New England Ski Museum

Touched by Big Green luminaries

by Marty Basch • Photos by John Snyder

Though the family’s story of coming to America from Austria is immortalized in The Sound of Music, Johannes von Trapp is one of many pioneering Dartmouth College skiers honored in Franconia’s New England Ski Museum. The hills outside Stowe, Vermont came alive for cross-country skiing with the foresight of von Trapp, a 1963 Dartmouth graduate. In 1969 he founded Trapp Family Lodge, the country’s first touring center, which continues today.

History and Memorabilia

A short drive from the Upper Valley, the compact New England Ski Museum, which opened in 1982, is located at the foot of rugged Cannon Mountain ski area in craggy Franconia Notch State Park. Steps from the mountain’s tram leading to the summit, the museum is home to ski memorabilia ranging from a GS suit worn by Bode Miller to the luggage used by Hannes Schneider and family, who journeyed from Austria to North Conway in 1939 to teach skiing at Mount Cranmore. It’s filled with information on legendary exploits like Toni Matt’s record schussing of the Headwall in Tuckerman Ravine at age 19 in 1939. In its research library, the museum has a large collection of papers, photographs, and other material from Dartmouth luminaries like Fred Harris, John McCrillis, Sel Hannah, John Litchfield, Walter Prager, and Malcom McLane. McCrillis, along with Otto Schniebs, produced what the U.S. National Ski Hall of Fame and Museum calls the first ski film, which centered on the Moosilauke downhill race. Hannah was a four-event Dartmouth skier who founded Sno-Engineering in 1958, while Litchfield was a strong Dartmouth skier and 10th Mountain Division ski troop soldier. Prager coached the Dartmouth ski program from 1936 to 1957, and McLane served on many ski-related committees, including the U.S. Olympic Committee, after his Big Green skiing days.

Noteworthy Dartmouth Alums

Fred Harris, class of 1911, influenced New England’s early free-heel skiing. Harris founded the Dartmouth Outing Club, which celebrates its centennial in 2010. He also was instrumental in the development of the Brattleboro Outing Club and construction of the historic Harris Hill Ski Jump in 1922. Today, the renovated jump hosts high-flying ski jumpers.

A Dartmouth grad, coach, and skier, John Caldwell is credited with bringing the basics of cross-country skiing to the masses through the pages of his 1964 book The Cross-Country Ski Book, which grew to eight editions and sold about a half-million copies. He also coached three U.S. Olympic teams in 1968, 1974, and 1984.

“We are very aware of Dartmouth’s contributions to the sport and frequently feature those in our exhibits,” says museum executive director Jeff Leich, a 1971 grad and one of several writers involved in Passion for Skiing, a book about Dartmouth’s contribution to the sport.

Cross-Country Skiing and Skating

Largely focused on the alpine side of skiing, the museum is taking a step back from the fix-heeled boot and has opened an exhibit called “Nordic Skiing from the Stone Age to Skating,” which runs through the end of the 2010 ski season. This well-researched exhibit traces the origin of cross-country skiing. It includes its roots as a means of transportation for people in northern climes thousands of years ago in the mountains of central Asia; a pair of wooden skis with horsehair climbing skins is on display. The popularity of the skating technique is here, too. That emerged from the 1970s in Putney, Vermont, where Caldwell was churning out acolytes like Vermont native Bill Koch, who became the first American to medal in cross-country in the Olympics (a silver in 1982).

Honoring the Legends

The exposition includes many tributes to Nordic skiing’s forefathers from Norway, including explorer Fridtjof Nansen, who crossed icy Greenland (250 kilometers in 19 days) on skis in 1888 and Sondre Norheim, who came to personify the knee-bending Telemark turning technique from his home province of Telemark. Nordic skiing isn’t without its dark characters. Shady Bing Anderson of Berlin, New Hampshire set an eastern distance record for ski jumping in 1922, but he was later hanged for murder in Nova Scotia in 1930.

“As a ski jumper, there is little doubt that he was tops for his time,” recalls Hannah in the display. “As a companion, he left a bit here and there to be desired . . . When he was off on a jumping tour, valuables from the home where he might be put up seemed to come up missing . . . His fists were as quick as his landings on the ski hill.”