Volume 15 • Issue 3 December 2019
Merry Christmas
“Pappy, We moved! Are you really sure Santa Bear will find our new den? December 2019
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The Enduring Appeal of Southern Snow Nearly forty years after the first edition of the “cult classic” ski book Southern Snow, the updated version delves even deeper into the rich history and growing national significance of skiing in a region known more for sun than snow. By Randy Johnson
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ack in the mid-‘80s when I wrote the first edition of Southern Snow, things were different in the Southern Appalachian ski industry. An amazing 33 years later, Southern Snow, a “cult classic” ski book according to ski film pioneer Warren Miller, is out again in a brand new second edition, updated and expanded from the University of North Carolina Press. The new book still contains an entire chapter on the “His50
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tory of Southern Skiing,” but back then, the industry was only 27 years old when measured from the opening of the ski area at The Homestead in Virginia—the first ski resort designed to operate exclusively on machine made snow. That was sixty years ago this winter! So much has changed that I basically had to rewrite the “old book,” which itself had become an historical document. Imagine, websites weren’t even mentioned in the original book! I urged people to “write for a free brochure.” Today, the latest rates are available online in a millionth of a second, and web cams are everywhere. The first book recommended ski area lodgings that have “rooms with color TVs.” Really? Sign me up! We know now that The Homestead’s ski resort proved that snowmaking and skiing would work in the South. Thomas “Doc” Brigham, who was a prime force in the creation of Beech and Sugar Mountains, and Snowshoe—literally decided to pursue skiing in the region after reading an article about The Homestead in Reader’s Digest. Back in the ‘80s I met the and became friends with ski pioneers from those early years—among them Sepp Kober and Doc Brigham—and others from as far back as the start of natural snow skiing in the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s. I’ve lived through the decades since then, skied all the slopes and trails, seen the trends emerge, and to this day I know many of the people who are making south-
ern skiing a success. Besides The Homestead’s 60th anniversary, this winter celebrates the 50th year for both Sugar Mountain and the French-Swiss Ski College (based at Appalachian Ski Mountain). Southern Snow tells those tales, but it also names so many names, from many years, that even a greatly expanded history chapter couldn’t include them all (much less this article). That’s why Southern Snow’s introduction warns readers that there are so many time-warp tidbits scattered throughout the book you can’t avoid being amazed at how much has changed in the ski industry, in the South and in the nation. Let’s ski down the years and have a look at a few of those changes.
Snowmaking
It was sixty years ago this winter that The Homestead took the leap of faith to start a ski area designed to subsist solely on machine made snow. Those feeble “guns” at early snowmaking resorts took forever to incrementally cover parts of slopes much less entire mountainsides. The technology imDecember 2019
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Change has happened on the slopes and skiers’ feet. Shaped skis have made skiing more fun and easier to learn. proved but it was slow going for decades. For years snowmakers dressed like the Michelin Man struggled to pull snow guns around the slopes, dragging the stiff, freezing hoses for compressed air and water behind them, all the while trying to do the impossible—balance the mixture of air and water to make great snow. Zach Marlowe, Wintergreen, Virginia’s director of mountain operations summed it up: “Back then, the minute the person walked away after adjusting the air and water mixture, you can bet the guns were already adjusted wrong.” Chances are you’ll see some old snow guns still in use today, and you’ll even see snowmakers doing the “sleeve test,” checking the quality of falling flakes by the way they look landing on their parkas. Guns moving around the slopes are now on wheels, but many or even most at some resorts are mounted high on towers. The amount and quality of the snow today is light years ahead of where it used to be. Some guns still use “pumped” air and water, but others vaporize their flakes with fan-forced ambient air. It’s all more efficient and reliable, especially when a computer adjusts the variables based on super-accurate data measured at the snowgun itself. The result? Today ski areas can cover entire slopes and mountainsides, even opening “to the top,” without that snail’s pace creep to good coverage.
Then and now at Appalachian Ski Mountain. It’s hard to believe how primitive slope grooming was in the 1960s (much less the piecemeal snowmaking in background). Courtesy Appalachian Ski Mountain
Climate
There will surely be disastrous winters in the future, but ever more sophisticated technology and scrupulous planning for water and other variables are increasingly able to make the most out of even fleeting windows of cold weather. More and more snow on the slopes is always the best insurance against interludes of warm weather. More good news—a recent study by ASU geographer Montana Alan Eck says even the threat of climate change may not 52
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Today’s tanklike snow grooming machines create a velvet corduroy surface. Grooming improves the surface for skiers and also preserves and moves the snow. Photo by Drew Stanley, courtesy Appalachian Ski Mountain.
Thomas “Doc” Brigham, shown at left (with son Peter), was a dentist from Birmingham, Alabama who walked away from his practice to pursue ski area development. Photo from Brigham Family Collection. yet be upon us. In research published last year in the prestigious International Journal of Climatology, he revealed that over the last century, temps in the Southern Appalachians have actually gotten a little colder, defying the “drastic changes to winter conditions currently experienced in the mountain West.” That luck may not last forever (knock on wood)—but the 60th anniversary of The Homestead’s ski area holds out hope that Southern resorts may not only be the first to fully embrace snowmaking, but the first to really make the most of it.
Austrian ski teacher Eric Bindlechner was Sugar Mountain’s ski school director, one of the first in the region to embrace the Professional Ski Instructors of America. Photo from Traver Family Collection.
Grooming
Now cast your eyes back on the history of how we treat the snow we have. An early image at Appalachian Ski Mountain startlingly recalls the primitive snowmobile pulled, slope-rolling groomers of yesteryear. Even as recently as the 1980s slope grooming was not a priority. Remember the massive moguls that used to defy removal on Tom Terrific
Jim Cottrell, above left, and Jack Lester, founded the French-Swiss Ski College at Appalachian Ski Mountain. Grady Moretz, far left, perfected that successful ski area. Courtesy Appalachian Ski Mountain. December 2019
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Jochl first came to the United States to teach and went on from there. Both Beech and Sugar had a cadre of Austrian instructors. That started changing right here in the High Country with the birth of the FrenchSwiss Ski College. Fifty years ago this winter, Jim Cottrell and his then partner Jack Lester launched their dream: a ski school staffed by Americans. Over decades organizations like the Professional Ski Instructors of America emerged to standardize and professionalize ski and snowboard instruction. The High Country and the South today have ski and snowboard teachers as skilled and certified as professional instructors anywhere in the United States. Take a private lesson to find out how much fun you can have and how fast you can get better.
The Red Baron Room was, and still is, a classic early watering hole at Beech Mountain Resort. Courtesy Beech Mountain Historical Society. and Boulder Dash at Sugar Mountain? In a reminder of Sugar’s 50th anniversary this year, owner Gunther Jochl deserves credit for being one of the first resort operators whose innovative, aggressive grooming started turning frozen waves into velvet corduroy. Today, Jochl’s fleet of “winch cat” groomers climb the area’s steepest slopes with cable-assisted ease. The “cockpit” of these cruisers resembles the flight deck of an airplane.
control short skis and “graduated” to longer boards when you mastered the tech-
Ski Culture
Ski Equipment
Big news doesn’t always happen on the slopes. In the 1990s, it was on skiers’ feet. Back in the day, expert skiers used long straight skis that stymied less-gifted athletes. Then came shaped skis, boards that had a gentle hourglass shape between the tip, waist and tail, that made it easier to turn. They were also fitted shorter. So many advanced skiers pooh-poohed the innovation that ski instructors had to weigh-in against the conventional wisdom. After evaluation, the Professional Ski Instructors of America literally called shaped skis a watershed moment. All kinds of ski improvements continue today, but that late 1990s change in ski design breathed new life into how easy, and how much fun, skiing could be for the masses.
Snowboarding
The first edition of Southern Snow not only didn’t include web sites, snowboarding wasn’t even mentioned! Boy that’s changed. The aerial emphasis of the surfing and skateboarding-derived sport of snowboarding has also drafted legions of skiers onto the now ubiquitous terrain parks found at southern ski areas. In fact, snowboarding now makes up a huge portion of the people sliding down our slopes—nothing less than a much-needed shot-in-the-arm for the “ski industry.”
niques? Teaching methods still evolve, but first, even ski schools had to be invented in the South. Starting at the Homestead in 1959 under Sepp Kober, southern ski areas used to import European instructors. Gunther
Remember when ski resorts were like alien settlements in the rural and conservative Southern Appalachians? Danny Seme, a Sugar Mountain professional ski patroller, tells the tale of an infamous party spot, the Hub Pub Club, which occupied one of the original buildings that became today’s Alpine Ski Center. Seme once told me “we spent one Halloween on the roof just
Ski Teaching
Beyond the revolution wrought by shaped skis, changes in ski design have periodically attempted to make it easier to learn the sport. Remember Clif Taylor’s “GLM” or graduated length method of instruction, where you learned on easy to 54
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Alpine Ski Center back in the 1970s after a nice dump of snow. The building was also the location of infamous party spot, the Hub Pub Club before becoming a ski shop.
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Boone’s Donate-What-You-Can Community Cafe “Where Everybody Eats”
Feed All Regardless of Means REAL. GOOD. FOOD.
Hawksnest ski area is a snow tubing resort today. Early local snowboarding phenom J.J. Collier won the US Open Junior Moguls championship. Tom Gidley, son of Seven Devils designer Gardner Gidley, played key roles at Hawksnest. Photos by Randy Johnson.
617 W. King St. (across from Mast General Store) www.farmcafe.org
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guarding the place.” Remember brown-bagging? Imagine, you had to bring-in your own alcohol if you wanted to raise a toast with your steak dinner. And there was nowhere nearby to buy wine anyway! The ski industry has been pushing a more liberalized urban lifestyle for decades. First the biggest resorts became towns—Snowshoe, Seven Devils, Beech, Sugar. With them came passage of beer and liquor referenda. Since then, America’s ongoing demographic changes have ushered in changing attitudes and places that never wanted to vote for alcohol sales eventually did. Remember, “A Polish Pope, a man on the moon, we think it’s time for beer in Boone.” Yes that was a sign made by Mike Sollecito of Sollecito’s Pizza, a classic of local ski region dining and apres-ski spot in Boone. His restaurant, and signature crooning to Dean Martin tunes, was just part of the evolving offerings of Southern Appalachian dining. Sollecito’s is gone but the memories last, along with names like the Rodes Farm at Wintergreen and Red Fox at Snowshoe. An enviable assortment of culinary offerings now epitomizes Southern ski country. More than that, there’s a true ski culture in the South that stands out all over the region. Speaking of Alpine Ski Center, Bob Quinlan and Hiram Lewis’ early local landmark of ski culture eventually became one of a number of successful ski shop chains
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in the region (among them Bill Leonard’s Ski Country SportsTK). Add in all the individual stores and the South has become a retail hotspot in the national ski economy. Just take a drive around the High Country.
Southern Snow
When I set out to write Southern Snow in the early 1980s, I did it to redress the ridicule being heaped on skiing in the South. I just loved winter, realized we get a nice chunk of it down here, and didn’t think you had to fly to Aspen to call yourself a passionate skier. Who would imagine that today, southern ski resorts are the biggest “feeder market” of new skiers for the nation’s ski industry. Rewriting my nearly 40 year-old ski book makes me increasingly proud of the rich history of Southern skiing. Who knew the first rope tow was installed in the South just a few years after the first in Vermont? Or that Lees-McRae College students were skiing on Beech Mountain in the 1930s? Or that Roan Mountain receives more snow than Buffalo, New York? Delving into all that impresses me that skiing in the High Country and the South is a long continuum worth continuing. Southern Snow is a paean to winter—in particular, winter in the South—and the people who find it, and find in it, a realm beyond location. Skiing came south on the dreams of true believers, and here in the High Country and elsewhere, those dreamers are still with us today. t
Stone Cavern
Tile & Stone Showroom
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