Page 62 - Flathead Beacon // 4.2.14

62 | APRIL 2, 2014 SPORTS
FLATHEADBEACON.COM

LURCHING FROM ONE
Hapy Birthday
NEAR DISASTER TO ANOTHER. Warren Miller
Franz Gabl

W
HEN AVERILL HARRIMAN lasted forever. Franz Gabl was wound-
was skiing in St. Anton in 1933 ed on the Russian front and went back

and 1934 he became aware hometorecoverinStAnton.Hewasthen
of how Hannes Schneider and his ski sent back to ight again in Stalingrad.
school were able to keep the Post Hotel In 1948, in St. Moritz, Switzerland,
and several other smaller hotels open Gabl, recovering from his very serious
all winter to house his many pupils who war wounds, was the irst Austrian skier
came from all over the world to learn to win an Olympic Gold medal when he
how to ski.
won the downhill.

Averill also saw the dark scepter of Over the years, Harriman was able
Hitler and his inevitable war not far over to ind refuge in America for many of
the horizon.
Hannes Schneider ski instructors includ-
Harriman made these observations ing Hannes himself. Those instructors
and discoveries while he was wrestling spread the gospel of skiing across North
with trying to control long, stif skis with- America. Men such as Freidl Pfeifer
out metal edges. His boots were hardly who helped develop Aspen and Butter-
more than soft hiking boots that ofered milk in 1946/47. I worked for Otto Lang

very little lateral control. Ski poles were when I was a ski instructor in Sun Valley
made of bamboo or willow trees with in 1948/49, and for a couple of those early
very large diameter and heavy baskets. years, he directed the Mount Hood, Para-
Ski clothes were heavy wool and when he dise and Mount Baker ski schools.
fell the snow clung to him like glue.
In 1948, Ward Baker and I were
When he executed the occasional spending our second winter living in
turn without falling, the one-week trip the Sun Valley parking lot in a eight-foot

from New York on an ocean liner was long, tear-drop trailer.
worth it. That’s one week each way on a In January of 1948, we tried to get the
slow boat to ski in Europe. And no one Sun Valley Ski Club to buy us a couple
had yet invented the ski lift.
of tank’s full of gas to go on the Idaho,
While Harriman was climbing for ev- Utah, California racing circuit, but they
Dale McGarvey
ery turn he would make he was wonder- laughed at how we were dressed and
ing when Hitler would make his move didn’t think we could place. So we raced
and skiing as he knew it would end.
as the Parking Lot Ski Team and I placed

A few years later a young house paint- second in Bogus Basin and irst in a ield
er in St. Anton named Franz Gabl was be- of more than 120 in Ogden.
ginning to win junior ski races. Harriman Two years later, Franz Gabl would
once again went back to his job as presi- come to America and race in the World
dent of the Union Paciic Railroad and Championship in Aspen while I was
Franz Gabl was conscripted by Hitler teaching at Squaw Valley and producing
and forced to ight on the Russian front my irst feature length ski movie. After
Congratulations on your new Law for three and a half years.
a winter at Sugar Bowl, Gable went on
Ofice and the formation of your Harriman put his money where his to Banf and eventually to Bellingham
dream was and inanced the building of where he owned and managed a ski shop
Intellectual Rights Corporation- America’s irst destination ski resort in and taught skiing at Mount Baker.
Ketchum, Idaho and named it Sun Valley.
Fortunately, those early pioneers
Harriman’s engineers, in his rail- gave so many of a chance to get hooked
the world of books and movies road yard in Omaha, Neb., were given on the freedom that skiing has to ofer,
the assignment of inding a better way including men such as Averill Harriman
-McGarvey & Townsend, INC.
to get people up a hill than with an arm- who build ski resorts and the men and
stretching, exhausting rope tow. In the women who teach the rest of us how to
process they invented the world’s irst enjoy what they have built. We honor
Wishing you many years chairlift in July, 1936.
them.
World War II seemed as though it
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