Warren Miller: 1924 - 2018

[WaistDeepGroomers]

RIP. Not a one like him since. Plus, I don't think anyone has ski bummed that hard on the boards, living in an unheated trailer and shooting game for food. Core!!

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[AKbruin]

RIP.

I watched a lot of Warren Miller films in the late 80's and early 90's. The footage and his voice were like ski comfort food.

[ACH]

“If you don't do it this year, you will be one year older when you do.”

Been my motto for some time now.

Yeah, that one stuck the first time i heard it...

RIP Warren, you shared your love of skiing and the mountains with all, inspiring many, including myself.

FWIW, the man could rip on long boards.
I'll toast to your memory at this years LBD Warren.

[SILENCER]

RIP.

I watched a lot of Warren Miller films in the late 80's and early 90's. The footage and his voice were like ski comfort food.

Bingo...well said.

I'm gonna fire up one of his classic films tonight and drink strong beer in his honor. One of kind he was.

[goldengatestinx]

Such an icon. I have so many fond memories of watching his films from a young age.

"You want your skis? Go get em!"

Beat me to this quote...this and the one year older ran through my mind as I heard it on the radio news.

From that teardrop to this:



Firing up the VHS for the evening.

Please be kind, rewind!

[willywhit]

Beat me to this quote...this and the one year older ran through my mind as I heard it on the radio news.

From that teardrop to this:



Firing up the VHS for the evening.

that's a sweet sticker, right thar

[goldengatestinx]

So I'm told!

I remember going to WM movies as a kid...real reel to reel film...never saw one where Warren narrated in person but my Dad did. Probably met him. I need to ask him.

We'd plan for the movie night as soon as it was getting cold. Best were in little places. School gym, cafeteria, etc. I think there were some in the lodge at Kissing Bridge.

[#######]

“The best place in the world to ski is where you’re skiing that day.”

I bumped his chair at Big Sky in the late 90's when he was skiing with Scot Schmidt. Only time I was every star struck.

[yardsale2]

Thinking of him while sitting in our camper in Tetonia.

[::: :::]

One of our clients was a friend of WM and had some memorabilia. She was kind enough to give me a movie jacket knowing that I would appreciate it.



Rip in peace

[evasive_MT]

[digger]

“If you don't do it this year, you will be one year older when you do.”

“If your parents didn’t have children, odds are you won’t either”

RIP

[bodywhomper]

I really enjoyed the writing that he did for "the ski journal".

[goldengatestinx]

VHS watched the two I could find. There's another box with a bunch in the storage room. Ski Time and Steep and Deep. Gotta find the red, gray and white jacket that's buried somewhere.

[Garth Bimble]

[robrox]

Thanks. Wonderful tribute piece.

[mooseknuckle]

No doubt. Gave me goosebumps.

[Johnny Gunn]

RIP.

I watched a lot of Warren Miller films in the late 80's and early 90's. The footage and his voice were like ski comfort food.

Agreed ... Thank you Mr. Miller for opening my eyes to skiing!

[digger]

Some great stuff in his lines Some more well known that others.

“I won’t ruin a good story with the absolute truth.”
“Never tell a lie, because you don’t have a good enough memory.”
“Always try everything at least twice.”
“Freedom is located somewhere outside the box.”
“If at first you don’t succeed, failure may be your thing.”
“On the other hand, you have different fingers.”
“One-seventh of your life is spent on Monday.”
“If you don’t have any idea where you’re going, you’ll probably end up there.”
“Freedom is when preparation meets the opportunity you have created.”
“How old would you be if you didn’t know when you were born?”
“Birthdays are good for you – the more you have the longer you live.”
“Don’t take life seriously, because you won’t come out of it alive.”
“Die living.”
“Adventure is the invitation for common people to become uncommon.”
“You can’t get hurt skiing unless you fall.”
“The definition of extreme is to go past your known limits by an unknown amount.”
“The best place in the world to ski is where you’re skiing that day.”
“If you don’t do it this year, you’ll be one year older when you do.”

[esseff]

Kinda ironic they both ended up over the ridge at the Y.C.

I always liked "why wreck a good story with the absolute truth"

I bumped his chair at Big Sky in the late 90's when he was skiing with Scot Schmidt. Only time I was every star struck.

[Wibby]

I really enjoyed the writing that he did for "the ski journal".

Here is the full interview of the Warren Miller interview in The Ski Journal.

Thank you Warren.

https://www.theskijournal.com/exclusive/warren-miller

[goldengatestinx]

If I were any luckier, I would have to be two people because I've been able to spend the past 52 Christmases skiing somewhere in the world. I always spend some of that time running my movie camera so I can share the sunshine and snow with people who might not have had either. During my Christmas vacations, I've skied and filmed powder snow, blue ice, corn snow, very little snow and no snow. And I've learned quite a few lessons along the way, both on and off the slopes.



Christmas Day, 1958, I watched three instructors trying to thread their classes down the Half Dollar ski hill with the rest of Sun Valley shut down because of tall sage brush and very little snow. Talking to Sepp, the ski school manager, I said, "You ought to look into those new snowmaking machines I just filmed, the ones Walt Stopa has at Wilmot in Wisconsin." Sepp's answer was "Those snowmaking machines are OK for those back east ski resorts. But we don't need them here in Idaho, where we get a lot of snow."

Today almost every ski resort in America has snowmaking machinery and many start them up in September so they can offer skiing by Halloween. A lot of skiers are upset if they don't have great skiing by Thanksgiving, much less Christmas. And if it hasn't dumped 7* feet of snow by New Year's Eve, those same skiers write off the winter as a bad one. Personally, I try to spend the early season looking for the snow between the rocks. As my three children grew in age and size, we kept up the Christmas road-trip tradition. It was always hard to finish up a 75-city tour with my feature ski film, have three days to get caught up in the office, pack the car with our skis and luggage and start driving 900 miles to spend Christmas in the mountains. After driving for 18 hours on four hours sleep, the magic of looking out the ski lodge window in the predawn darkness and seeing new powder snow always erased any fatigue and frustration I might have brought with me. Later, while walking to breakfast with my children, feeling the crunch of snow under our feet, seeing our breath in the clean mountain air, throwing snowballs at each other, and listening to the distant boom of avalanche guns, my life always got back into focus. No one can ever take those holiday memories away from my family.But in recent years, something different has been happening around the base of the ski hill on Christmas day. I hear it in childrens' voices. It's a different attitude.







"My Christmas tree has more presents under it than yours.""Tommy has a more expensive _____(fill in the blank) than I do." Materialism is creeping into people at much too young an age. Does it come from the parents' attitude that their condo is bigger than yours? There used to be a saying about "Keeping up with the Joneses." Why not just be one of the Joneses? Then if anyone wants to try to keep up with you, let it be when you're carving first tracks on a powder morning.

I have seen wives send their husbands' corporate jet back to their hometown to pick up a special dress they forgot to include in the 19 suitcases of clothes they brought for the many Christmas parties. A friend once told me that her husband had given her a parachute for Christmas. I was a little surprised because she was not the skydiving type. She explained that her husband had given her a parachute-not for personal use but for their jet, so they could land at airports with shorter runways and wouldn't have to spend so much time in the limo getting to the ski resort.

Everyone has at least one story for every Christmas of his or her life. One year, just after the holidays, I was filming a celebrity ski race and met a young lady named Tracy Taylor. She was the March of Dimes poster girl that year. She was born with spina bifida, which causes paralysis, and at the age of 11 she was no bigger than a minute.



After the opening ceremonies she had her picture taken in the arms of each celebrity, and when the photoshoot was over, I held her in my arms and skied over to where her mom was sitting. Tracy was wearing plaster casts from her toes to her hips, and when I put her down in her wheel chair, I turned to her mother and asked, "How much does Tracy weigh?"

"About 35 pounds."

"That's about the same as one of my movie cameras with a tripod. Would you let Tracy take a ski run with me?"Without hesitation her mom answered, "Sure."I picked Tracy up in my arms and coasted over to the chairlift. Taking advantage of the ski school line, we jumped right onto the chair and started for the top of the mountain. When I began skiing down with her cradled in my arms, her pencil-thin arms were wrapped tightly around my neck. Before I had made a half dozen turns her death-grip around my neck began to ease, and within a hundred yards she was waving at anyone who was standing alongside the ski run.

Tracy had a spirit that I have never seen in another human. By the time we got to the bottom of the hill, word had spread, and people were cheering her every time we made a turn. Tracy was hooting and hollering and giving everyone the thumbs up.

On the next run, as we gently cruised over the smaller bumps, I alternately held her down between my legs or lifted her high above my head, pretending she was getting big air. At the age of 11, Tracy had become an extreme skier.



Two weeks later I made arrangements for Tracy to fly to Denver and go to ski school with Hal O'Leary in Winter Park, Colo. Hal pretty much invented handicapped ski instruction, and he taught her how to ski down a hill school with Hal O'Leary in Winter Park, Colo. Hal pretty much invented handicapped ski instruction, and he taught her how to ski down a hill all by herself. During her whole life, she had never been able to walk without crutches and braces, yet after her first nonstop ski run on the fourth day she said, "God made me this way on purpose so I can prove to the world that anyone can do anything they want to do."

What are you going to be doing this Christmas season? How about spending a day giving some ski lessons to people who might not be able to afford a day on the hill? All it takes is some of your time and some of your old equipment that's rusting in your garage. How about talking your favorite ski resort manager into letting everyone ride the resort's short, flat, beginner's chairlift all day for a ten dollar bill and throwing in the free use of some of last year's rental ski equipment at the same time?





I remember one very special Christmas Eve almost 50 years ago. My young wife had just died of cancer and our son was barely a year-and-a-half old. I was heading back to my hotel room alone in a blizzard with the wind blowing 25 mph and the single stoplight in town swinging in the wind. As I waited for the signal to change, I glanced over at the curb. At 2:30 on Christmas morning there was an elderly man sitting on a bench in the blowing snow waiting for the bus with his Seeing Eye dog. I drove about half a mile before I was able to make a U-turn and go back to offer the blind man and his dog a ride. I was across the street when a big red van pulled up and the man with the white and red cane and his dog climbed aboard. The van driver was a very fat man with long white hair, a big white beard and a twinkle in his eye. He looked over at me as they drove away together, and I realized on that Christmas morning that if I were any luckier I would have to be two people.

[goldengatestinx]

Where's The Spirit?

Warren Miller

Warren Miller· Sep 25, 2000



















warrens world pic 1000



In 1936, Union Pacific Railroad president Averell Harriman created Sun Valley, Idaho, because he had enjoyed skiing in St. Anton, Austria. But there was no uphill transportation in St. Anton and he had to climb to ski, so he had engineers invent the chairlift in his railroad yard in Omaha, Neb., in July. The many different parts were designed, fabricated and transported to a remote hill near the end of a railroad spur in Ketchum, Idaho, and then hauled up the hill on the backs of mules. Five months later, just in time for Christmas, the lift carried skiers up Dollar Mountain.



In the Thirties, U.S. Forest Service permits could be had for the asking and the American destination ski resort was invented. Harriman had enough capital behind him to buy 4,500 acres of land around that first chairlift so he could build a base village, too. A year later, a young snow surveyor walked into a bank in Bishop, Calif., and asked to borrow $84 against his Harley to buy the parts for his first ropetow. The banker initially turned him down but when he left, the banker's secretary said, "If you don't loan that nice young man that $84, I'm going to quit." The banker loaned the young entrepreneur the money and since then Dave McCoy has personally supervised the construction of all 31 lifts on Mammoth Mountain. At one time during his more than 60-year career, Dave even owned the bank that loaned him the original $84.





In 1948, Harriman's Sun Valley decided to build a new lift on Dollar Mountain. The manager of Sun Valley at the time, Pappy Rogers, wanted $5,000 for the original single chair. Everett Kircher, an automobile salesman from Detroit, offered him $4,800 and bought the lift as is, where is. Everett and his ski school director, Victor Gotschalk, took the lift apart bolt by bolt and trucked it to nearby Ketchum, where they loaded it on a train and shipped it to Michigan. Everett converted it into a double chairlift and put it up on the then-400-foot-high Boyne Mountain. As the story goes, Kircher bought the Boyne land for less than a hundred dollars from a farmer who couldn't grow any crops on the side of it. But it was the highest mountain in Michigan and under Kircher's guidance it became a huge success. Today the Kircher family also owns Boyne Highlands, Big Sky, Mont., Crystal Mountain, Wash., Brighton, Utah, and seven golf courses that stretch from Michigan to Florida.



In the late Thirties, Wayne Poulsen and Marty Arroge bought a meadow in the Sierras for a rumored $10,000. In 1948 they sold part of it to Alex Cushing so he could build California's first double chairlift. Alex not only built a chairlift, he started to develop a world-class resort that later would host the 1960 Winter Olympics.I had the good fortune to teach skiing at Squaw Valley that first winter of 1949-50. On a good day all four of us instructors would each have a pupil. When the powder was too deep to teach, I took 16 mm movies and produced my first feature-length ski film for less than $600.

About that same time Bob Mickelsen, who was the president of the Edelweiss skiwear company, found an isolated piece of land that was within 50 miles of Seattle and a short distance from a six-lane freeway. I spent two days flying around in a helicopter with Jim Whitaker, the first American to summit Everest, and three or four other skiers and again put together another promotional film for Bob to sell vacant lots at his potential ski resort. The first morning he showed the film in Seattle, he sold 47 lots at what later became Alpental.

In the late Fifties, a veteran of the Tenth Mountain Division found the place to build his dream ski resort so he and some friends bought a ranch under the guise that they were going to build a rod and gun club. Then he built a scale model of his dream, which was actually a ski resort. He put it in the back of his faded blue '55 Plymouth station wagon alongside his bed and traveled all over America trying to interest people in buying vvacant lots. Those vacant lots sold for $5,000 and $10,000 and with each lot you got four lifetime season passes thrown in. The $20,000 homes that were built on those $5,000 lots in the Sixties have sold as tear-downs recently for as much as $8 million. Pete Seibert was the entrepreneur and his dream resort became Vail, Colo.



Throughout the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies, major destination ski resorts were being created at the rate of about one every year or two. Then, gradually, environmental groups made the permit process impossible to cope with.

The last destination resort built in America was Deer Valley, and that was in 1981 on mostly private property. Meanwhile, Tom Dempsey in California has invested $8 million of his own money and eight years of his life trying to get a ski resort started near Mammoth. He has been shut down once again because someone discovered a rare breed of fish that lives a few miles below his land in the creek that runs through the valley at the bottom of his ski hill.

The current entrepreneurial trend is to simply buy up existing ski resorts and to homogenize them under one ownership. They are moving numbers around on a financial balance sheet and selling stock instead of logging ski trails, moving dirt, putting up ski lifts and building dreams.





It has been fascinating for 50 years to watch the change in attitude that has become so anti-entrepreneur. I used to be able to phone someone at a ski resort and ask if I could stop by and take movies to help promote their new resort in my next new ski film.

Last fall I was looking for new things to film in the ski business. I telephoned a major ski resort in Colorado for its 218-page four-color brochure. The electronic voice that answered said, "S-p-e-l-l—y-o-u-r—n-a-m-e—a-n-d—a-d-d-r-e-s-s—s-l-o-w-l-y."



The electronic voice repeated my correct name and address and then said, "P-l-e-a-s-e—a-l-l-o-w—f-o-u-r—t-o—s-i-x—w-e-e-k-s—f-o-r—d-e-l-i-v-e-r-y."

I made that phone call in November and I never did get the brochure. The whole experience made me appreciate the past, and people like Ted Johnson, who used to flip burgers at the top of the ski lift at Alta. At the end of the day he would ski over the ridge and down into the next valley. Before long he was buying up old mining claims from little old ladies who lived in house trailers in Torrance, Calif., or in tract homes in Minneapolis, Minn. When Ted had all of the mining claims and surface rights bought up, he took a movie that I had edited for him on the road and convinced Dick Bass to fund his dream. Together they created Snowbird, Utah.

Where have all of the entrepreneurs gone? Most of them have had their spirit destroyed by the people who chain themselves to the trees when someone tries to build a new ski resort. And so you might ask yourself: What would you be doing this winter if these entrepreneurs had not been able to build their dreams?

[goldengatestinx]

Ski Freedom

Warren Miller

Warren Miller· Dec 14, 2001
Warren's World 0102



In 1919, soon after World War I, Hannes Schneider of St. Anton, Austria, said, "If everyone skied, there would be no wars." Two decades later, Schneider escaped religious persecution from a non-skiing madman and fled to the U.S. He spread his knowledge of ski technique and freedom at Mt. Cranmore, N.H., thus becoming the father of American ski instruction.



I first read Hannes' words while I was living in a parking lot in Sun Valley, Idaho, in 1947. They were true when he spoke them in 1919, they were true at the outbreak of World War II and they were true in 1947. And they are still true today.

Man's fundamental drive is his search for freedom and equality. For no reason that I can explain, some people-especially skiers-answer to that instinctive search for freedom and equality more than others.

My skis have taken me to the many corners of the world in the search for freedom. During my first winter of skiing in Sun Valley, I learned that I could dine on free oyster crackers and ketchup for lunch, then ride on the same chairlift with Gary Cooper and his wife-or even Averell Harriman, the president of Union Pacific Railroad and founder of the resort. When we got to the top, we were all equals. When we weren't skiing, Gary and his wife were paying the then unheard of price of $30 a night for a room in the lodge with a fireplace. My fireplace was the Coleman stove out behind my 8-foot-longtrailer that I cooked dinner on. We were still equals, though I was a little colder.Last winter, the Warren Miller film company sent a camera crew and skiers to Iran. They discovered a ski resort there that had some lifts for men only and some lifts for women only. But the lifts went to the top of the same hill, so that men and women, though segregated by law, found equal footing on the slopes.







Even though Iranian religion and culture are radically different from ours, the Warren Miller crew bonded with the locals. Was that because the cameramen got to ride on the women's lift-and the sky still didn't fall down? Or because they shared a passion for skiing, and the freedom and equality that goes with the sport? The camera crew got great footage of both the men and the women skiing, even though the women of Iran were treated as second-class citizens-regardless of the financial status of their husbands or fathers.

The same thing that occurred in Iran happened to me in Sun Valley, when my pair of skis broke down the barriers between myself and Gary Cooper...and even the man who created Sun Valley. At the top of any ski hill, gravity makes a mockery of what the various governments stand for-and further emphasizes what Hannes Schneider said more than 80 years ago.I can remember my first day on a pair of skis, and so can you-no matter how long ago it was. For me it was in 1937, at the end of a dirt road that led to Mt. Waterman. Two years later, a chairlift was installed that would later provide freedom for a lot of soldiers and sailors on leave during World War II, myself included.

In 1945, I had earned some leave from the Navy because our ship was sunk in a hurricane in the South Pacific during the war. I spent every day of my leave on a ropetow in Yosemite. I knew I was going to be sent back overseas again, but during that leave I had total freedom. I was free to ski as much and as fast as my adrenaline would allow.



What is closer to total freedom and equality than two skiers standing on a summit with blue sky overhead and a long steep mountainside of untracked powder snow below? You can go wherever you want, at whatever speed you want, using any style you want. And whoever you are skiing with will be waiting for you when you get there. It doesn't really matter who gets there first, because both of you have your freedom on the way down. When Hannes Schneider said, "If everyone skied, there would be no wars" in 1919, there were no ski lifts of any kind, not even rope tows. The only way to get up a hill was by putting one foot in front of the other. There were no metal edges, metal skis, safety bindings, plastic boots, condominiums, snowmaking machines, rental cars, video ski lessons, aluminum ski poles, waterproof clothes or crash helmets. But the essence of skiing was still the same then, and each of the above was invented to help us enjoy it even more.

[goldengatestinx]

Warren Miller: Fast Times

In ski racing, even the smallest advantage can produce a victory—and often the edge is right under your feet.

Warren Miller· Feb 8, 2018
Originally published in September 2004 issue of SKI Magazine.

It was a cold spring day in 1935 at the summit of the Weissflugipfel in Davos, Switzerland. The 43 ski racers, who were going to put their lives on the line for the Parsenn Derby, a 7.5-mile downhill race to the village of Kublis, had prepared as best they could. This would be the toughest downhill ever held. The course had no gates of any kind. Just a start and a finish line. Any route was fair game. With enough courage and ability, a racer could take any shortcut he could find. He could rocket through farms, careen down icy hay-sled paths, get airborne across switchbacks and, if the snow was deep enough, ski right over buried fences. I can't even call it a racecourse, because almost every racer had a different route.




Warren Miller November 2002




Warren Miller

On race day, the curious queued up early to ride the new Parsenn Bahn cable railway to watch the anticipated carnage of this odd new sport of ski racing. The forerunner, a lad named Wolfgang, shoved off with encouragement from several hundred spectators shouting in half a dozen languages. He had a Swiss cowbell tied around his neck to warn anyone-or anything-to get out of the way.


Not one of the best skiers, Wolfgang finally arrived in Kublis some 34 minutes later. Upon his finish, officials waved a flag at the telegraph operator in the railroad station, who then telephoned an official in Davos Dorf, who in turn telephoned the Weissflujoch Station at the top of the Parsenn Bahn, where another flag was raised to signal race officials at the top of the course that the course was clear.







One by one, the racers straggled in with tales of near death at speeds previously unimaginable, up to 30 mph in some sections.

Racer No. 3, his bib torn almost off his body, reported that deaf old Friedl had forgotten about the race and walked his cows home after their morning watering.
Most of them had left droppings in the middle of the route. Racer No. 3, however, still set the time to beat, a new course record at 28 minutes.



Then when bib No. 19 finished in less than 25 minutes, the spectators went berserk. No. 19, who had built two jumps over the farmyards, missed his first one, yet somehow made it to the finish line-albeit with only one pole and one and a half skis.

Suddenly, a young Swiss racer hurtled out of the trees, with a number completely out of sequence. Either he had started at the wrong time or he had passed a dozen racers. At 19 minutes, his time would be the fastest of the day by almost six minutes.

Walter Prager, who would become the ski coach at Dartmouth College, was the man who set the record for the Parsenn Derby Downhill that day. It was a record that would stand for more than a decade.

His secrets? The right wax, skiing skills as fine as anyone on the hill and a stealth weapon: metal edges, which many of the racers hadn't even seen before.

Walter had spent a week studying the routes from the summit. Two days before the race, the variables came together. He realized that all of his left turns would be on hard snow, and all of his right turns would be on soft snow. The night before the race, Walter unscrewed the steel edges on the right-hand side of his skis and replaced them with brass edges he had made himself. Why? Because Walter's uncle, an engineer, had convinced him that brass edges would have a lower coefficient of friction in the warmer, wet soft snow.

Did Walter realize how metal edges would change the sport? Who knows? But on that day nearly 70 years ago, technology and skiing collided on a crazy racecourse in Switzerland, and they haven't been apart since.