Home

Steamboat Springs — Vintage ski races are much more than novelty acts. If you pay attention and ask a few nosy questions, you can observe how throughout the decades, equipment has dictated the technique a skier must use to initiate a turn.

It was all there to see Friday during the Vintage Ski Race on the Stampede ski trail at Steamboat Ski Area.

One needed to look no further than the handsome newspaper advertisement for Friday’s race for an illustration. A prominent photograph in the ad depicted the late, great American ski racer Buddy Werner, of Steamboat Springs. Werner is running a slalom course, most likely in the early 1960s. You clearly can see his leather lace-up boots with leather safety straps wrapped around them.

Werner’s upper-body angulation is extreme as he plants his left pole and begins to initiate a new turn. Competitors in Friday’s vintage race at the ski area could relate to Werner’s technique.

Bernt Riffe was working his way through the bamboo slalom gates on the Stampede trail on a pair of 70-year-old wooden 10th Mountain Division skis. They originally were made for troops training in the Colorado mountains for Alpine combat in World War II.

“If I’m making parallel turns, I use the Arlberg method,” Riffe said.

He was referring to the teaching method of Austrian instructor Hannes Schneider, who came to the U.S. in the 1930s and introduced the progression from snowplow turns to stem Christies and finally Christie turns.

The skiers taking part in the vintage race came down the course in a mishmash of equipment that sometimes saw boots from one decade clicked into bindings and skis from another decade.

Bob Kearful, of Steamboat Springs, was wearing Rosemount boots from the early to mid-1960s, but he skied on a pair of 1958 Head Standard skis that once were state of the art.

Kearful worked as a ski patroller for 18 years in the upper peninsula of Michigan and in northern Wisconsin, and he has seen ski technology and technique evolve.

“You have to up-unweight (straighten suddenly from a slight crouch) these skis,” Kearful said. “It’s not like today’s skis that you can turn just by rolling your knees.”

The Heads were mounted with Cubco bindings, which were among the earliest bindings designed to release the boot from the ski in a fall. They looked frightfully primitive by today’s standards.

Tim Ficke was skiing on a pair of Norwegian Hansen & Nilsen wooden skis that were being used for decoration on his parents’ porch until he called them up to active duty.

The skis were fitted with the infamous bear trap bindings, which were not made to release the way the Cubcos were.

“I made it down without breaking my leg!” Ficke said.

Bucky Erickson won the race on a pair of skis that sounded fast. His Lamborghinis were made in Spain and are not to be confused with the exotic Italian sports car of the same name.

“I got them from a friend who was getting ready to throw them out,” Erickson said.

Erickson paired the bright yellow skis with a pair of leather lace-up boots he’s had since he was 15 and coming of age in Connecticut.

“I bought them with money I earned from gardening and pulling weeds,” Erickson said.

Middle-aged guys and gals showing up to compete on the same boots they wore as teenagers — now that’s what a vintage ski race is all about.

To reach Tom Ross, call 970-871-4205 or email tross@SteamboatToday.com