PRESS RELEASE
As Published in Ski Magazine March 1951
The American Inferno
Starting at the top of New Hampshire's Mt. Washington, the Inferno race down the Headwall is "hell on skis".
By Joe Dodge
Now, dammit, I want you characters to imagine something. This is prob'ly gonna be hard for you, but I want you to try just the same. I'm gonna describe a race course and then I'm gonna ask you to tell me where in the h---- I mean where in the United States this here course is located. OK? Let's go.
This course starts on top of a bald old mountain and drops 4300 feet in 3.6 miles. It drops into a glacial cirque with a slope at the top that is almost vertical; under the racers' skis at this point there are more than 50 feet of snow. It rockets over a steep drop and into a slot between spruce and fir trees. The slot continues down the mountain to the valley floor, and from the top of the course to the bottom the snow can vary from deep powder to solid ice to mushy corn.
All right, where is this rugged course? No, not Oregon or Washington. Not Colorado. I knew you characters were a bunch of knuckleheads. So all right, I'll tell you: It's the best ole race course on the roughest, toughest, best ole mountain in New Hampshire. It's the course from the top of Mount Washington down through Tuckerman Ravine to Porky Gulch - or Pinkham Notch, if you want to be delicate about it. And on it have been run some of the roughest, toughest ole races that these United States have ever seen.
Now it all began back in 1933. I was a lot younger then, and I hadn't learned to swear so good, so I was roped into helping with a Hochgebirge Race over on Peckett's-on-Sugar-Hill. A lovable ole character, name of Grampy Bright, asked me how the snow was on rugged ole Mount Washington, and I allowed as how there would be plenty of snow for any race anybody might want to run.
Well, after a lot of correspondence between Boston and Porky Gulch, Easter Sunday, April 16, was chosen as the day for the race. Early on the day chosen, a dozen or so of the hardiest of New England's racers gathered at the Gulch, received numbers from the race committee, and climbed the mountain.
Now I don't want anybody to think this race was much like the races we run today on open slopes and prepared trails. There was no John Sherburne Trail at this time, and the so-called Fire Trail extended only about a mile up the mountain. The best course on this particular day was down the right gully of Tuckerman Ravine, over the Little Headwall, down the river bed to the Fire Trail and down that to the Cascades where a portable radio was set up to aid the timing at the finish line.
In spite of all the obstacles and bum weather, the racers started down, and the race was won by Hollis Phillips of the Appalachian Mountain Club. His time was 14:41.3 for the three and three-quarter mile course.
The race was a success, and was run again the next year. Dick Durrance had just become a ski racing sensation in New England, and everybody expected a terrific run from him. Unfortunately he took a line too far to the left when he came over the Headwall, ran into some avalanche tracks, and fell a couple of times. Nevertheless he won the race with a time of 12:35.0, and Bob Livermore, who took a terrific cart-wheeling fall at the bottom of an old avalanche trough, was second.
The race was planned for 1935, but it was combined with the Eastern Downhill Championships and the Eastern Olympic Trails. The snow conditions were poor on the lower part of the mountain, and the course was only from the summit of Mount Washington to the floor of Tuckerman Ravine. This could not be called an Inferno or even half an Inferno, but it was the best we could do at that time.
It wasn't until 1939 that conditions were again favorable for an Inferno. By this time the U.S. Forest Service and the Civilian Conservation Corps had improved the skiing facilities in the Pinkham Notch area considerably by building the Wild Cat, the Gulf of Slides and the John Sherburne Trails.
The race was run on April 16 - the sixth anniversary of the first Inferno. Racing had changed a good deal in this time, and many of the racers had never raced in previous Infernos. Toni Matt, a new ski instructor in the Hannes Schneider Ski School at North Conway, had only recently come over from Austria. He had a great reputation, and hundreds of spectators had come to see how he would do on this rugged ole course.
Toni Matt's run on the Headwall is still the talk of skiers whenever racing is discussed. He took the Headwall practically straight, with hardly a check at the lip of the Ravine. Everyone could hear his skis chatter on the ice on the floor of the Ravine before he shot over the Little Headwall and down onto the Sherburne trail. I'll never forget how fresh he appeared at the end of the race as he leaned over my shoulder and asked, "Joe, vat vass my time?"
His winning time was 6:29.3 - a full minute faster than Dick Durrance, who came in second, and more than twice as fast as the winner of the first race back in 1933.
More Infernos will be run in the future, but this year the Eastern Slope Ski Club decided not to ask for sanction for the race until there is surely enough snow in the critical connection between the floor of the great Ravine and the top of the Little Headwall to assure a successful race. But if and when the race is run again - and we all hope that it will be this spring - Toni Matt's record time may be cut; for skiing has moved along at top speed, and it's a long time since 1939. Get training Boys!
|
