Slope style: ‘Retro-Ski’ columns collected in writer’s new book

Skiing, especially in its early years, has undergone countless innovations. Leather boots became plastic and colorful. Rope tows evolved into high-speed detachable quads. Skis got longer, then shorter, then longer again.

And through it all, style’s been paramount.

“I’m definitely of the era where it was important to look good,” said Greg Morrill, the writer behind the Stowe Reporter’s Retro-Ski column.“I was definitely a proponent of the colorful, flowery shirts.”

Launched three years ago, the Retro-Ski column explores the history and evolution of the sport in weekly installments, complete with trivia questions. Morrill recently turned his column into a book, featuring 50 bite-sized trips down skiing’s memory lane.

“Retro-Ski, A Nostalgic Look Back at Skiing,” showcases a winter sports saga that more often than not dovetails with Morrill’s own experiences. Over 60-plus years of skiing, Morrill has worn the hot and not-so-hot gear, skied countless famous and infamous trails, and fallen off his share of rope tows and T-bars.

“I started off with a list of ideas that took me through the first three years (of the column),” Morrill said. “It’s been mostly memoirs, and it’s been triggering memories in other folks, too.”

Morrill grew up on skis, starting at the age of 4 in his family’s backyard near Conway, N.H. He decided to base his decisions on where to live and work on skiing. In 1968, he answered an employment ad for IBM in Essex that highlighted the plant’s proximity to four ski resorts.

Although he now lives in Stowe, he didn’t ski at Mount Mansfield right off.

“That year, Stowe raised its price to $10 a day. We were like, ‘Who do they think they are?’” Morrill said. Soon, though, a friend brought him to Stowe for some spring runs, and Morrill found his mountain. He’s been skiing Mount Mansfield regularly ever since, and he ranks Stowe’s famous Front Four trails up there with any resort’s most hallowed runs.

“I can still tear everywhere up, and these (National, Lift Line, Starr and Goat) are still a challenge to me,” he said.

Morrill traces numerous evolutions in “Retro-Ski.” There are the evolving ways to get up the mountain, like the 1934-designed rope tows, which “have a way of ensnaring anything remotely loose and wreaking havoc,” and the short-lived Skimobile at Morrill’s hometown Cranmore Mountain. There are whole essays on boots through the ages. The book chronicles the origins of resorts like Snowbird and Alta, Mad River and Killington, and famous skiers with names like Killy, Kidd, Pitou and Kinmont.

So what technological advancement does Morrill think is most responsible for growing the sport of skiing into the millions?

Stretch pants.

“By 1955, the pants were available in 42 colors and a wide range of sizes. Suddenly, skiwear was fashionable and sexy. So skiing was fashionable! Skiing was sexy!” Miller notes in one piece.

He describes how between the end of World War II and the end of the 1960s, the sport grew from fewer than 50,000 skiers to more than 4 million. “Prior to stretch pants, women took up skiing to meet men, but only after the introduction of stretch pants did men take up skiing to meet women,” he writes.

“Retro-Ski,” by Stowe Reporter columnist Greg Morrill, is available at Bear Pond Books and the Vermont Ski and Snowboard Museum in Stowe, and at Haymaker Card and Gift in Morrisville.