Cranmore goes platinum

North Conway resort marks start of 70th anniversary season

To paraphrase Yogi Berra, It was like 1937 deja vu all over again!Cranmore's venerable ski history was celebrated in style Friday as the in-town North Conway resort marked the start of its 70th anniversary season.Skiers and snowboarders flocked to Cranmore to take advantage of the resort's one-day-only, special 1930s pricing of $3.30 for a lift ticket.A snowstorm the day before coated the resort's slopes, completing the nostalgic, pre-global warming picture as the ski area's bounty of white looked like something from the winters of old.As local skier Randy Mossen of Horsefeathers said, Sure, there's a line. But at these prices, and with this snow, you've got to go and take at least three runs, right? Merry Christmas!Meanwhile, in the resort's Eating House, groups of fourth graders from three classes at John Fuller Elementary School of North Conway and two classes at Madison Elementary School gathered to listen spellbound to stories about Cranmore's rich history as related by beloved Cranmore skimeister Herbert Schneider. Schneider, 87, is son of the late Austrian skimeister Hannes Schneider (1890-1955), the Father of Modern Skiing, who was released from Nazi custody to bring his family to America, arriving to teach skiing at Cranmore in February 1939.As someone who has written extensively on Cranmore's past over the years, I was honored by also being asked by Cranmore's Kathy Bennett and Ben Wilcox to speak about local ski history to the young ski history enthusiasts, who are learning about New Hampshire ski history as part of Ski N.H.'s Earn Your Turns program. In this program, students receive vouchers for days of skiing at the 37-member Ski N.H. resorts in return for compiling reports on the state's rich ski lore.Kim Pickering of Ski N.H. was also on hand to encourage the children to continue their history studies. She said that since the "Earn Your Turns" program was begun in 1998, the program has grown from 67 schools and less than 500 kids to 153 schools and 2,516 students.Many of the students brought along paper mache models of their version of a snow-covered Cranmore. Others sang songs or read from their papers on local ski history, as John Fuller instructors Patty Gagnon, Jill Garland and Raimy Coffey and Madison instructors Louisa Bryant and Mary Barbour assisted.Herbert Schneider, accompanied by one of his two sons, Christoph, and recently the recipient of the Professional Ski Instructors of America's Lifetime Achievement Award and a member of the U.S. Ski Hall of Fame, regaled the youngsters and their teachers with tales of his father's learning how to ski as a young boy in Austria and how he developed a crouched technique that allowed him to ski with speed and under control.Not many people skied when father was a boy living in Stuben [just over the pass from St. Anton am Arlberg, Austria]. Early on, he had a pair of bindings made. He would start from up the hill and ski down, and because he couldn't turn, he would ski right into the barn behind his house and he would stop by hitting the hay bales! said Herbert, wearing his traditional skimeister white cap like the ski instructors of old.He then related how his father in 1907 founded the world's first ski school in St. Anton at age 17 at the Hotel Post. His service in World War I included the training of skiers, and it was there that he learned how to organize and teach large numbers of skiers.The ski school in St. Anton, Herbert told the youngsters, grew immensely after the war, especially after Hannes teamed up with German filmmaker Arnold Fanck to create five ski films, including The Fox Chase in Engadine, which turned Schneider into an international ski star. In the film, Herr Schneider played the role of the skiing fox, as skiers tried to catch him as he vaulted across powdery fields and jumps.They had to recruit 50 skiers from all over Europe because no one could ski well enough to keep up with father, said Herbert.He told the youngsters how his father's renown spread throughout the 1920s and 1930s, including to Japan, where he was invited to teach thousands to ski in 1930.But when Hitler's Nazi Germany annexed Austria in the Anschluss of March 1938, Schneider who had never made a secret of his disdain for the Nazis in his country was arrested in the middle of the night and put in jail and later under house arrest in Garmisch Partikirschen, Germany.His release was sprung by North Conway native son Harvey Dow Gibson (1882-1950), an international financier and president of Manufacturers Trust Company in New York City. Gibson sat on the board of the Short Term Creditors for Germany from World War I, and his influence was felt throughout Europe.Gibson after whom today's Gibson Block and Gibson Center for Senior Services in North Conway are named had bought and developed Cranmore in 1937, and then bought the former 1926-built Hotel Randall and renamed it the Eastern Slope Inn, announcing that it would be open for year-round use.He next bought ski school and ski shop pioneer Carroll Reed's two ski schools in Jackson and at Cranmore in summer 1938. Reed was a young ski enthusiast from Boston who had broken his back while skiing the Civilian Conservation Corps-built Wildcat Trail in April 1934. While recuperating from back surgery, Reed read in an Appalachian Mountain Club magazine about Schneider's ski school in Austria.The genius of Carroll Reed, I told the youngsters, was that instead of feeling sorry for himself, like many people would have, he decided that it would be great to start a ski school here so that other people could learn to ski the right way so they wouldn't end up getting hurt like him.Reed enlisted the support of innkeepers by asking them to help finance the endeavor. Hired as the first ski school director was Benno Rybizka from Schneider's St. Anton school because he could speak English.Rybizka arrived in December 1936 in Jackson. He hired local instructors to help with the school. Good snow did not arrive until February of that season, but despite having to ski on what Reed once described as a combination of frozen sheep manure and ice crystals on the hill in front of the Eagle Mountain House, the school gave more than 6,000 lessons that first year. Rybizka, meanwhile, brought five of the local boys with him back to St. Anton that spring, and all passed the Austrian ski examination with flying colors.The next year, Reed established a second branch of his school at Cranmore in December 1937, with Gibson paying Reed to move his rope tow from Jackson to the base of Cranmore for the start of the resort's lift-serviced ski operations.Gibson, a tireless man of inexhaustible energy and foresight, also hired local inventor George Morton to build a ski lift for Cranmore, and Morton who operated a garage that still stands today near Goodrich Falls delivered by building the unique and colorful Skimobile. Pulled by a cable under the wooden tracks, the Lower Skimobile opened in December 1938 to service Cranmore's trails, which at the time only extended on the lower part of the sunny, west-facing mountain.Upon his arrival from the Alps, Herr Schneider told Gibson that Cranmore needed to expand to the top. Gibson told Schneider that he had gotten him there, and that now it was up to him to put Cranmore on the skiers' map of North America.Schneider obliged, and laid out trails from the top. Gibson, meanwhile, had Morton build the Upper Skimobile, reaching the summit in August 1939.Unlike other early resorts, Cranmore boomed during the war years, the late Kay Reed once said, noting that due to its proximity to the North Conway train station, GIs could come north on snow trains and get some R&R, while even nearby resorts such as Whitney's, at what is now Black Mountain in Jackson, had to shut down.After the war, Cranmore lost some of its preeminence, as other ski areas opened in the 1950s out West, many of them developed by former 10th Mountain Division ski troops veterans (Herbert Schneider and the late 1939 Tuckerman Inferno champion Toni Matt were both 10th Mountain members, with Schneider awarded the Bronze Star). Many other local residents also served with the 10th, including longtime Cranmore instructor and former North Conway Country Club golf pro John McDonald.After Hannes Schneider's death, Herbert was named director of the ski school in 1955 by Mrs. Helen Gibson, who next sold the mountain to Herbert and a group of investors in December 1963. During his ownership, Cranmore invested in snowmaking, was always there for young ski racers such as future Olympians Terry and Tyler Palmer and David Currier, members of the 1972 U.S. Olympic Team, and hosted the Volvo International Tennis Tournament from 1975 to 1984. Herbert's group then sold the mountain in 1984 to Ed Mank, who helped celebrate the resort's 50th anniversary Flight Without Wings milestone in 1989.Mank then sold to Les Otten. It was Mank's group that disassembled the Skimobile in 1990. The resort is now owned by Booth Creek, and is a major innovator in family programs as well as in using biodiesel fuel.At Friday morning's gathering at the Eating House, it was obvious and endearing, to this local ski historian's ears to hear how much the youngsters have embraced the region's ski history.Those in Patty Gagnon's class presented Herbert a copy of their self-illustrated Mount Cranmore Ski Area Timeline book, which tickled Herbert's heart.As I took to the stage after Herbert, I asked the throng a few ski related questions. They knew the answers to them all.Who was Carroll? I shouted out to the youngsters, and back came a resounding retort of, Carroll Reed! Or, I asked, who was Harvey? Harvey Gibson!I then asked them to form two rows, with the students facing one another. That they did, and then I told them that it was Feb. 11, 1939, and that they were still kids, but now they were the kids from the Eastern Slope Ski Club's 1938-founded Junior Ski Program, and that they were not at Cranmore's Eating House, but standing in formation in front of the North Conway train station in the early-morning hours to greet the Schneider family as they arrived in North Conway from New York after traveling all night with the Gibsons.OK, I shouted, now raise your arms as though you were raising your ski poles to connect in the middle to make a ski arch.That the kids did, and then ever the good sport, and like his father, always one to have a soft spot for kids Herbert Schneider and son Christoph agreed to walk under the arch, just as Herbert did with his father, his mother and sister in February 1939.OK, I shouted, say hello to the Schneiders and welcome them to North Conway!It was a reenactment that I have had other kids act out when I have spoken about local ski history in recent years to John Fuller fourth graders. I figure that if they get to act out our town's rich ski history, it will stay with them even more.And well it should, because Cranmore has a ski history like no other. Happy 70th anniversary season.