Author Archives: Jesse Ritner

Right now ski resorts, ski media, and skiers are focused on the lack of Black skiers in North American skiing. But this attention isn’t as new as it sometimes feels. In the 1970s, at the height of the Black Power Movement, for the first time skiers widely considered the absence of Black people in skiing.Continue reading “It’s time for some context, Black skiing & U.S. History”

On the night of February 13, 1885, the whole mountain ran. The papers reported that a mile-long avalanche raced down the mountain above the town of Alta, upturning trees and boulders, producing hurricane-force winds, and burying three-fifths of the diminutive mining town the three men would travel from. In the dead of night, the townspeople struggled to assess the damage. But as the sun rose over the canyon, death and destruction slowly emerged from the darkness.

Barely clothed women cover ski advertisements. But looking through a collection of old marketing materials, this ad for the Catskills from the early 1950s caught my eye. My first thought: “her butt must be so frostbitten.” In it, the woman sat almost entirely naked. Decked out in high heels, white gloves, and a suggestive fur coat, she perched herself on the edge of a snow bench. Sitting there, pants-less and shirtless, I can only assume she suffered from severe frostbite and hypothermia. But barely clothed women coat ski advertisements. So why did this one catch my eye?

Howard Head was a tall man with a shiny bald head and ears that stuck out from his head, as though he were pushing them forward to better hear someone. He was also a famous man. At least, his skis and tennis racquets were famous. But sitting in the Archive Center at the National MuseumContinue reading “From Bombing to Shredding: The development of metal skis may never have happened without the military-industrial complex”

One ski slid in front of the other. I was touring up Snodgrass in Crested Butte, slowly gaining altitude on a road that was packed solid by ski tracks. Moving up well-trod paths on skis is a unique and underappreciated feeling. It is comparatively easy, and with calmness comes time to think.  It is whileContinue reading “Skiing Snodgrass”

“the storm that came over the mountains on Saturday night made the last stage of the weekend a bit chaotic.” It disrupted the event, but it also disrupted the result. Wallerson explained hot “the weather was a dominating factor, as the skiers were unable to get the kind of airtime that they wanted for their biggest tricks. That led to a host of wipeouts and subdued runs and kept podium scores lower than normal.”

In 1968, Ski magazine published a photo essay called “Michigan Winter” by Paul Ryan. Considering the purpose of the essay, his photos were surprisingly sparse of skiers. Instead, Ryan’s camera pulled him towards objects with high contrast. In his eye, dark blacks and browns stood out sharply from the brilliance of fresh sparkling snow. At the same time, the straight lines of trees broke up the otherwise pearly landscape, sectioning off the hill into long and thin sections of white.

The modern ski mountain is a cyborg. Hiking up the Ute Trail on Aspen Mountain the other day, I couldn’t remove the idea from my head. Among academics, the term holds great weight. It is associated with an influential essay by Donna Haraway named “A Cyborg Manifesto.” There, Haraway uses the concept of a cyborgContinue reading “Hiking Up a Cyborg”

(This article is part of a larger series on Indigenous people and ski resorts.) Resorts are mythical places, and Sun Valley is the origins of this myth making.[1] In the United States, Indigenous people play a central role in building fanciful resorts. By hiring Indigenous people to “play Indian,” American ski resorts used Native peopleContinue reading “Bringing the Artic to Sun Valley”

Historian Andrew Denning, studying the rise of Alpine skiing in the European Alps coined the term “Alpine modernity.” Slim wood physically binds skiers to the soft white snow beneath. The diminished friction paradoxically linked the skier to the wild, primitive, and rugged Alpine landscape. At the same time, the lack of friction tied skiers toContinue reading “Indigenizing Ski Resorts”