1914

The goings on at Lake Placid in February led me to think back on our skiing days at Dartmouth. Fred Harris '11, Carl Shumway 'l3, and a chap named Rundlett in a later class come to mind. Harris probably sponsored skiing in the first place. Shumway was a leading competitor. Rundlett ingeniously used a strap hinge to fasten his skis to his shoes-one hinge on the ski and the other permanently on a shoe. Naturally that involved changing shoes on arrival at the hill, and it countered all advice to use a flexible binding to release the foot in the event of a fall.

The College had a portable hoist on the golf links now and then, and the more adventuresome went to Balch Hill for their sport. In my junior year a group went to climb Mount Washington when we had a holiday for Town Meeting. We stayed at an inn at the foot of the carriage road. Two students used skis and the rest of us used snowshoes. Coming down it was just as long a plod as going up for the snowshoers. The next season a similar group made the trip, and all were on skis.

At one of our Winter Carnivals a Scandinavian youth from the University of New Hampshire was invited. He arrived in a business suit and wearing ordinary shoes with rubbers. On his first jump in the Vale of Tempe he outdistanced our entire team. The Dartmouth group may have been more appropriately dressed, but our visitor was the expert on the slope.

My original equipment consisted of a pair of maple skis without metal edges costing about six dollars, Huitfelt bindings, bamboo ski poles, and a pair of Bass boots costing eight dollars. The entire package cost less than $20. Contrast this with the current prices of equipment and the gloves, glasses, and special outerwear to go with it. Several hundred dollars are represented in a ski outfit now.

My skiing never reached competitive calibre, but I had fun on the slopes and continued after college days to travel to areas in the North Country. Perhaps my record consists of breaking a leg on the Wellesley College campus when a tree got in my way on a gentle slope. Few, if any, of my peers can match this notoriety, I suspect. Local Wellesley residents were only reasonably sympathetic.

11 Leighton Road Wellesley, Mass. 02181