Book Review

WRITTEN IN THE SNOWS: ACROSS TIME ON SKIS IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST

LOWELL SKOOG

by Ken DuBois

At the inaugural Silver Skis Trophy competition on Mt. Rainier in 1935, huge crowds assembled to watch mostly inexperienced skiers barrel down the mountain, crashing, cartwheeling, and leaving a wake of splintered skis. The event was deemed a resounding success, to be repeated every winter for years to come. It was the point at which skiing in the Northwest definitively shifted from the pastime of a few hardy adventurers to a spectacle and diversion for the masses.

With a historian’s objectivity, Lowell Skoog places this mayhem at the center of his engaging tome, Written in the Snows, a chronicle of skiing in Washington state from the early 20th century to today. Extensively researched and illustrated with hundreds of photographs, he presents a remarkably comprehensive record created from a wide variety of sources, including Mountaineers club records, newspaper accounts, interviews, and his own attempts to retrace ski routes traveled a century ago.

As Skoog explains, early 20th century skiing in the Seattle area was mostly limited to a handful of homesick Norwegians and curious coeds willing to hop an eastbound train from Seattle to spend a day climbing and exploring in the wilderness, and then flag down the westbound train at the end of the day (it would be decades before roads through the Cascades were accessible in winter). Skiing began to catch on in the 1920s, with small clubs and carnivals popping up, and a few ski hills developed, but the focus varied from group to group: The Seattle Ski Club bought land near the railroad line and cleared trees for ski jumping; the Mountaineers, with their lodge near Snoqualmie Pass, traversed ridges and valleys in the style of the European ski patrols; and the Mt. Baker Ski Club organized around alpine skiing, though they had only 8-10 members and two pairs of skis among them. Skiers were mostly self-taught; many simply climbed uphill and bombed back down as best they could. As one skier recalls, “we ‘herringboned’ up and ‘ran it straight.’”

The skiing explosion of the 1930s was directly connected to accessibility, Skoog writes, as winter roads were being plowed and opened for the first time. At Paradise, 200 summer “housekeeping” cabins were filled in winter with ski enthusiasts willing to dig down through the snow to get to their front doors, or tunnel over to their neighbors. At the same time, ski mountaineering in remote areas was gaining appeal as well. With sealskin wax or canvas climbers on their skis, many explorers were determined to summit peaks on skis, an often impossible task due to steep inclines and ice near the top (if they had to switch to crampons for the last part of the climb, they deemed it a failure). Eventually many ascents of Mt. Rainer and Mt. Hood were made entirely on skis.

Skoog has much more to say about the evolution of skiing and ski culture in the Pacific Northwest, including fascinating chapters on military skiing during World War II, the development of large-scale resorts in the 1960s, and the recent resurgence in backcountry skiing similar to the style that excited ski adventurers a century ago. Along the way, there are many points of view, but like any good historian, Skoog remains impartial and lets his subjects fill in the commentary and opinion. Of the ubiquitous chairlifts we now take for granted, for example, Skoog quotes a disgruntled ski pioneer: “People are too lazy now. They’d rather sit on a chair and get hauled up, ski down and then take the next chair up–just like a yo-yo.” Another veteran adds, “Nobody wants to walk anywhere anymore.”

Skoog, Lowell. Written in the Snows: Across Time on Skis in the Pacific Northwest. Seattle, Washington: Mountaineers Books, 2021. Mazama Library number 796.93 S5.