The Greening of Labrador
It was late March in Labrador City, Newfoundland. The sun was high in the sky and Easter only a week away, but snowdrifts stood twelve feet deep along the side streets and reached to the roof of the local shopping mall.
Not a likely place for a reunion. And yet, as the scene of this year's final World Cup cross-country ski races and North American championships, Labrador City harbored more competitors, coaches, and race officials from Dartmouth and the Upper Valley than from any other single location in the world (runner-up was. Winnipeg, Manitoba). You could enter almost any room where the ski-racing crowd gathered, holler, "Hey, anybody here from Hanover, New Hampshire?" and see heads popping up all over the place.
Chief among them, of course, was the snowy head of C. Allison Merrill, perennial Dartmouth ski coach. As a member of the International Ski Federation (FIS), Al was serving as technical delegate to the local race committee, which had never before played host to an event of this importance. West Labrador has worldclass cross-country trails, designed by the American champion Bill Koch; but it was Al's job to certify that they satisfied FIS standards in every particular, to advise on the design and use of track preparation and timing equipment, and in general to lend the benefit of his vast experience to a group of willing amateurs.
Al has been in this position before in 1972 and 1980, at the Sapporo and Lake Placid Olympic Games. As a consultant, he does a lot of standing around and talking. But don't get the idea that he's lost a single step of the stuff that made him an FIS competitor himself back in 1950. I skied the 10-kilometer course with him one day, and can attest that he still "has his numbers on."
One sad note: after 26 years at Dartmouth, Al says he has packed his last trail on Oak Hill. Though he will remain active in international skiing, he retires this year, on October 31.
Doug Peterson '75 spent a lot of his time in Labrador out in the woods. As an assistant Canadian team coach, Doug's job during the races was to occupy a checkpoint out on the course with a stopwatch, radio, and clipboard in his hands. As each Canadian racer passed him, he shouted out his position relative to the other racers: "Okay, Pierre, you're six seconds down on Koch! Move it!" Then he'd radio the information to Head Coach Marty Hall, stationed near the finish.
Doug spent two years on the U.S. Kayak Team and ten on the U.S. Ski Team. In 1976 he skied at the Olympics in Innsbruck. That was the year that Bill Koch won his celebrated silver medal ana the Europeans first began to take American cross-country skiing seriously. Retiring from competition in 1982 to coach full-time, Doug co-owns a Brook Holloa condominium and plans to build a house in Hanover this summer.
"The World Cup tour has been a terrific experience," he said. "It's been a good life and a good living, and I've learned a lot about myself in ten years, as well as about words like motivation, perseverance, and dedication.
"Dartmouth gave me two things that have been important: excellent German and a worldly, humanistic outlook. Both have helped me a lot in my constant traveling and many opportunities for new friendships."
Tim Caldwell '76 has been on the circuit since 1971. He has skied in three Olympics and three World Championships. He has been on the World Cup tour since its beginnings in the mid-seventies. This year he is ranked twentieth in the Cup standings. When we talked in the U.S. team's waxing room, Tim looked tired.
"I've been on the road since November third," he said. "Usually I get a chance to get home now and then, but not this year. I can't wait to get there!"
Tim teaches Middle Eastern history part-time at Vermont Academy and a physical fitness course at the State University of Montana. In spite of his killing schedule, he reads constantly on the road and has managed to collect three credits toward his master's degree at Montana.
Ski racing has been a major part of his life ever since his matriculation in 1973. Yet, says Phil Peck '77, "You can't become obsessed with skiing. It's a game, no more. You have to have something in your life larger than skiing. For Kochie it's his family; for Tim it's his teaching, learning, and writing; for me it's my faith."
Phil's career as a Dartmouth skier was unusual. "I was skiing cross country,"he says, "but I was going downhill. I went from twentieth ranking in the country as a freshman to seventieth as a senior, when I should have been improving."
An active member of the Dartmouth Christian Fellowship as an undergraduate, Phil went to work after graduation as a ski manufacturer's representative. But his perplexing decline as a competitor remained on his mind. So in 1982 he "took a year off and got back into racing. "I figured," he explained, "that if I could just get a handle on what it is that affects a competitor's performance, what can turn him around, then I would begin to understand the process of education and training and be a much better coach and teacher for it."
Currently assistant men's coach on the U.S. Ski Team, Phil spends a lot of time out in the same woods as Doug Peterson, but rooting for a different team. After a visit with his parents in South Carolina at the end of the season, he'll be racing bicycles in Juneau this summer and plans to coach the U.S. team again in the 1983—84 season.
What was a kayak jockey doing in the snowdrifts of West Labrador? Eric Evans '72 was covering the races for Cross CountrySkier and the Brattleboro Reformer. Now a teacher of American Lit at the Putney School, Eric once skied for Al Merrill and Dartmouth, but gained fame as a ten-time national kayak champion. Since life on the whitewater circuit is less lucrative than that on the white snow tour, he was forced to work for a living as well as an outdoor education instructor, editor of Nordic World, a products manager for Trak Skis, and most recently as a free-lance writer in Putney.
Eric and I occupied neighboring typewriters in the press shack at the races, and got to talk a lot about Dartmouth. He was by far the most outspoken alumnus I met, articulating a concern that some of the others expressed as only a misgiving: "Dartmouth is succumbing to 'spectatoritis.' The College seems to be abandoning its tradition of active outdoor sports in favor of spectator sports, and that's a shame."
The final race of the long week at Labrador City was a Citizens' Loppet, a 54-kilo-meter event open to all comers, from oldtimers to pre-schoolers. And that's where Dudley Weider '60 came in. Arriving after most of the hotshot skiers had left, Dudley and a journalist friend skied the race together and posted a creditable time. They listed their club affiliation as "The Geriatric Adventure Society."
After graduation from medical school, Dud spent several years practicing in Kotzebue and Anchorage, Alaska, where he developed a now-famous "stapling" technique for repairing damaged eardrums. His percentage of success has been far higher than with the standard suturing method. In his spare time he has managed to bicycle about 100 miles a week during the summer, enter ski marathons in the winter, and raise a couple of excellent figure skaters and a junior national champion Nordic combined skier.
The last of the Dartmouth men left Labrador City on the afternoon flight Easter Sunday and scattered to their homes around the country. They'll be training all summer on snowfields, highways, and glaciers and, come winter, will gather again at ski-racing venues on three continents. Whatever the colors of the ski waxes they will use from day to day, the events, at least, will be Big Green.
Doug Peterson '75, a 10-year member of theU.S. ski team, was in Labrador as assistantcoach of the Canadian team.
Al Merrill, Dartmouth's director of outdooraffairs, represented the F.I.S. at the WorldCup cross-country ski races in Labrador.
Phil Peck '77 serving as timer for the WorldCup cross-country races.
Tim Caldwell '76, a veteran of the World Cuptour, has skied for the U.S. in three Olympicsand three world championships.
Dudley Weider '60 with one of the snow sculptures at the Labrador City Winter Carnival.
Willem Lange of Etna, N.H., combines freelance writing with carpentry. He was directorof the Dartmouth Outward Bound programfrom 1968 to 1972.
