed steep cliff faces in a move that surprised their enemies and ultimately allowed the Gothic Line to be penetrated and defeated.
1943: 10th Mountain Division troops cross the Williams Mountains from Camp Hale on Groswold Skis, march into Aspen, and are met by the town band. Some stay at the Hotel Jerome and are given a steak and a room for $1. Sgt.
1945: As 10th Mountain soldiers and Aspenites-to-be fighting in Italy, Bert Bidwell saves Friedl Pfeifer’s life in battle. (Bidwell would tell a surprised Pfeifer a month before Pfeifer’s death in 1995 that it was he who had saved him in Italy.) Pfeifer returns after the war, minus part of a lung, forms the Aspen Ski School with Percy Rideout and Johnny Litchfield, and takes over the Boat Tow. He promotes Aspen Mountain over the Mt.
10th Mountain Division Trooper in Vail Village
Post-War Transformation: From Ski Areas to Resorts
During the post-war period, Colorado’s ski areas began transitioning to full-fledged resorts modeled after those found in Europe. As posh restaurants and luxurious hotels began to spring up alongside amenities like parking lots and gas stations, the state’s modest ski areas slowly began to achieve resort status.
1936: Ted Ryan, Billy Fiske, and Tom Flynn hire Swiss mountaineer André Roch and Gunther Langes to survey the Aspen-Ashcroft area for skiing.
1936: Ted Ryan forms the Highlands Bavarian Corporation and builds the first Aspen-area ski lodge at the junction of Castle Creek and Conundrum Valley.
1936: The Roaring Fork Winter Sports Club (RFWSC)-the predecessor of today’s Aspen Valley Ski and Snowboard Club-is formed. Every Sunday, André Roch gives free ski lessons on Maroon Creek Road at the foot of what is today Aspen Highlands and at the base of what is today Buttermilk.
1936: André Roch marks the first ski trail on Aspen Mountain.
1936: Aspen locals build the six-passenger Boat Tow from the bottom of today’s Lift 1A to the bottom of what is now Corkscrew and Tower Ten Road. (The top hoist wheel is still cabled to a tree there today.) Components are a secondhand Studebaker motor, two old mine hoists, and two ten-person sleds that went up and down in opposition. The Boat Tow costs $600 to build. Skiers pay $0.10 per ride.
1937: Ted Ryan’s Aspen films screen in Chicago, showing assorted skiers schussing five miles down Mt. Hayden to Ashcroft. The German Ski Team trains at Highlands Bavarian Lodge.
1937: The Denver & Rio Grande Railroad starts running “snow trains,” bringing skiers and winter enthusiasts to Aspen.
1938-39: Elizabeth Paepcke and a group of friends get a ride up the backside of Aspen Mountain with the Midnight Miners in their trucks.
1940: D.R.C. Brown becomes president of the Aspen Ski Club. National Downhill and Slalom Championship is held on Roch Run, giving Aspen its first international exposure.
1941: Plans are drawn for a tramway up Mt. Hayden from Ashcroft. Architect Ellery Husted envisions a “Williamsburg of the Old West” as base village. Fifteen runs are plotted from the top of Hayden into Castle Creek. Colorado legislature OKs $650,000 in bonds to build 4,000-foot tellaferry up Mt. Hayden.
1942: The Southern Rocky Mountain Ski Association holds ski-jumping and cross-country events in Aspen. World-record-holder Alf Engen, from Norway, gives a ski-jumping exhibition. Events include skijoring on Main Street and rope racing (two skiers tied together on a thirty-foot rope) on Roch Run.
1945-46: Walter Paepcke conceives of Aspen as a cultural center and plans the first ski lift with Friedl Pfeifer.
1946: The Aspen Ski Corporation is founded by Friedl Pfeifer, Johnny Litchfield, Percy Rideout, and Walter Paepcke. D.R.C.
1946: Summer brings the construction of Aspen’s first chairlifts: the single-chair Lift 1 to today’s Midway-“the longest chairlift in the world”-and Lift 2, which runs from the top of Lift 1 to the new octagon Sundeck at the mountaintop, where beer, pop, ham sandwiches, and coffee are served. Aspen Mountain opens on Dec. 14. A season pass costs $140.
1946: The first annual Roch Cup ski race is held. The ski train to Aspen from Denver, with dining and sleeper cars, runs regularly.
1947-48: The Little Nell run is cleared and widened as a beginners’ hill. The Constam T-bar is built. Night skiing debuts; tickets, $1. Ski Patrol is formed. Six phones installed. Lift 1 and Lift 2’s combined uphill capacity is 1,070 skiers an hour. FIS. World Championships. Zeno Coló wins the combined with witches’ brew wax concocted by fellow Italian Mike Magnifico.
1951: The Spar Gulch run is widened. A daily lift ticket costs $4.05. Wintersköl-an event-filled celebration for locals during the slow part of the ski season-is started by Jack dePagter.
1952: Walter Paepcke starts Aspen Airways with surplus DC-3s; planes b...
The Rise of Snowboarding
Initially developed a decade before, the early iterations of the snowboard brought a much-needed element of authenticity and counter-culture that flew in the face of the wealthy, exclusive atmosphere found at Colorado’s ski resorts.
That year, the first snowboarding competition was held at the Ski Cooper resort in Leadville.
In the years following the competition, the state’s resorts realized they wouldn’t be able to continue to ignore the growing popularity of snowboarding.
In 1990, the World Snowboarding Championships were held at the Breckenridge Ski Resort, an event many point to as a seminal moment for the burgeoning sport.
By 1998, snowboarding had exploded in popularity, and it became an official Olympic sport that year.
Halfpipe practice session at Copper Mountain
Evolution of Ski Fashion
Only for a retro ski party would you wear a patchwork neon one-piece, rear-entry boots, finned Oakley glasses, and the horror of a mullet. Your date might rat her hair bigger than sagebrush, sport a billowing fuchsia jacket with padded shoulders and tight starred pants with Clydesdale cuffs, all while listening to Nu Shooz on her Walkman.
Then as now, fashion and function struggle like two birds tied to the same string.
In 1911, Paula von Lamberg, the “flying countess of Kitzbühel,” set the first women’s ski jump record of twenty-two meters, in Austria, wearing a long skirt.
Not long thereafter, wool gabardine coats and jodhpurs segued into ski outfits.
Fashion and function merged in the 1940s with “Byrd cloth.” Developed by Admiral Byrd for his Antarctica expedition, the reversible brown or blue jackets were made of water-resistant poplin. They contrasted with the roomy pantaloons that gave men and wasp-waisted women an inverted triangle look.