Summit County Citizens Voice

Old school! PHOTO COURTESY THE CREATIVE COMMONS.

Every pair of skis has a story …

By Bob Berwyn

Thinking back over more than 40 seasons of downhill sliding, I sometimes wonder what ever happened to all the different skis I used over the years. After all, nearly every pair has a story. I know that some of them were handed down to my brother, two-and-a-half years younger, who has had a complex ever since. Others ended up in sacrificial bonfires.

But what about that set of red wood boards I used when we skied the Taunus Mountains, just outside Frankfurt, back in the 1960s? I was about six or seven, and our skis had front-throw cable bindings. They came in handy, since the lift was about a mile from the parking lot. To ski along the forest road to the base, we freed the cable from the rear guides, creating a touring setup. I don’t remember the make or model, but I know that the metal edges were screwed into the bottom. On warm spring days, I hand-rubbed soft silver wax into the grainy base, smoothing the finish with my gloves. Those skis contributed to an early sense of independence on the mountain, as my parents encouraged me to hike up past the top of the lift to explore the forests and meadows beyond.

Switching to fiberglass skis a few years later was another big step. My dad and I picked them out in the U.S. Army Post Exchange in Garmisch during an early season ski trip. I raised my arm straight up and cupped my hand over the tip to gauge the right length. They were dark-green Völkls with yellow sidewalls, and we mounted them up with Marker Rotomats the same day. I watched the ski tech score the toe of my boots with tiny V-notches to match the binding’s toe piece, feeling very grown up.

The following morning we rode the train up past the Eibsee to the Zugspitzplatt, a huge glacial bowl on the flanks of Germany’s highest peak. Skiing the fresh snow on those springy new slats was a dream come true. The skis had a life of their own. Instead of dead weight under my feet, I felt like I was riding a pair of porpoises, bounding, bouncing and diving through the fluff.

Of course when I took a spill and released out of my binding, I learned why people called those Markers “explodomats.” The unique heel pieces featured twin springs held in place by an elaborate system of pins and washers, truly a product of German over-engineering. Trying to re-align all the pieces with gloved hands was like trying to play piano while wearing mittens.

The first skis I ever bought for myself was a pair of Kneissl Red Stars, mounted with Salomon 505s. Austrian ski hero Karl Schranz posed on the cover of a ski magazine with those babies, and as soon as I saw them, I knew I would win every race I entered. Since the local ski shop didn’t carry that model, I made the trek to the Air Force PX at Rhein-Main airbase. The Red Stars leaned up against the wall in my bedroom for several months before they ever touched the snow, resting between a poster of Jean Claude Killy and a cluster of trail maps from areas that I’d never skied, but dreamed about constantly. Gazing at the skis at night before going to sleep seemed to imbue them with some sort of mystical energy, because, sure enough, when the racing season began that fall, I did alright.

When I moved to the U.S. in the early 80s, I spent almost an entire winter in the San Francisco area, away from the snow. By the time I decided to move to Mammoth in the spring, the Sierra snowpack had corned up and when I crossed the range at Tioga Pass, the bowls of the Yosemite high country cast a 15-year spell over me. My first stop in Mammoth was at the Cast-Off, a second-hand store run by the hospital auxiliary. I scored a pair of Rossi 4Ss for $25, shook the mouse turds out of a pair of manky old Tecnicas and headed back up the pass to camp out at the base of Ellery Bowl. The next morning, I climbed the majestic cirque with the sunrise, then carved some of the sweetest turns of my life. Home again, in the mountains.

Filed under: Colorado, recreation, skiing and riding, writing Tagged: | essays, ski history, skiing and riding, Summit County Colorado, writing