I took a couple of days off from writing my autobiography and began sorting out about 2,000 still photos that pertain to my skiing and surfing life that I have accumulated over the years. Now I have to make the decisions on which ones to include in the finished book. Many of them are historical photos, some of which I have used over the years in my press kits that I sent to the sponsors of my ski films.
A great example is one of Sun Valley from the top of Dollar Mountain when there was nothing there except the lodge. It looked lonely out there in the middle of that wide valley. There are also some photos of the lodge under construction before there was a chairlift on Dollar.
I have a great photo of Mount Baldy in the background with my car and trailer in front of the lodge. This was back when there were only two runs down from the Round House, Canyon and Exhibition and both of them had Volkswagen-sized bumps on them.
There is also a shot of the Squaw Valley Ski School when there were only five of us to give lessons on the new “French Ski Technique.” That was when the old No. 1 chairlift stopped at the bottom of the headwall because no one could ski well enough yet to handle the terrain.
I have several still photos of Pete Siebert in knee-deep, untracked powder at Vail when it opened in 1962. There was only a gondola, two chair lifts and a Poma lift and no lift lines at all. As a matter of fact, there were a lot of days when there were only 50 people on the mountain and one day when they only sold eight lift tickets.
Each of the thousands of black and white pictures that I have tells a different story and most of them trigger a good memory.
Some of the European stills of scenery are so full of memories that I could write an entire column around each photo. The cable and cog railroad to the top of the pass where you could ski 12 kilometers down to Kublis and get a ride back to the Parsennbahn on the railroad. It was a different world in Europe in the ‘50s.
Another picture is of where I loved to ski: Zurs, Austria when it only had two T-bars and lots of untracked powder snow. I was always guaranteed a powder snow sequence whenever I went there. Herbert Jochum developed my favorite inn there and I loved going back to see him. The snowbanks in Zurs in those days were nine feet high every year I went there.
The problem now is how many of these wonderful, thought-provoking still pictures can I insert in my bio? I have already written almost 300,000 words, which is way too many. No one will want to read a book about a ski photographer that is four or five inches thick.
Since 1924, when I was born, this country has seen a lot of wars, and the world has gone from ice delivery wagons being horse-drawn, as they made their way down the street where I lived for a while, to an almost “instant anything.” What changes will my grandchildren see?
Fortunately, for them and a lot of other people, I have a photo record from when I first started making ski movies. Back when there were only 15 chairlifts in the country. I wonder how many there are now?