Nic Oatridge – Page 5 – Alpine Winter Sports

17/10/202422/04/2026

The Development of Winter Sports in the Engadine

By W. G. Lockett and Margaret Lockett

Source: Year Book of the Ski Club of Great Britain 1942, p3-14.

PRELUDE TO WINTER SPORTS: A GLANCE AT MOUNTAINEERING.

ON Boxing Day in the year 1860 the lonely sleeping village of Grindelwald was awakened and astonished by the arrival of a large party of English visitors, who pulled up outside the famous Bear Hotel, un- expectedly, but expectant. They came from Berne (from the Bear Town to the Bear Hotel), and their ringleader, a young secretary of the British Legation, who knew mine host of the “Bear,” managed to persuade him to open and warm the hotel.

Six years later guests of the same exceptional stamp went up from Montreux and invaded Chateau d’Oex in winter.

What these enterprising parties were after, however, was hardly what we mean by “winter sport,” but winter mountaineering; and winter mountaineering before (or after!) ski were used for climbing does not come within the scope of this book, except superficially as demonstrating the drive towards the Alps in winter that made itself evident in the 1860’s.

It may nevertheless be useful as well as interesting, at this point, to mention a few mountaineering feats in the Grisons tending to show that this region, in spite of the isolation elsewhere ascribed to it, was already even a century ago, being visited and climbed by a few Alpinists, British among them.

Herr A. Flugi of Silvaplana has compiled statistics of first ascents in the Engadine, going back to 1820 and in greater detail from 1844. From this we borrow a few particulars relating to British Alpinists.

The first British ascent given is that of Piz Bernina on 23rd July, 1861, by Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Hardy, whose acquaintance the Fresh- fields made on their tour that summer. Mr. Buxton with guides went to the top peak of Piz Palü in 1862. The next year Mr. Buxton with Messrs. Digby and Johnson and guide did Piz Sella (Rosegtal), and Mr. F. F. Bircham with guides climbed to the north peak of Piz Roseg. In 1864 we meet for the first time in this record the name of Mr. D. W. Freshfield, who, with Mr. J. D. Walker and Sir Melvill Beechcroft, ascended Monte Sissone (Forno group). Freshfield was back again the next summer, when with Tuckett and Buxton, he did Piz Verona (Bernina), a few weeks after Moore and Walker had conquered the south peak of Piz Roseg. The first crossing of the Fedozjoch was accomplished by Freshfield and Tuckett in July, 1866. The first British ascent of Piz Morteratsch was made in July, 1867, by Mr. F. G. Bonney, and in the same season we meet for the only time in these records with the famous name of the Rev. W. A. B. Coolidge who, with two others, made a first ascent of the Cima dei Rossi on 30th July.

No other British name appears in this list until August, 1876, when Messrs. Cordier and Middlemoore were the first to climb Piz Bianco. Then there is another gap until August, 1879, in which month Mr. F. Bircham went up to the Cima di Cantone. Until February, 1878, all these first ascents had been made in summer, and then three times (twice in February and once at the beginning of March) three first winter feats are recorded; but there was no British first winter ascent until 4th February, 1880, when Messrs. C. E. B. Watson and Parnell with two guides got up to the top of the Piz Bernina. In July, 1882, Messrs. Wainwright and J. Legh with two guides were the first to climb Piz Prievlus in the Bernina group.

In the Davos district no such list of first ascents can be given, the only one, in fact, is that already mentioned: the first ascent of the Tinzenhorn by D. W. Freshfield in 1866. Freshfield’s quality may be illustrated by mentioning that it was twelve years before any other human feet were set on the top of the Tinzenhorn. This peak was first climbed in winter on 15th February, 1882, by A. Rzewuski, who had found a cure for asthma at Davos, and still lives there hale and hearty, and has since led a very active life there.

It seems that until the middle of the 1870’s the surrounding mountains were very little climbed, even by the Davosers, who contented themselves with going up the Schiahorn, the Weissfluh, and the Flüela Schwarzhorn, leaving it to strangers to assault the more difficult points and peaks. The earliest undertakings of the kind were of a sort of professional character, the first ascent of Hoch-Ducan in October, 1845, and of Piz Kesch in September, 1846, having been done by a Swiss Inspector of Forests named Coaz, who was doing cartographical work for the Confederal Ordnance Survey Department. He accomplished many such first ascents in the Grisons. Then in 1867 the highest point of Piz Vadret was climbed, apparently by two residents named Hartmann and Fitch. Then we hear of no more adventures of this kind until 1875, by which time Davos was already a health (if not yet quite a sport) resort. A new era began; but for a while it was mostly invalid visitors who did the climbing, conspicuous among whom was a German clergyman named Hauri, who with his friends, and often without a guide, climbed many a Davos peak for the first time. The Rev. Dr Hauri settled in Davos and became one of its foremost men. He wrote a good deal about the place, and for many years delivered a series of I myself attended with profit and pleasure. His favourite poet was popular lectures on scientific and literary subjects, many of which Shakespeare, whom he read in English and lectured upon, as well as his next favourite, Goethe.

I will only mention further that the first winter ascent of the Piz d’Aela, which is such a notable massive object from any viewpoint above Davos, was made by a party of Davosers on 24th November 1881.

The very first recorded Davos ascent with a guide was that of the Flüela Schwarzhorn on 15th August, 1836, when Andreas Mettier, well-known and still well remembered chamois hunter, took out his first “tourist.” A still more famous chamois hunter, Colani, was one of a Swiss party that made the first ascent of Piz Palü (eastern peak) in August of the year before, 1835.

ST. MORITZ: 1860-1890.

It must seem strange, but it is convenient, to commence the story of the very beginnings of winter sport in St. Moritz with a glance at the history of the English Church in that resort.

In the Villa Grünenberg, above the Leaning Tower, there is to be seen the following inscription on a brass plate:To the Memory of
The Rev. A. B. Strettell, for 38 years English Chaplain at St. Moritz, and of Arthur E. V. Strettell, his son, whose home was in this house and who, being the first foreigner to winter at St. Moritz for health’s sake, always desired that others might benefit as he did, this gift to the St. Moritz Aid Fund is dedicated.

The “whose” in this memorial is perhaps a little vague; but it is clear from other sources that the first foreigner to winter for health in St. Moritz was Mr. A. E. V. Strettell, the son of the Chaplain.

It is astonishing how difficult it is to fix these early dates. There is a stained glass window in the English Church in St. Moritz in memory of “Alfred Baker Strettell, First Chaplain at St. Moritz, 1860-1900, by whose effort this Church was built.” Yet we have already been told by a good authority that Mr. Strettell first came to St. Moritz in 1866. And yet it is recorded that the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts became Patron of St. Moritz as long ago as 1863, when they nominated the Rev. A. B. Strettell British Chaplain. Services were held first in a hall in St. Moritz-Bad on Sunday mornings, and in the Swiss Protestant Church at the Dorf in the afternoons. In October, 1864, a local committee was formed to raise funds for building a church under S.P.G. patronage. Services were conducted by Mr. Strettell during the late ‘sixties in the Kulm Hotel, the proprietor of the hotel in those days, Herr Johann Badrutt, who died in 1899, taking the greatest interest in the Chaplaincy.

By the year 1871, and chiefly owing to the splendid exertions of Mr. Strettell, a sufficient sum had been raised to build the English Church which stands midway between St. Moritz-Dorf and St. Moritz-Bad. It was opened in July that year.

Far away as all this seems to be from our subject, it is of interest and importance in comparing beginnings at St. Moritz and Davos. St. Moritz had a chaplain at a time when no English visitor is reported to have been in Davos, and an English Church twelve years before Davos had one. In was in 1871, when St. Moritz already had a Church, that the Colonial and Continental Church Society first thought it worthwhile to send out a chaplain to Davos; but at the end of the first season the chaplain reported that no English figured among his small congregation! For some years the services were poorly attended. A change for the better occurred when the Hotel Belvedere was opened in 1875. In 1878 the first steps were taken for securing an English Church for the now rapidly increasing community, and in 1883 the Church was opened.

The early dates at which St. Moritz instituted English Church services and built itself a church seem to be in utter variance, with the St. Moritz Post speaking in its own press of Davos being “the elder sister.” The solution is probably that these words were used of Davos as a winter-sport resort; for Davos certainly began organising winter sports before St. Moritz did. But as a summer resort St. Moritz had an enormously older and bigger history than Davos, because of its historic spa. We read elsewhere in this book of a British family visiting St. Moritz as early as the summer of 1855.

In January, 1890, the St. Moritz Post and Davos News published a letter from Mr. Walter M. Moore, Canterbury, New Zealand. He wrote: “I believe I may lay claim to the honour of being the first English traveller who ever spent a winter in the Engadine. I say, the first traveller,’ because one Englishman (Mr. Strettell) had certainly been there before me, but as he lived there and had built a house in St. Moritz, I consider him more as a resident than a visitor. I first went to the Engadine in June, 1867, living during the summer at Pontresina, and finally left in April, 1868, and I have no doubt that some of the residents in Pontresina, Samaden and St. Moritz may remember the English lad ” (unfortunately the printers put “cad”!) “who spent a winter there 22 years ago.’ He speaks of it as “a delightful time,” with sleighing parties, dances, etc., already!

But it does not follow that St. Moritz-Dorf in the 1860-70’s was any nicer a place to stay in, so far as accommodation and so forth was concerned, than Davos. Even much later it was described as a not very pleasant or attractive village. “It is built,” wrote Dr. Yeo,* “in an irregular, untidy, scrambly way, with narrow dirty streets, and terribly rough and jolty pavements. It is the least tidy and neat of all the Engadine villages I have seen. Some decent-looking houses have been built on the outskirts of the village, for the accommodation of visitors, a pretty little Catholic Church, and a house adjoining for the priests, have been erected just beyond the Kulm Hotel, on the road towards Samaden. A very pretty little English Church, the site for which was given by Herr Badrutt, and foundation stone laid in 1868 by the Archbishop of York, has been built between the village and the exertions of the Rev. A. B. Strettell, the English chaplain at the baths. Our countrypeople are indebted for the edifice mainly to St. Moritz, who, besides founding the chaplaincy there, has been unremitting in his efforts to improve it and beautify it since its completion.”

No doubt Mrs. Holland is quite right in saying that in her time Mr. Strettell was summer chaplain; he took a winter chaplaincy in a warmer climate in Italy; but we must remember that Mr. Strettell was in St. Moritz for nearly twenty years before the Hollands arrived; and at first he certainly did spend the winter in St. Moritz; and we get the following glimpse of him in an interesting private letter describing the winter from October, 1869, to February, 1870, at St. Moritz, and until March in Samaden: “Our party at the Kulm Hotel has consisted of four English, three Germans, three Italians, and a French lady; in Mr. Strettell’s house there have been four more English people besides himself. In this place (Samaden) which is only three and a half miles from St. Moritz, but at a slightly lower elevation, there has been one English family, consisting of a lady and gentleman and five children. That, I think, is a complete list of the visitors who have passed this winter in the Upper Engadine.” That makes a total of sixteen in St. Moritz and seven in Samaden.

The anonymous writer goes on to show that the same complaint about inadequate food which we found at Davos in the 1870’s was made in the Engadine. “The great drawback,” he said, “of spending the winter at St. Moritz is the want of good food. The milk and bread and butter are good; but the meat is bad, and the soup invariably requires a certain amount of ‘Liebig’s Extract’ to make it worth eating. For three months the only vegetables we had were potatoes. In fact, a person coming here for health gains greatly as regards climate, but loses greatly for want of good food and ordinary home comforts.’

If we would understand what our forefathers came out to sixty or seventy years ago, for health or for pleasure, we must get such facts well imbedded in our minds.

It was a tough job getting to St. Moritz and they had to rough it when they got there. But conditions improved rapidly, as far as circumstances would permit, and already in the winter of 1875-76 a newspaper correspondent reported that the evil reputation the Engadine once had in the matter of food was no longer merited, and the most exacting and fastidious need no longer complain against either the quality or the cooking of the food.

But winter sports had already begun. Concerning that same winter of 1869-70 a writer in The Times of 21st February, 1870, describes the means adopted for providing a “beautiful surface for skating on the St. Moritz Lake. Another favourite entertainment,” he added, “is sliding down steep inclines on small sledges constructed for this purpose. The speed obtainable is almost incredible. In this sport both old and young join.”

A slightly earlier record – one of the very earliest records of a winter passed at St. Moritz by an invalid who was also a sportsman is to be found in the visitors’ book of this Kulm Hotel for the winter of 1868-69. In those days there was no central heating in the hotels, and the writer said: “The rooms are warmed by means of stoves, not open fireplaces, consequently the chief difficulty is to ventilate them properly; to do this effectually, we left our sitting room for five minutes every two hours, opening all the doors and windows…. On the average we were out four hours daily, walking, skating, sleighing, or sitting on the terrace reading this latter two or three hours at a time; twice in January we dined on the terrace, and on other days had picnics in our sledges… Skating was already, in 1868-69, organised by a small club of English visitors, who kept a “circle” of the lake in order as a rink.

Yet in the 1870’s, when St. Moritz was still only a health-resort, with skating and tobogganing thrown in as casual diversions, St. Moritz did not seem able to compete with Davos. In 1876 a writer in a daily newspaper, speaking of St. Moritz, states: “No one has had the hardihood to pass the winter there or at the Berninahof in St. Moritz since 1872 until the present season, notwithstanding the favourite testimony as to climate, comforts, and amusements of the very few who stayed through that and the three preceding winters.”

He goes on to say that several proprietors of hotels and pensions at St. Moritz, encouraged by the success of Davos as a winter residence for consumptive patients, advertise that their establishments are open the whole year. They scarcely seem to realise, however, the extent to which provision must be made for delicate patients above the requirements of ordinary summer visitors, or even of themselves in winter.”

It is noteworthy that in his classic Tourist’s Guide to the Upper Engadine, the English edition of which was published in London in 1877, M. Caviezel makes no mention whatsoever of any winter visitors.

If we let the curtain drop here and ring it up ten years later, we shall find the scene altogether changed.

It is true that Dr. Tucker Wise, living practically on the spot, wrote in 1885 that there were only two hotels open at St. Moritz in winter. His words are: “Two hotels are open to receive those who winter at St. Moritz, two ice rinks are in constant use, and several tracks are kept in good order for coasting and tobogganing.”

That St. Moritz (according to a practically resident authority) had only two hotels open during the winter in 1885, seems astonishing, especially when one remembers that the first Cresta Run was built in the winter of 1884-85, and that the first Grand National Race, with the commencement of the annual visit of Davos sportsmen to St. Moritz, and vice versa, had begun in that very year 1885.

It seems strange, in comparison, that Davos already had seven hotels and a number of villa-pensions, and was running a visitors’ list more than ten years earlier, in the winter of 1873-74.

In December, 1886, an astonishing thing happened in that small English community. An extraordinarily enterprising young English invalid conceived the apparently risky adventure of publishing weekly newspaper of and for that little isolated community, with lists of visitors, accounts of sports and entertainments and amusements and of title, get-up, scope, frequency of appearance, and so forth, this first announcements of forthcoming events. In spite of all sorts of changes until this day; and from this point onward it affords an infallible guide English newspaper ever printed in Switzerland has continued to appear in tracing the history of these Alpine winter colonies and resorts and their sports.

The first number appeared on 7th December, 1886, and an examination of the lists of visitors and of the advertisement page will help us to see St. Moritz as it was fifty years ago.

As a matter of fact, the visitors’ list shows that there were four hotels instead of two; but quite half the visitors were staying at one hotel, the Hotel Engadiner Kulm, of which Mr. J. Badrutt was then the proprietor. The other houses were Hotel Caspar Badrutt, Hotel Beaurivage, the Privat-Hotel.

Imagine St. Moritz with only four hotels, only one of them large enough to take a hundred visitors. No Palace Hotel, no Grand Hotel, no Carlton, no Suvretta House-or any of the thirty or so hotels and pensions that now fill page after page of the Engadine Express with lists of their visitors.

But there were plenty of shops already. In the first number we find advertised: “A Pastry Cook Shop,” a confectioner, two grocers, two “bazaars,” a jeweller and a watch and clock maker, two banks, a chemist, a hairdresser, an ironmonger (who sold skates), a bootmaker, a tailor, a tailor and dressmaker, a dressmaker, a tinsmith, a milliner, a Modes” and a shop offering “Linen, Cotton, Wool, Silk and Lace.” Almost every week announcements of new businesses were added to the advertisement sheets. Also two doctors announced their consultation hours.

Turning over the pages of this newspaper one gets an impression of great animation – sports without and amusements within. It might be quite a large community that needed all these shops and indulged in so much gay life.

Now, if we take an issue of mid-season (end of January) we find that the total number of visitors in the four hotels was about 240, of whom some 210 were British. More than half were at the Kulm. It is wonderful how this little community asserted itself, what energy it displayed, what faith it had in the future of St. Moritz. Much of the impression is due to the fact that it had several born leaders to show it the way, to account for its inventiveness in sports, and to ensure the attractiveness of its social life.

After all, it was still a small community as compared with Davos, with its fourteen hotels and many boarding-houses, housing 1,412 visitors; so that altogether we begin to understand how a St. Moritzer could about this time describe Davos as the “elder sister.”

One great disadvantage still remained for St. Moritz-the journey to and from it. This is how the journey was at the beginning of the winter season of 1886-87:-

1st Day.-Leave London, 11 a.m.
Arrive Calais, 2.20 (lunch).
Tergnier, 7.32 (25 minutes allowed for dinner).

2nd Day.-Arrive Basle, 6.15 a.m.
Leave Basle, 7.20.
Arrive Zürich, 9.32.
Arrive Chur, 1.15.

3rd Day.-Leave Chur, 5.30 a.m.
Or go on to Thusis the same afternoon and pick up the post at 8 (instead of 5.30!) the next morning.
Arrive St. Moritz, 6.20 p.m.

An alternative route from Basle was via Lucerne, Lugano, Menaggio, Chiavenna by rail (Gotthard Line) and from Chiavenna to St. Moritz by road, 9 hours. The advantages were the scenery, the shorter road journey, and avoidance of the severity of the passes.

Heavy snowfalls very seldom interfered with the running of the sleigh posts, though owing to a five-foot fall the Julier post did miss a day that very December, 1886-a thing that had not occurred since 1871. On the 22nd December it took the post 11 hours to get from Samaden to Maloja! The heaviest snowfall on record is that of 1863, when the Maloja Pass was closed for six weeks, and on one occasion it took twelve hours for the post to get from Samaden to St. Moritz, a distance of about three miles, while for several days no post was able to get through at all. Those were among the risks you ran in travelling to St. Moritz before the railway reached it in 1894.

St. Moritz has changed more than any other of the old Alpine winter resorts. This is due chiefly to the men who have made it, who knew what they wanted and worked straight for it. They have made it the unquestioned queen-the capital, the metropolis of Alpine winter- sport-land. Largely because of what they were and are in themselves, men of refinement and social and educational quality, as well as of iron energy, they had built up a palatial resort, a sport and pleasure resort, which drew irresistibly the best people in society, statesmen, politicians, business leaders, authors and artists, and all people of fame; and they have given the place a cachet which is unique. For one thing it always gives the impression that it is a wealthy place, which has any amount of money to spend for the advantage of its visitors. Though to keep this up means a constant strain on local finances, St. Moritz never hesitates when money is needed for its further development. Its inter- is, it seems to have the importance and significance of a European centre. national relationships and communications are elaborate; small as it To find the original poor little St. Moritz out of which the world- famous and all-attractive has grown, is no easy task. There are no so interesting when you come to dig down far enough, is the discovery signs of it out-cropping. You have to excavate for them. And what is that the early development of St. Moritz is due more to its visitors than to the native population, and above all to the English. It is extra- ordinary to see how British visitors took hold of the place and organised its life and sports, giving the example and the incentive to the born St. Moritzers and pointing out the road they had the good sense and skill to follow.

Something that no St. Moritzer and no Davoser knows now, until it is shown him as in this book, is the intimate friendship that for many years existed between the two places, their comradely rivalry, the visits to and fro in spite of the terrible Flüela, the abundant mutual hospitality, and for some years the sharing of one English newspaper for both resorts.

*”A Season at St. Moritz,” first published in 1870, and revised throughout and incorporated in “Health Resorts and their Uses” (1882), by Dr. J. Burney Yeo.

THE INVALID LEADS!

Alpine winter sports were introduced to the world by invalids and their companions. Most of these winter-sporting invalids were consumptives, and some of the leading winter-sport pioneers, whose stories are told in greater detail elsewhere in this book, were at one time very ill indeed.

All through the ages the wonderful curative and sport-enabling climate on the mountains remained unknown to the world. The people who lived in the Engadine and in the Davos Valley knew, centuries back, that theirs was an extremely healthy climate; but the medical profession did not get hold of it effectively until less than a hundred years ago. When the doctors did discover it and succeeded in persuading invalids to visit the Alps in winter, the invalids and their companions very soon saw, though to a very limited extent, the possibilities and delights of sport in the wonderful sunshine of the snowy mountains. They led and pointed the way to the present immense popularity of winter sports. To them we owe the Alps as a winter- sport playground. They did not invent the sports–they found them suggested; the sports were all known somewhere and to some extent before, but they discovered that here was the ideal region for these sports; they practised and developed them.

To so many of us it seems such an obvious thing that the Alps are a perfect winter playground-it is all so taken for granted that we do not stop to consider that down to seventy years ago the Alpine resorts that now resound with the joys of sport were almost inaccessible snow- deserts, the inhabitants of which spent their long winter in dreary dullness and loneliness. Such horrible killing cold regions were dreaded and shunned. The world knew nothing of the glory of Alpine winter sunshine or of the splendour of the snows.

It was, we repeat, considerations of health that led the way to the discovery. A district doctor named Luzius Rüedi, who practised in the valley from 1827 to 1849 (his son was to be R. L. Stevenson’s medical adviser at Davos), was struck by the curative qualities of the climate; he wrote about it in the medical Press in the 1840’s and founded an institute for “scrofulous” children.

But his was a voice crying in the wilderness. Davos was such an inaccessible desert, with not so much as a road leading to it, that after a few years Dr. Rüedi and his views and his institute were heard of no more. Davos had first of all to be made accessible and habitable.

Twenty years and more passed by. Then another district doctor was struck, as Dr. Rüedi, by the freedom of the inhabitants from tuberculosis and the rapidity with which Davosers who contracted it else- where got better of it when they came back. From 1862 onwards he called the attention of the medical world to his observation, and in 1869 published a fuller and more persuasive pamphlet, which attracted much attention, especially in Germany. The doctor was himself a German-a German political refugee named Alexander Spengler. He if any one man-was the effective “discoverer” of Davos and of the Alpine winter. This is now universally confirmed by local historians.

Long since a monument to Alexander Spengler was erected in the public gardens of Davos-Platz. Two of his sons became doctors practising in Davos.

Davos, in spite of being so difficult to get at, was already in the early 1860’s known to a good many Swiss people as having a pleasant cool climate to take refuge in from the lowland dogdays, and there was nothing to say against Dr. Alexander Spengler’s advocacy of its qualities as a health resort-except that it had no decent hotel or private house accommodation, no sanitation, no roads, no shops, no amusements- nothing urban to make life tolerable to the visitor! But those things could be produced. What rubbed people up the wrong way was that Dr. Spengler wanted them to be there in winter as well as in summer which was, of course, absurd! Nay, it was worse than absurd; it was wicked. Surely everybody knew-patients as well as doctors-that cold was the greatest enemy of the consumptive! and the Alpine winter was “arctic,’ Siberian.” It would have been bad enough to persuade healthy people to visit the frozen mountains, supposing there was any- thing for them to do or get or enjoy there; but to tempt invalids to go there was murderous.

However, in February, 1865, two consumptive invalids arrived, who had sought recovery in vain elsewhere. Here they were both healed. One died in 1893, the other some ten years later, more than eighty years of age. That was the beginning of the exploitation of the Alpine winter. The news spread-not only that healing could be found on the mountains, not only that it was possible to “cure” in the Alpine winter, but also that the Alpine winter, instead of being deadly, was a delight. And so the way was prepared for Alpine winter sports.

St. Moritz, too, had a medical man who, in very, very early years made known the same discovery about the health value of St. Moritz. This was Dr. P. Berry, who practised in St. Moritz from 1857 until his death there in November, 1892. He too had remarked that Engadine people who became ill in foreign countries recovered after passing the winter in their native climate. This led him to the belief that the Engadine winter could restore others as well, and, inspired by this faith, he was instrumental in persuading many English people to spend the winter at St. Moritz, greatly to the benefit of their health.

St. Moritz, as well as Davos and Arosa, began its career as a health and sport resort, as I will soon show in detail. But none of these places was ever an invalid resort only. St. Moritz early became predominant as a pleasure resort. Davos tried and tries to be both. But even Davos, and as long ago as 1884, protested against being regarded as an all-invalid resort. The editor of the Davoser Blätter, a weekly journal for visitors, published in October of that year an indignant refutation of an article in a Continental periodical in which it was “incidentally remarked that Davos is only visited by people in an advanced stage of consumption.” We cannot insist too strongly, wrote the Davos editor, ‘that it is fully time to put an end to this spreading of incorrect statements. For years only a small fraction of Davos visitors has consisted of people who are very ill. Can they imagine that those people are far gone in consumption who undertake glacier expeditions, play tennis,* run toboggan races, and go in for suchlike amusements. Or will they affect to believe that the numerous families of foreigners who stay here the whole year through, are made up entirely of sick persons? At Davos we have very much the same class of visitors as the Riviera. Indeed, we are even convinced that at many a southern health resort there are to be found fewer sound people than here in comparison.”

“Invalids” were at any rate, among the first sportsmen at Davos, and they appear to have done very well on both rink and run-on the little runs and rinks of those early years. As long as the primitive Swiss “coaster” was the only “machine” on the toboggan runs and in the toboggan races, the invalid often beat the able-bodied competitors. When the “Americas” came in, the invalids were put out of the running, because of the heavier weight and the head-foremost posture.

A correspondent of The Davos Courier (8th November, 1888), who signed himself “Invalids First,” protested against the unsportingness of the healthy tobogganers in using machines which they knew the invalids could not! Davos is made for invalids,” he exclaimed,” and tobogganing is made for the invalids. Nearly all the prize-winners have come from among those who were spending the winter here solely for the benefit of their health. . . . I doubt whether any of these invalids is in such health as to venture to use an American toboggan; but with the Swiss machines there are a number of invalids so well suited for the big races that they generally manage to beat those who are not invalids!” St. Moritz, like Davos, began as a consumptive resort.

That St. Moritz really did get consumptives in the early days, is evident from an appeal by the administrators of the St. Moritz Aid Fund published in The St. Moritz Post and Davos News in July, 1889. “One patient, a consumptive young man, age 18, has, after a winter’s residence at St. Moritz, returned to his duties in England completely cured; and the other case, a far graver one, with extensive tubercular disease of both lungs, has greatly benefited by a stay of three months.”

We see, therefore, that St. Moritz itself, the tiptop pleasure centre, the most fashionable and gayest of all, went through this invalid stage too, but went through it quicker and got further away from it.

We must not forget that St. Moritz had been a health resort pure and simple as a spa-tens of centuries before winter sports were ever dreamed of. It is the only big Alpine winter resort that has all this history behind it. As a watering place St. Moritz is, literally, thousands of years old, whereas Davos as a health resort has not a single century behind it.

In 1907 when some excavations were going on at the wells in St. Moritz-Doif, workmen found traces of a well-lining and of other human activity dating back to the bronze period, over three thousand years back, 750 years before the foundation of Rome. Then there is a long gap of darkness down to the 15th century, when the documentary evidence of the existence and popularity of the spa sets in. St. Moritz and its healing waters were a place of pilgrimage in those times, and

Pope Leo X issued a bull granting special indulgence to pilgrims visiting the holy springs of St. Maurice. It is mainly because of its healing does the curative effects of these waters with those of its invigorating, waters that St. Moritz has been and is a health resort, combining health-promoting climate.

But, apart from having been a spa health resort for at least three thousand years, St. Moritz began to be considered a climatic health resort at about the same time as Dr. Alexander Spengler began to call the attention of the medical world to the Alpine climate in general and that of Davos in particular, and it continued to be considered as prominently a climatic health resort. Commenting in July, 1890, in a new spacious sanatorium favour of a scheme for erecting St. Moritz, the editor of the St. Moritz Post and Davos News wrote: “There are almost innumerable visitors who year after year find renewed health and strength at St. Moritz… ” And in 1890, when Dr. Robert Koch, who had discovered the bacillus of tuberculosis in 1882, produced a lymph (” tuberculin “) by which he hoped to effect a cure for phthisis, he appointed a doctor to go to St. Moritz with a supply of it.

We have all forgotten it nowadays, but the fact remains, and can be proved from numerous records that there was a time when St. Moritz seemed likely to become a larger and more important resort for consumptives than Davos itself. That was away back in the 1870’s; but the likelihood did not last long, and Davos established its priority in this (for winter sports) none too favourable element! Indeed, down to this very day this entanglement with tuberculosis tells against Davos as a winter-sport resort, though it now does so less and less, as year by year sanatoria are transformed into sport hotels.

I have thought it right to recall the true pioneers of winter sports, our plucky forefathers who, when stricken by disease, undertook the adventure, as it then was, of the journey to and residence in these un- comfortable Alpine villages without so much without almost everything that makes these resorts such a pleasure to us nowadays. Our inventive discovering forebears did not, literally, take their cure lying down, as patients do to-day; but demanded skating rinks, built toboggan runs, invented racing “machines” for snow and ice, and prepared the way for this age of ski-ing.

No doubt the sports as we know them to-day would have come without the invalids. These hungry generations of ours would certainly have discovered the Alpine winter and its joys. It need not have been the invalids who led the way, but it was.

The invalid lead in winter sports applies only to Davos and the Engadine, and in a lesser degree to Arosa. All the other hundred winter- sport places began as winter-sport places-after the invalids at St. Moritz and Davos and their companions had transformed their winter pastimes into winter sports for the robust.

*The first Tennis Club in Davos was founded in 1884.

(Concluded)

K.T.

02/09/202422/04/2026

A Ski Tour in 1893

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Strand Magazine, vol.8, no.48, pp 657-661 (1894)

There is nothing peculiarly malignant in the appearance of a pair of “ski”. They are two slips of elm wood, 8-ft. long, 4-in. broad, with a square heel, turned-up toes, and straps in the centre to secure your feet. No one, to look at them, would guess at the possibilities which lurk in them. But you put them on and you turn with a smile to see whether your friends are looking at you, and then the next moment you are boring your head madly into a snow bank, and kicking frantically with both feet, and half-rising, only to butt viciously into that snow bank again, and your friends are getting more entertainment than they had ever thought you capable of giving.

That is when you are beginning. You naturally expect trouble then, and you are not likely to be disappointed. But as you get on a little, the thing becomes more irritating. The “ski” are the most capricious things upon the earth. One day you cannot go wrong with them; on another with the same weather and the same snow you cannot go right. And it is when you least expect it that things begin to happen. You stand on the crown of a slope, and you adjust your body for a rapid slide; but your “ski” stick motionless, and over you go on your face. Or you stand upon a plateau which seems to you to be as level as a billiard table, and in an instant, without cause or warning, away them shoot, and you are left behind, staring at the sky. For a person who suffers from too much dignity, a course in Norwegian snowshoes would have a fine moral effect.

Whenever you brace yourself for a fall, it never comes off. Whenever you think yourself absolutely secure, it is all over with you. You come to a hard ice slope at an angle of 75 degrees and you zigzag up it, digging the side of your “ski” into it, and feeling that if a mosquito settles upon you, you are gone. But nothing ever happens and you reach the top in safety. Then you stop upon the level to congratulate your companion, and you have just time to say, “What a lovely view is this!” when you find yourself standing upon your two shoulder-blades, with your “ski” tied tightly around your neck. Or again, you may have had a long outing without any misfortune at all, and as you shuffle back along the road, you stop for an instant to tell a group in the hotel veranda how well you are getting on. Something happens — and they suddenly find that their congratulations are addressed to the soles of your “ski”. Then if your mouth is not full of snow, you find yourself muttering the names of a few Swiss villages to relieve your feelings. “Ragatz” is a very handy word and may save a scandal.

But all this is in the early stage of “ski”-ing. You have to shuffle along the level, to zigzag, or move crab fashion, up the hills, to slide down without losing your balance, and above all to turn with facility. The first time you try to turn, your friends think it is part of your fun. The great “ski” flapping in the air has the queerest appearance — like an exaggerated negro dance. But this sudden whisk round is really the most necessary of accomplishments; for only so can one turn upon the mountain side without slipping down. It must be done without presenting one’s heels to the slope, and this is the only way.

But granted that a man has perseverance, and a month to spare in which to conquer all these early difficulties, he will then find that “ski”-ing opens up a field of sport for him which is, I think, unique. This is not appreciated yet, but I am convinced that the time will come when hundreds of Englishmen will come to Switzerland for the “ski”-ing season, in March and April. I believe that I may claim to be the first save only two Switzers to do any mountain work (though on a modest enough scale) on snow-shoes, but I am certain that I will not by many a thousand be the last.

The fact is it is easier to climb an ordinary peak, or to make a journey over the higher passes, in winter than in summer, if the weather is only set fair. In summer, you have to climb down as well as to climb up, and the one is as tiring as the other. In winter your trouble is halved, as most of your descent is a mere slide. If the snow is tolerably firm, it is much easier to zigzag up it on “ski” than to clamber over boulders under a hot summer sun. The temperature, too, is more favourable for exertion in winter, for nothing could be more delightful than the crisp, pure air on the mountains, though glasses are, of course, necessary to protect the eyes from the snow glare.

Our project was to make our way from Davos to Arosa, over the Furka Pass, which is over 9,000 feet high. The distance is not more than from 12 to 14 miles as the crow flies, but it has only once been done in winter. Last year the two brothers Branger made their way across on “ski”. They were my companions on the present expedition, and more trustworthy ones no novice could hope to have with him. They are both men of considerable endurance, and even a long spell of my German did not appear to exhaust them.

We were up before four in the morning, and had started at half past for the village of Frauenkirch, where we were to commence our ascent. A great pale moon was shining in a violet sky, with such stars as can only be seen in the tropics or the higher Alps. At quarter past five we turned from the road, and began to plod up the hillsides, over alternate banks of last year’s grass, and slopes of snow. We carried our “ski” over our shoulders, and our “ski”-boots slung round our necks, for it was good walking where the snow was hard, and it was sure to be hard wherever the sun had struck it during the day. Here and there, in a hollow, we floundered into and out of a soft drift up to our waists; but on the whole it was easy going, and as much of our way led through fir woods, it would have been difficult to “ski”. About half-past six, after a long steady grind, we emerged from the woods, and shortly afterwards passed a wooden cow-house, which was the last sign of humans which we were to see until we reached Arosa.

The snow being still hard enough upon the slopes to give us a good grip for our feet, we pushed rapidly on, over rolling snow-fields with a general upward tendency. About half-past seven the sun cleared the peaks behind us, and the glare upon the great expanse of virgin snow became very dazzling. We worked our way down a long slope, and then coming to the corresponding hill slope with a northern outlook, we found the snow as soft as powder, and so deep that we could touch no bottom with our poles. Here, then, we took to our snow-shoes, and zigzagged up over the long white haunch of the mountain, pausing at the top for a rest. They are useful things, the “ski”; for finding that the snow was again hard enough to bear us, we soon converted ours into a very comfortable bench, from which we enjoyed the view of a whole panorama of mountains, the names of which my readers will be relieved to hear I have completely forgotten.

The snow was rapidly softening now, under the glare of the sun, and without our “ski” all progress would have been impossible. We were making our way along the steep side of a valley with the mouth of the Furka Pass fairly in front of us. The snow fell away here at an angle of from 50 degrees to 60 degrees, and as this steep incline, along the face of which we were shuffling, sloped away down until it ended in an absolute precipice, a slip might have been serious. My two more experienced companions walked below me for the half mile or so of danger, but soon we found ourselves upon a more reasonable slope, where one might fall with impunity. And now came the real sport of snow-shoeing. Hitherto, we had walked as fast as boots would do, over ground where no boots could pass. But now we had a pleasure which boots can never give. For a third of a mile we shot along over gently dipping curves, skimming down into the valley without a motion of our feet. In that great untrodden waste, with snow-fields bounding our vision on every side and no marks of life save the tracks of chamois and of foxes, it was glorious to whiz along in this easy fashion. A short zigzag at the bottom of the slope brought us, at half-past nine, into the mouth of the pass; and we could see the little toy hotels of Arosa, away down among the fir woods, thousands of feet beneath.

Again we had a half mile or so, skimming along with our poles dragging behind us. It seemed to me that the difficulty of our journey was over, and that we had only to stand on our “ski” and let them carry us to our destination. But the most awkward place was yet in front. The slope grew steeper and steeper until it fell away into what was little short of being sheer precipice. But still that little, when there is soft snow upon it, is all that is needed to ring out another possibility of these wonderful slips of wood. The brothers Branger agreed that the slope was too difficult to attempt with the ““ski”” upon our feet. To me it seemed as if a parachute was the only instrument for which we had any use; but I did as I saw my companions do. They undid their “ski”, lashed the straps together, and turned them into a rather clumsy toboggan. Sitting on these with out heels dug into the snow, and our sticks pressed hard down behind us, we began to move down the precipitous face of the pass. I think that both my comrades came to grief over it. I know that they were as white as Lot’s wife at the bottom. But my own troubles were so pressing that I had no time to think of them. I tried to keep the pace within moderate bounds by pressing on the stick, which had the effect of turning the sledge sideways, so that one skidded down the slope. Then I dug my heels hard in, which shot me off backwards, and in an instant my two ““ski”, tied together, flew away like an arrow from a bow, whizzed past the two Brangers, and vanished over the next slope, leaving their owner squatting in the deep snow. It might have been an awkward accident in the upper field where the drifts are twenty or 30 feet deep. But the steepness of the place was an advantage now, for the snow could not accumulate to any great extent upon it. I made my way down in my own fashion.

My tailor tells me that Harris tweed cannot wear out. This is a mere theory and will not stand a thorough scientific test. He will find samples of his wares on view from the Furka Pass to Arosa, and for the remainder of the day I was happiest when nearest the wall.

However, save that one of the Brangers sprained his ankle badly in the descent, all went well with us, and we entered Arosa at half-past eleven, having taken exactly seven hours over our journey. The residents of Arosa, who knew we were coming, had calculated that we could not possibly get there before one, and turned out to see us descend the steep pass just about the time when we were finishing a comfortable luncheon at the Seehof. I would not grudge them any innocent amusement, but still I was just as glad that my own little performance was over before they assembled with their opera-glasses. One can do very well without a gallery when one is trying a new experiment on “ski.”

02/08/202422/04/2026

Introduction to “The Story of Skiing”

Arnold Lunn (1927) A History of Ski-ing, Oxford University Press, London. p3-6

Ski-ing, perhaps the oldest of sports, has so far escaped the attentions of the historian, and the reader who is interested in the subject has to content himself with an occasional article on a particular period or on a brief summary, of which the most masterly is the introduction to Richardson’s “Ski-Runner.” There has been no attempt to chronicle the history of ski-ing from the earliest days up to modern times. Perhaps supply has waited on demand, and perhaps no sufficient demand exists for a history of ski-ing. Ski-runners may only ask of a book that it shall fulfil the function either of teacher or of guide; that it shall assist the reader to improve his ski-ing or to discover new ski tours.

The same could be said of many mountaineers. The average climber is, of course, familiar with the Alpine classics. He reads and enjoys his Whymper, Leslie Stephen and Mummery, and indeed mountaineers have usually been generous patrons of any well-written book on their sport. But he does not, as a rule, read mere histories of mountaineering. Gribble’s delightful “Early Mountaineers” had a small sale, and I wonder how many climbers are familiar with Coolidge’s classic work on Simler and the origin of Alpine climbing? The mountaineer turns to Whymper, Stephen or Mummery to renew his memories of the hills, “Mountain Craft to teach him his job, and “The Climbers’ Guides” to show him the way. Such is the average Alpine library. There remains a small minority which is passionately interested in the details of Alpine history, and this minority devotes much time to research and publishes many books and articles for the benefit of their fellow-students. They will argue with the vehemence of experts on questions which leave most people very cold. Problems such as the alleged first ascent of the Finsteraarhorn in 1812 are still capable of provoking spirited controversy. It is, of course, perhaps easy to take such matters too seriously. The question whether X did or did not reach the summit of a particular peak is not a matter of international significance. And yet the best things in a man’s life are often his hobbies, and if he will not take his hobbies seriously life will lose half its charm. And mountaineering is something more than a hobby.

The Alps indeed owe much of their fascination to their human associations, to that long epic of triumph and disaster, joy and sorrow which is the woof of Alpine history. Can any sport boast a more dramatic story than the tale of that first ascent of the Matterhorn? Again, to cite a more esoteric example-the cliffs of the Finsteraarhorn would impress a man who knew nothing of its history, but the challenge of the great south-eastern ridge makes a deeper appeal to those who know the story of that first gallant assault on its secrets which took place in the dawn of mountaineering.

It is possible to attach too much significance to the history of a sport, but it is also possible to under-estimate the social reactions of sport on national life. The historian who enjoys all the emotions of sport in the attempt to prove that other historians are mistaken is apt to forget that sport in some form or other is the main object of most lives, that most men work in order to play, and that games which bulk so largely in the life of the individual cannot be neglected in studying the life of the nation. The relations between socman and villein are no doubt highly intriguing, but some of us would like to know how the socman amused himself when he had done soccing (or whatever the socman did). I have seen a history of Switzerland which was carried down to the end of the war and which blandly omitted all mention of mountaineering. Of course, I read a great deal about the hardy mountaineer, but I discovered that by mountaineer” the learned author merely meant a peasant who lived in or among the mountains. The Alps were discussed as a military frontier; their far deeper significance as a social asset was ignored. And yet there are no sports which have proved of greater racial value than mountaineering and ski-ing to those races lucky enough to possess mountains and snow for the asking. Contrast the weekend of a clerk in London and in Zürich. The former, at best, escapes into the country on a bicycle. At the worst he spends Sunday loafing around the cinemas or public-houses. In Switzerland this type is almost unknown. Lake, river and mountain are the com- peting attractions which empty the towns during the week-end, and if anything could reconcile me to serious rowing it would be the endurance of this dreary treadmill on an Alpine lake mirroring the snowy hills. But the mountains are a dangerous rival to the water, and every Saturday you may see the week-end trains leaving Berne or Munich or Vienna overflowing with bronzed weather-beaten men in excellent training for their weekly battle with the peaks. Most of them are guideless climbers, and they learn in the mountain school lessons of courage and endurance and initiative and good humour under adversity, lessons of imperishable value not only to the individual but to the race. Mountaineering with these men is a democratic sport. “There’s men from the barn and the forge and the mill and the fold,” and though guideless climbing exacts a heavy annual toll, and though “there with the rest are the lads who will never be old,” the price is not too high when we consider the easy access of all classes to beauty and to adventure.

Ski-ing is responsible for something like a social revolution, which unlike most revolutions has damaged nobody and benefited all those who have been infected by the passion. Life in the mountain valleys was a dreary business through the long winter months before the “hardy mountaineer” learned to ski. For as a rule the hardy mountaineer has a very healthy dislike of mountains, and when he is not being paid to lead foreigners to their summits he prefers to stay at home. The local pub. and the great Swiss card game, “Jass,” whose mysteries I hope one day to unravel, provided almost the only amusement when the snow lay heavy on the ground. But to-day the wirtschaft has lost much of its former patronage. Those who have penetrated in winter to the remoter valleys whose inhabitants have not yet taken to ski-ing must have noticed the contrast between the listless natives and the keen, happy energy of those who live in happier vales where the ski have found a home. The same change was observed in Christiania, where ski-ing as a sport only dates from the ‘seventies. The improvement in general health and physique was striking, and the effect was perhaps most marked on Norwegian womanhood. Norwegian women had conformed to the best Victorian models until the ski came and crochet work lost its charm. The ladies were not slow in deserting the fireside and in insisting on accompanying their menfolk into the hills. The new freemasonry of the ski achieved in a few years the result which some people fondly imagined would be secured by the odd contrivance of female suffrage. The outlook and the status of the sex was radically changed.

And so I make no apology for this attempt to trace the history of our noble sport. These things may interest only a minority, but it is for that minority I write. The rest need not read me. Nobody is compelled to pass an examination in the British Ski Year Book. No such examination is, as yet, included in the Tests. Caveat lector. He has had full warning, and perhaps he has already given up. The labour of collecting from many sources the materials for this book is repaid by the thought that I know at least two, and perhaps three, readers who will read what I have to say. There is Marcel Kurz. He must read my book because I have read his. I read every line of his history of winter climbing in the Valais, and one good turn deserves another.

And at least I have the consolation of knowing that once the result of my researches find their way into print, they are on record for all time. Nobody may read them to-day, but in a century or so, when the origins of British ski-ing are wrapped in mystery, the historian of the future may be glad to use the material which has here been so laboriously gathered together. Perhaps that unborn historian will hesitate to reveal his sources and will attempt to claim the credit for my labours by the simple expedient of copying my references without quoting my book. But I trust that he may be sufficiently magnanimous to immortalise me in a footnote. And in my dreams I read that footnote and feel very proud.

“Throughout this chapter I have made use of a scarce book published in the early decades of the last century. This work, A History of Ski-ing,’ by Arnold Lunn, does not appear to have been widely read at the time. It is not without a certain merit, though written in a pedantic style, and abounding in misprints. Its quaint archaic English (early twentieth century) compensates for a certain tediousness of diction. My own copy is apparently a remaindered copy, and was sold for six Georgian pence, the equivalent of five millings of modern money.”

One word more. There is still a great field for the antiquarian who wishes to explore the early history of ski-ing in Scandinavia. As I know next to no Norwegian or Swedish I have contented myself with a very brief summary of the early history of ski-ing, and have relied almost exclusively on the excellent historical chapters in ” The Ski-Runner” by E. C. Richardson, and on Crichton Somerville’s contribution to “Ski-Running.

I am mainly interested in recording the later history of ski-ing: the period which opens with the introduction of ski-ing into Germany and Switzerland. And so, though my first chapter is only a tentative sketch of the earlier phases of the sport, I hope that the later chapters, which record for the first time in consecutive form the story of more recent developments, will not be without interest to the future historian.

Needless to say I write with more knowledge of British than of Continental ski-ing, and as I am writing for British readers in the main, the developments of the sport among our countrymen will be treated with a greater attention than they perhaps merit. I leave to Continental writers the task of filling in the gaps, and of completing this history by a detailed account of the evolution of the sport in their respective countries. My book is only an attempt to supply material for that comprehensive history which will, I hope, some day be written.

As far, however, as mountaineering on ski is concerned, I hope that I shall succeed in doing justice to the great pioneers of the new mountaineering, be they Swiss, German, or Austrian.

22/07/202422/04/2026

The Ski Club of Great Britain

A Brief History by Nic Oatridge

“Among the pastimes of Englishmen, ski-running has now taken a permanent place. As a sport, it contains all the elements that appeal to our countrymen. Its full enjoyment is only to be appreciated by those who possess an abundant store of patience and perseverance – not to mention a distinct sense of humour – to be drawn upon during the process of acquiring sufficient skill to traverse valleys, woods and mountains.”¹

It is perverse that Great Britain should have anything other than a marginal contribution to the history of snow sports, given how unpredictable and mild British winters are. However Alpine ski racing is a British invention – although largely crafted in the Jungfrau. The roots of this lie in a nexus of factors.

From the riches of the British Empire emerged an affluent elite that embraced the Age of Enlightenment and celebrated the Alps in verse and prose. With the Public Schools Act of 1868, the leading schools embraced the opportunity to create the cadre required to run an Empire, imbuing them with a “muscular Christianity” that they applied with fervour to the business of pursuing sports and defining the rules by which those sports should be pursued. A succession of British mountaineers imbued with this ethos set to conquer the peaks, particularly the loftiest ones in Switzerland, creating the Alpine Club for like-minded adventurers in 1857, and achieving notoriety with Edward Whymper’s successful, but costly, ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865.

The happy embrace by the Continentals of the railways made the Alps much more accessible to many well-to-do Englishmen and women, whose busy schedules afforded them only a few weeks in each season to travel abroad. Initially, the attraction for the British ruling classes was the summer destinations of continental Europe, but the therapeutic benefits of mountain air for sufferers of lung diseases established year-round colonies in places like St Moritz, Grindelwald and Davos in Switzerland. A growing coterie of winter tourists danced on the ice rinks in the mountain villages by day, and in the ballrooms of the hotels in the evenings. Switzerland became an Englishman’s home from home; indeed many would be mortified that a visitor from any other nation should be allowed in the same hotel.

To facilitate travel, companies managed by Thomas Cook and, later, Henry Lunn organised itineraries for the English to visit suitable destinations, with Switzerland being most accessible and cost-effective. Lunn was to acquire hotels exclusively for the English, and created the “Public Schools Alpine Sports Club” to ensure only the right sort of people would visit his centres. Initially winter sports on these early package holidays were limited to skating, tobogganing and curling but by the 1890s, “ski-runners” began to appear in the mountains. From a British point of view this was most famously noted when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle skied from Davos to Arosa and wrote of his exploits in the British press in 1893. However, the Germans, Austrians and Swiss were already embracing the new sport; the first Swiss Ski Club began in Glaruus in 1893 and within a few years thousands of devotees took up the sport in central Europe, whilst the children in the mountain villages gleefully adopted skis to get to school in winter.

In 1888, the Norwegian, Fridtjof Nansen led the first successful crossing of Greenland on skis. He wrote a book, which was translated into English and German and inspired a number of people to experiment with skis, either in Norway, or by importing them to other snowy locations – notably the Black Forest and the Alps. Scandinavians had used skis for generations in a utilitarian or military context, but Norway adopted skiing with nationalist fervour in the 1860s and 1870s and started organising clubs and competitions. The typical competition involved two activities: jumping and a cross-country race. Although most skiers preferred “straight running”, the need to change direction or control speed led to the development of very technical turning manoeuvres, notably the Telemark and the Christiana, named after Norwegian towns – Oslo was then called Christiana. Stopping and turning were assisted by the use of a long stick.

E.C. Richardson has often been described as the Father of English Skiing. Ironically he was a Scot, born in 1871, and Harrow and Cambridge educated. He went to Norway, together with his brother “C.W.”, for his Easter vacations in the winter of 1894-5, ostensibly to skate, but instead the brothers learned to ski. They heard that skiing was possible in the Alps and went to Davos to find out, becoming founders in 1902 of the Davos English Ski Club when they came across some like-minded compatriots.

In 1903 this same group, and others, founded the Ski Club of Great Britain (SCGB). Initially they sought to establish skiing as a sport in Great Britain, seeking out suitable ski locations within easy reach of London before acknowledging that reliable conditions could only be found abroad. Until the First World War the tiny British ski community was divided over the role of women in the sport, amongst other things, and the organisations that represented skiers acrimoniously splintered as the areas of contention multiplied. The Armistice brought reconciliation, and the SCGB evolved Phoenix-like after the war to become a powerful voice in promoting forms of ski racing seen as a heresy by the influential Norwegians – Downhill and Slalom, often referred to as the Alpine disciplines. One man takes much of the credit for this, the indominatable Arnold Lunn, the son of Sir Henry Lunn, who editted the British Ski Year Book, the journal of the SCGB, from 1920 until his death in 1974.

Although Arnold Lunn – later knighted for his contribution to skiing – was the architect of modern Alpine ski-racing, there was a nagging sense across the ski associations of the Alpine nations that a sport designed for the undulating hills of Scandinavia required adaptation to work in the Alps. The shop window for Alpine skiing was ski racing, and Alpine nations were quick to see that sporting success brought wealth to the mountain villages which for centuries had been impoverished and isolated. Also, for a while, British skiers could hold their own against continental rivals, so when the British, through their web of associated ski clubs, brought Downhill racing to the Alps, they spun in many adherents. For the most unlikely of reasons, the name Kandahar is forever associated with this movement.

Of course it is one thing for a handful of Englishmen to organise a ski race, yet another to convince the federation of national ski nations, FIS, to adopt the format. What became known as the first Winter Olympics only included the Nordic disciplies of cross-country and jumping, and excluded women. The SCGB disdainfully ignored the competition.

In 1929 the Polish Ski Association was entrusted with organising the FIS Championship, and included a Downhill race in the programme. The British came second, sixth, eight, tenth, twelfth, fourteenth, fifteenth and twenty-fourth out of a field of sixty, with fourteenth and fifteenth places belonging to Doreen Elliot and Audrey Sale-Barker. The participation of women caused a sensation.

In 1930 the FIS recognised rules for downhill ski-racing and the SCGB was entrusted with the task of organising the first International Downhill Ski-Racing Meeting under the auspices of the FIS. It was successful enough for FIS to agree to include both slalom and downhill in the 1936 Winter Olympics programme, and to include races for women.

At this time skiing was a relatively exclusive aport for the English, and its practitioners largely saw themselves as ski mountaineers or tourers, who trudged up mountains as well as skied down through fresh snow. With mountain railways and the introduction of ski lifts an increasing number of skiers preferred to be “Downhill Only” – a name adopted by an English ski club in Wengen. Just as Alpine ski races needed manually groomed slopes to provide the mountain equivalent of a level playing field, so many skiers preferred compacted pistes to increasingly tracked out runs.

Skiing, as with other sports, took on a broader dimension from the mid-1930s. First there was the prestige associated with the Winter Olympics, the shadow of Nazism, and the communist blurring in the distinction between amateurism and professionalism. A sport steeped in exclusivity and aristocratic associations was overwhelmed in the post-war years by a meritocracy that embraced a form of skiing alien to the fathers of the sport in the formative years. The British pioneers of package holidays such as Sir Henry Lunn and Erna Lowe brought affordable skiing, if not to the masses, to a growing middle class. A post-war surplus of pilots and planes, the extensive adoption of ski lifts, the allure of apres-ski, and the necessary preparation of pistes to cope with skier volumes brought the multitudes to the mountains. Currency exchange controls made expensive Switzerland a less attractive destination, to the benefit of the purpose-built French ski resorts. Competitive skiing became a media sensation and its stars became household names.

The Ski Club benefitted from the enthusiasm for ski package holidays and membership grew, but not at the same pace as the uptake of the sport in the UK. The Club re-invented itself several times. As a charity, it had to cede its role in ski racing to a new organisation that could receive government funding. Its famous reps became better trained, but had no role in ski instruction – a new organisation became accountable for that in the UK. It embraced dry slope skiing and even grass skiing and became a travel agent. The venerable Year Book was discontinued, but replaced with a consumer-friendly, market-leading magazine.

Many of the pioneers of British skiing were remarkably erudite and wrote with great craft. Copies of the Ski Club’s books and journals graced the Club’s premises for almost a century, housed in a library where members could consult a volume, relax in a comfy leather armchair, and drift back in time to the “Golden Age of Downhill Racing”, as Lunn described it. The Club has sadly relinquished its Club premises, but fortunately, since 2018, the library is still available to the public, by appointment, in the Kimberlin Library at Leicester’s De Montford University’s Special Collections Unit.

1 Quote from a review of E.C. Richardson’s The Ski-Runner in the S.C.G.B Year-Book for 1910, p88