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Ski Jumping on 4th Avenue By Lowell Skoog, Mountaineers Books Author
Written in the Snows: Across Time on Skis in the Pacific Northwest, new from Mountaineers Books, offers a definitive and visually rich history of the past century of Northwest ski culture. In his debut title, renowned local skiing historian Lowell Skoog traces the development of skiing in Washington from the late 1800s to the present, covering the beginnings of ski resorts and competitions, the importance of the Olympic and Cascade mountains, and the friluftsliv, or open-air living spirit, of backcountry skiing. In this excerpt, experience how a record-breaking snowfall in 1916 led to the first-ever ski jumping tournament in the Pacific Northwest. Front page of the Seattle Times on February 7, 1916 featured ski jumpers (clockwise from upper left): A. Flakstad, Reidar Gjolme, and L. Orvald.
Excerpt from Chapter 2: The Big Snow With its maritime climate, Seattle rarely gets much snow in winter. Snow in town is a novelty that quickly becomes a nuisance because of the city’s steep hills and limited ability to clear them. Scandinavians who grew up skiing and who settled in Seattle in the early 1900s were frustrated because snow never lasted long enough to encourage development of the sport here. But events in the winter of 1916 began to change this. That January was unusually cold. Lakes around the city froze over, and during the last weekend of the month, three thousand skaters flocked to Green Lake on a Sunday afternoon. Over a period of three days, 29 inches of snow blanketed the city. The one-day record for snowfall in Seattle, 21 1/2 inches, was established on February 1. At 10:00 a.m. that day, the grandstand at the University of Washington’s Denny Field buckled under the weight of new snow. The following afternoon, the dome of St. James Cathedral collapsed. Newspapers reported similar cave-ins all around western Washington. Streetcars were disabled and five-foot drifts clogged residential streets. The Smith Tower, the tallest building in the western United States at the time, hurled rooftop avalanches onto pedestrians below. The Seattle Times 38
mountaineer | winter 2022
reported that the city was “in the Clutch of the Snow King.” As Seattle slowly dug itself out during the days that followed, Times editorials exhorted citizens to “clean your sidewalks!” and “clean off that roof!” and “clean out the alleys.” By the end of the week, odd tales of citizens coping with the snow were widespread. The Seattle P-I ran a fanciful account of one Henry Steinkopf, who wrote, “For fifteen years I have enjoyed the reputation of being the model citizen of our neighborhood… perfectly lamblike except under great provocation.” Steinkopf, who had never skied before, was persuaded by his Norwegian neighbor to borrow a pair of skis for a trip to the grocer. During the downhill run for home, he lost his groceries, his watch, his cash, and his temper after crashing into Rev. Mr. Lukenwater, the local pastor. “I repeat,” he wrote to the P-I editor, “that I lost all that was dear to me save my family because of those deceitful skis.” The story distilled through humor what non-Scandinavians imagined might happen if they tried skiing. On Sunday, February 6, the Times printed an unusual announcement: “Ski jumping and speed skiing today will be introduced to the Seattle public… The committee in charge of the event believes that this is the first display of ski jumping
