Ski History

EMSC

Well-known member
Thought it might be fun to throw up some personal ski history items from back when the dinosaurs roamed. While I had season passes prior to this, this is the earliest one of mine that got saved at some point. I'm sure I'll toss out a few pics or other ancient items over the summer in this thread.

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Horseheads?

I played hockey as a kid. Skiing was for rich brats whose parents took them on trips to exotic Killington.
 
Doesn't hockey require access to an indoor rink unless you live in Minnesota or upper New England? Plus a lot of specialized gear like skiing? I think it's an upper middle class sport in most of the U.S. As opposed to Canada where you can make your own rink in your backyard.

As for skiing, there is no substitute for starting as a kid like EMSC and Patrick and getting some good technical training along the way. Those of us who started as adults rarely close the gap.
 
jamesdeluxe":k30f8la0 said:
Love that old-school logo. A huge mistake that they "updated" it.

Definitely agree on this. The old logo/font was spectacular IMHO.

jamesdeluxe":k30f8la0 said:
Horseheads?

Yep.That would be a west facing slope.

Tony Crocker":k30f8la0 said:
Doesn't hockey require access to an indoor rink unless you live in Minnesota or upper New England? Plus a lot of specialized gear like skiing? I think it's an upper middle class sport in most of the U.S. As opposed to Canada where you can make your own rink in your backyard.

I'm going with Tony on this one. Rink time is outrageously priced now-a-days. Plus skiing back when I was learning was much more middle class than today. Everything was dramatically cheaper in inflationary terms (gear, tickets, motels if you traveled). Of course the snowmaking stunk, the lifts were slow, the grooming was mediocre, the motels were paper thin and cold(at least where we stayed), etc...
 
Early 1980's Greek Peak... Note the significant lift lines, lack of any trees by the condo's and even the #2 chair lift line is at the base, not part way up the hill among other things...

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EMSC":3pfrthsn said:
Early 1980's Greek Peak... Note the significant lift lines, lack of any trees by the condo's and even the #2 chair lift line is at the base, not part way up the hill among other things...


this place looks a bit like a horror movie village haha
but at the same time it is so peaceful and comfortable if you imagine all this in brighter colors
 
The pass is really awesome! I'm envious. I think I had a Greek Peak pass for 1 or 2 years in the late 70s/early 80s. Might have learned to ski in a local instructor's yard when there was snow. Either that or pulling myself the Greek Peak tow that did not move - just a bunch of knots.

There were always lines for Greek Peak ski lifts in the 1970s/1980s...5-15 minutes was normal on weekends...people even waited until night skiing to ski quicker. Upstate New York was a prosperous region with a Google/Facebook/Apple of its day "IBM" being founded in Binghamton, NY. And Xerox and Kodak nearby....a good jobs region with a skilled workforce...the Moon and Space Shuttle systems were all Oswego, NY based.
 
Well with both parents being pack rats and literally thousands of pictures to go through (all the way back at least 5 generations possibly 6 as near as I can tell; and most of them never seen by any of the current generation. Likely years of work to go through and toss/organize etc...)

For this thread, apparently my parents reached out to the photographer and got a print of the newspaper original from when I was 4. This is the full speed start up (not soft start like today), T-bar on the upper half of The Pinnacle (or Addison Pinnacle). Now a NELSAP "lost" area.

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That's an interesting way to take a kid up a T-Bar. I saw how they do it on the club field rope tows at Mt. Olympus in NZ in 2010.
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Not sure what happened, but fixed a post above to show the attached pics. In the one you can see my father using the same technique on a rope tow. No edgie-wedgie tip clips, harnesses or other modern help back then.
 
I'm going with Tony on this one. Rink time is outrageously priced now-a-days.

I went to a private school in 1976/77. Everyone had a job, mine was in the rink. I was told the LIGHTS were $250/hr to run. In 1976.

Plus skiing back when I was learning was much more middle class than today.

Agree 100%.

Here is what I got for history:

 
@EMSC , that photo of you and your Mom is a treasure! Regrettably, I have nothing like that. I skied with my parents for about 20 years, but it was when I was age 15 to 35. My folks started skiing in their late 40s and I was off doing my own thing with my friends when they were puttering around on intermediate slopes, so as a result there are very few on-slope images of us together. Plus, this was long before ubiquitous cell phone cameras made it easier to capture such images.

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I remember taking T-bars at Greek Peak with my 6-4 father. For 7-yo it was frightening. Height mismatch.
 
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