He taught thousands of people how to telemark ski in the day, in the 70s and 80s. I was fortunate to meet this guy Dickie Hall, and he had an organization called NATO, which stood for North American Telemark Organization. I had a bunch of friends who were downhill skiers and they were all Ski Patrollers, some of them were racers, but they all had gotten into the free hill downhill, and we rode lifts, and we’d come downhill actually on wood skis. One year we left Vermont and just hit the road for six weeks and went all the way out to Oregon and California and Colorado and all over the place, just telemark skiing. Every spring I would go out to Colorado and see all the big telemarketers out there, and go backcountry skiing all throughout the west. I actually started working in the Nordic ski industry in Vermont for two years in the late 70s and really got to know the business. ![]() People from New York and Boston would come out. Nordic skiing in Vermont in the 1970s was happening. It was like ice skating with skis on, but instead of a pond you’d have the entire planet to ski. So when I got introduced to it, it really clicked immediately. But no one in my family or anyone I ever knew cross country skied. When I was a child I downhill skied, and I was actually on a little hockey team as a kid, so I ice skated and I downhill skied, and that was real common in the 50s and 60s. I got to know the operator Eddie Flaim, and he had me help him and then had another mutual friend up in the Killington area that introduced me to two friends who became life-long friends. I actually took my granddad’s old skis and bindings and started alpine skiing.Īdjacent to where our project was, there was a Nordic ski area called Sitzmark. ![]() I was living in the mountains of Virginia at the time and I decided to go up there for the winter with a friend of mine and restore a cabin and a house up near Mount Snow. When did you first try cross country skiing?Ĭhip: I was about 23 years old and I decided I’d go up to Vermont. Scott: Thanks for participating in the DCSki Interview Series, Chip.
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