The Girls of Skiing

A two-mile Gondola ride up Vail Mountain, then you suddenly see this irresistible girl, sipping spicy Glühwein at Mid-Vail Restaurant before taking that final run down Bear Tree. She's standing alone, leaning against a fireplace; her face, bronzed by sun and flushed by wind, radiates an inner smile. She's beat from racing down the slopes all day, but she's hardly ready to call it a night. Back East, at Mt. Snow in Vermont, you catch a glimpse of her again, partying with the après-ski crowd at Reuben Snow Tavern. Out on the sunny slopes of California's Mammoth Mountain, you find her once more--well on her way to perfecting her christie. She's your own idealized image, but she really exists--stretch-pants-clad and sun-goggled--among the hundreds of thousands who frequent America's rapidly expanding winter-sports resorts. She's often a blonde, usually in her early 20s. Her lifestyle is as free as her hair blowing in the breeze; and she comes in two basic models: the weekender or short-term vacationer and the (text continued on page 165)the girls of Skiing(continued from page 131) long-stay ski bum. The latter, a season-pass skier, is the purist, the devotee. She's often an expert who assaults life with all the verve she brings to every slalom. Twenty-four-year-old Hedy Chew, who finances her snowy pursuits by working as a model and sometime hula dancer in the Mt. Snow area, is typical. She revels in the outdoors with a consummate zest; for when she's not digging her edges into hard pack, she's flying on water skis, playing tennis, hiking or cooking (barbecue, of course). Blonde and blue-eyed Debbie Chenoweth candidly lists her occupation as ski bum. The daughter of a film producer, she says, "I came to Vail because I won a trip on The Dating Game TV show and got into the place so much that I decided to stay the winter."

The principal thing to remember about girls who spend the season in or near a winter-sports area is that they're fiercely independent creatures--high-spirited and outgoing, in the main. Their preferences run to all kinds of men, but there is one type that, it seems universally agreed, gets nowhere: the paternal sort. We asked Belgium-born Marlon Ellis, of Buttermilk, about her preference in men: "I'm most attracted to the down-to-earth type," she told us.

Mammoth's Kerrie Gorman--who admits, "I'm ready to go anywhere or try anything, as long as it's challenging and stimulating to my mind"--leans toward the "strong-minded man who's not hung up on routine."

Clearly, one needn't be a ski aficionado to strike up a friendship with a ski girl. Nevertheless, it's good to keep in mind that the miss who's limited to weekend wintering--though she, too, may be a schuss-booming expert--is seldom as dedicated to the sport as her zealous counterpart. Sheridan Tumler just recently caught the skiing bug; but her studies at San Fernando Valley State College in Northridge confine her participation to weekends. "Frankly, I haven't the time or the money," she says, "to devote myself full time to skiing." Sheridan, a former high school record-holding track athlete, also plays tennis on her college championship team. "Naturally," she declares, "because I'm involved with collegiate sports, I have to worry about getting hurt skiing. Who needs a broken leg on the tennis team?"

Yoga instructor and movie actress Judy Pfaff spent vacations in Aspen and seriously considered living there until she landed a part in Larry (Goodbye, Columbus) Peerce's film The Sporting Club. "I have to say," says Judy, "I miss the guys I used to meet in Aspen. They were both sensitive and adventurous--a great combination. But when Peerce offered me the chance to fly to the movie location in Arkansas for a screen test, I couldn't pack soon enough."

But what is it that lures these people to the slopes? When a publicist for Vermont's Sugarbush Mountain polled a representative group of skiers, more than half of those surveyed listed exercise as skiing's greatest benefit. About one out of five replied that for him--or her--romantic social experience (primarily après-ski) was the sport's greatest enticement. "Where else but at a ski resort," claimed one enthusiast, "can you find such a fantastic combination of great food, constant booze and beautiful chicks?" Those polled were also asked, "Why do you ski?" More than a third echoed the sentiments of one pretty coed, "I like the accomplishment, the sensation of winning my own personal battle with the elements." But nearly as many (mostly male) answered, "I don't care what skiing is supposed to mean; I'm here for one reason--sex."

There definitely is something about the atmosphere of a ski resort--whether it's in the East or the West--that's conducive to developing casual friendly relationships with a wide variety of unusually attractive girls. Just a glance at our pictorial will confirm that no part of the country where skiing thrives is short on the supply of such delights. From the East, we have girls from New Jersey and Vermont; from the Rockies, from Colorado and Utah; and from the Far West, from California and Nevada. And though she may not be aware of it, each girl is subtly influenced by her region.

Easily identifiable, the girls of the West Coast are, in most cases, more freewheeling and informal than their sisters to the east, and their approach to life is disarmingly open. Sue Cary, a drama student and dirt-riding motorcyclist when she's not skiing at California's Mammoth Mountain, claims she has "a thing for total honesty." Currently trying to break into disc jockeying, while enrolled at Los Angeles City College, Sue confesses, "I'm most partial to truthful guys who are generous and enthusiastic, and whenever I go skiing, I have no trouble finding them." Part-time ski instructor Renee Smith, 23, also of Mammoth, says she had little patience for the kind of life she was leading in L.A. "The city isn't any place for a recent divorcee like myself," she explains. "I had to get away from the old routine; and even though salaries aren't as good here, I make enough by giving lessons to support myself, pay for my skiing--and have a better time than I would at home."

In contrast, the girls from Rockies resorts seem a bit more cautious--but considerably more down to earth--than the Far Western breed. Generally from higher-income homes, principally in the Southwest and Midwest, they dig good times with an intensity equal to anyone's, but they're less likely to impart transcendental virtues to having fun. A salient example is Vail's Jacqueline Billings, an ex-English teacher and former Peace Corps volunteer who insists, "I couldn't go back to a city to marry a man who didn't want this kind of life. Most guys spend their whole lives working, looking forward to taking two-week vacations to do what I'm doing all year. I don't feel my lifestyle is escapist. This is the way people should live. People have just as many problems here, but whatever difficulties arise, they're not compounded by pollution, garbage strikes and traffic. In Vail. I have everything I need--except, maybe, a good Chinese restaurant."

America's first winter resorts grew up along the Eastern Seaboard, and here tradition exerts a powerful--some say charming, some say stifling--influence on the sport. In 1940, Stowe, in central Vermont, opened its lifts as the first bona fide ski area in the eastern United States; and within a few snowfalls, its combination of breath-taking beauty, challenging trails and Colonial American charm became the most desirable for any winter vacation. Because of their proximity to the Atlantic megalopolis, Eastern resorts today swell with humanity, especially on weekends. The girls who dot the hills of New York, Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire are more apt to be there for the weekend or a conventional two-week vacation than for the entire season. Here, that effusive miss you meet on a chair lift is more likely to be a student or a working girl and, on the average, she'll be a year or two younger than the mountain maids of the West.

Most New Yorkers are drawn to Vermont, while for Boston-area urbanites, New Hampshire resorts are the magnet. An exception to that rule, however, is Boston's Sandy Taft, 26, who not only made lift money by serving cocktails at a Mt. Snow restaurant but entered the Miss Mt. Snow and Miss Vermont beauty contests, winning the latter three years ago. "Since graduating from college," says Sandy with a shrug, "I haven't found anything I really want to do--except ski." A weekend Snow bird is 26-year-old Patricia Louzan, a first-grade teacher living in a Boston suburb. Like many enterprising Eastern ski fans, Patricia and three other girls rent a chalet in Vermont for the winter. "Nearly every Friday," she says, "I leave right after work and drive from Boston to Mt. Snow. Most weekends, the roads are clear and the trip rarely takes more than three hours. By early that evening, we're dancing at a bar called Fat City and, by Saturday morning, we're skiing." Great Gorge, New Jersey's largest ski site, is less than two hours from Manhattan. Much of its popularity is due to such amenities as illuminated trails for night skiing, a 27-hole golf course, horseback riding and the 700-room Playboy Club-Hotel.

The Rockies, more distant from our principal population centers, draw fewer weekend skiers--and more exponents of the singular lifestyle crudely dubbed ski bumming. One practitioner of that style is Aspenite Garrie Walls, who tends bar in Beverly Hills during the off season. "I suppose," she admits, "that I am a ski bum, but I really don't like the term. The implication is that those of us who lead this kind of life don't work, and nothing could be further from the truth. A season pass," she explains, "costs about $300; and whether I waitress, wash dishes or instruct, I earn every cent that pays for my skiing." It is, after all, the skiing that draws so many to the Rocky Mountains. Aspen, with its four major ski sites, 250 miles of trail, 70 lodges and never-ending night life, seems the embodiment of a winter-lover's paradise. As North America's most extensive ski resort, Aspen combines a monumental range of choice with a sense of tolerance that led to the candidacy of Rolling Stone editor Hunter Thompson for sheriff there.

Newer Breckenridge bills itself as "the family ski resort," but the pristine quality of its powder was enough to convince Norwegian-born ski instructor Inger Tragethon to apply for U. S. citizenship. Jackson Hole, in Wyoming's Big Sky country, is the U. S. choice for this year's Alpine Ski Championships, and with good reason. Situated in the broad expanses of Teton National Forest, Jackson boasts one bowl that can serve as the apotheosis of Western-style skiing. It's called the Rendezvous and its tree-free slope is a quarter of a mile wide. At Sun Valley, the ski drifter mingles with the movie star as well as the leisured classes, and head man Bill Janss warns the newcomer to "count on a week to ski all the runs." As a retreat for such luminaries as Ernest Hemingway, this elegant resort in Idaho's Sawtooth Mountains gained fame and a jet-set crowd that demanded--and got--the best.

Vail, Colorado's Tyrolean fantasyland, has completed a sister resort, Vail/Lions-Head, that offers its typically cosmopolitan clientele even more fresh powder, unsurpassed accommodations, diverse après-ski pastimes and calculated Alpine charm. Indeed, it would be difficult to name a winter resort as meticulously planned as Vail, where everything from trail expansion to town landscaping to gas-station decor is defined by law. And though the girls of this resort are supposed to be more reserved than their cross-mountain rivals at Aspen, they claim--and vigorously--that their brand of Western hospitality is as openhanded as anyone's.

In California, miners in the Sierras were strapping Norwegian-type snowshoes to their boots as early as 1854. These snowshoes differed from the commonly seen Canadian (or webbed) variety in that they were boards usually hewn from spruce. By today's standards, these primitive skis were ludicrously long (some measured 20 feet), but the features of turned-up toes and narrow width make the Norwegian snowshoe quite recognizable to any latter-day powder lover. As legend has it, the miners not only used their spruces to cut across blizzard-battered mountain trails but held ski races and other winter events for fun.

Yet, despite California's early introduction to the sport, it was nearly three generations before the first site, Sugar-bowl, appeared there--in 1938. Today there is no paucity of superlative ski setups in the state, nor is there any shortage of Golden State girls enlivening them. The many Angelenos featured in our pictorial, for instance, are most often drawn to Mammoth Mountain, one of the state's biggest. On any given weekend from November to as late as July, tram-loads of singles head for Mammoth's complex of condominiums and gemütlich lodges. One regular is vegetarian Becky Harlowe, who seems quite happy with her healthy, if ascetic, existence at Mammoth. When she's not immersing herself in Vedic mythology, Buddhist philosophy, the works of Indian mystic Krishnamurti or other methods of inner discovery, Becky spends her spare off-slope hours distributing organic soaps and food supplements to local head shops. "No nine-to-five life for me," she avers.

Becky and her confreres, whether they be at Vail, Stowe or Sun Valley, are the incarnation of your fantasy of that girl by the fireplace. Next time you see her, just walk over and say hello. That'll be the first step in turning your dream into reality.