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Legends of American Skiing follows the evolution of Alpine skiing from its rough- and-tumble days in the High Sierras in the mid-1800s to the 1936 winter Games when skiing first became an Olympic Toni Matt, the only man ever to ski straight down the near-vertical headwall on Mount Sun Valley when it was only a 's first trails... Aspen when it was still a mining town. Thrilling authentic footage and accounts by those who were there. A Film by Richard Moulton Ski Pioneers in order of appearance: Sel Hannah: Captain of the 1935 Dartmouth Ski Team. Formed Sno Engineering which laid out hundreds of ski resorts. Bill Berry: A journalist who made a lifelong study of skiing in California’s High Sierras from the gold rush of 1849 on. Lowell Thomas: media journalist whose love for skiing led him to promote the sport and invest in many of the first ski resorts. Charlie Proctor: 1928 Olympian and Dartmouth ski great who together with his father. Professor Proctor, laid the foundation for collegiate Alpine Skiing. Alf Engen: Norwegian Ski Jumping Champion who, in America, took up Alpine and then won the National Downhill, the Alpine Combined, Jumping, and the Four Event titles. He would head Alta’s Ski School for thirty years. Roger Langley: Headed the National Ski Association from his home in Massachusetts for over twenty-five years. Charlie Lord: Engineer with Vermont Highway Department who ran the CCC crews that cut ski trails. Later he engineered the first chairlifts in the northeast. Ab Coleman: A Vermont highway engineer whose enthusiasms for skiing led him, together with Charlie Lord, to lay out the famous Nose-dive. Barney McLane: National Ski Jumping Champion, National Apline Champion, 1948 Alpine Olympic Team. Lee Ashly: Business executive in Denver in the 1930s who, with his brother Frank, started Denver’s first Ski Club for Alpine Skiing. Mary Bird Young: member of the first women’s 1936 Olympic Ski Team. One of a few women ski jumpers, she always skied in a skirt. Dick Durrance: Dartmouth ski star and 1936 Olympian. Won National Alpine and four-event National Championships. He was the only world class American ski racer in the 1930’s. He helped design Sun Valley, Alta, and Aspen. Ted Ryan: was a socialite who skied from Canada to St. Moritz. With friends in 1938, he planned a mega resort near Aspen that was never built. He would lose a leg to his sport in a remote section of Quebec. Janet Mead together with her husband Brad, started Pico in Vermont. Their daughter, Andy, would win two Olympic Gold Medals in 1952. Don Frasier won the Silver Belt Downhill on Mt. Rainier. A member of the 1936 Olympic Team and husband of Gretchen, the first American to win a gold medal in Alpine Events. Helen Boughton-Leigh McAlpin Member of the 1934 British ski team. Captain of the first women’s Olympic Team of 1936. Gov. Averrill Harriman who gave birth to Sun Valley—the first destination ski resort—and, oh yes, his engineers invented the chairlift. Toni Matt an Austrian Ski Champion who schussed the Headwall on Tuckerman’s Ravine to win the 1939 Infemo Downhill. Perry Merrill: Head of Vermont’s Forest and Parks Department who saw the value of skiing and made state land accessible for winter sports. Sepp Ruspch: Austrian ski champion who came to the Vermont woods and spent a lifetime carving out the major ski resort called Stowe. Gordie Wren: National Ski Jumping Champion and National Alpine Champion. Chose to be a Nordic, rather than Alpine, Competitor in ’48 Olympics. Nordic Olympic Coach and General Manager of Warner Mountain and Holversen Hill, Steamboat Springs.
