By Chris von Imhof
Special to the Turnagain Times
The U.S. National Alpine Championships and Olympic Trials in 1963 were a major undertaking for Alyeska and required a lot of resources. A week prior to the races an Alaska Airlines Charter Flight brought 70 U.S. racers from Idaho to Alyeska.
Strong winds swept the snow of the slopes into snowdrifts. Alyeska had no snow grooming equipment to pack the race courses, so they had to do it the old fashioned way and boot pack.
Francois called the Commanding General of Fort Richardson and asked if they could stage some military training at Alyeska. Sure enough several Shawnee helicopters airlifted a company of soldiers to Alyeska, who were deployed elbow to elbow, as they hiked up and down the racing trail under the command of Lt. Col. Wilkins.
However the trail was still so crude and challenging that U.S. head coach Bob Beattie said it was too narrow, steep and too rough, so the race course had to be reset. The famous U.S. ski champion Buddy Werner called the giant slalom the most challenging course in the world.
Despite all the odds and obstacles, the championships were a great success for the fledgling ski area. The chairman of the U.S. Ski Association, Amos Little, compared it to Squaw Valley in its early stages, a resort that went to host the Winter Olympics in 1960.
He wrote in a letter to De Gunzburg, “You have set a standard of excellence for hospitality, congeniality, sportsmanship and race organization, that will stand for a long time.”
The National Championship races gave Alyeska a big boost of prominence within the Alpine World of Skiing.
At this time, Anchorage became known as the air cross roads of the world as international airlines flew from Europe to the Orient, and all of them had to fly via Anchorage for refueling and airline crew layovers. This was the shortest route since Russia did not allow flights over their land during the Cold War, and Scandinavian Airlines System was the first airline to inaugurate the polar route in 1957 via Anchorage.
Later Air France, KLM, Lufthansa, Japan Airlines and a total of 12 international airlines joined, and it was big economic boom for Anchorage. The refueling of the big aircraft,
the hundreds of crew members who stayed in Anchorage hotels, and the foreign visitors were all warmly welcomed.
Well, the airline crews normally had three to four days layover time in Anchorage and in the winter started coming to ski at Alyeska. Some of the domestic airlines challenged the international airlines for a fun ski race and in 1959 the first competition was held at Arctic Valley.
This was the start of the International Airlines Ski Races and was held on annual basis at Alyeska for over 20 years. The International Airline races, which celebrated their 50th Anniversary, and are now called the World Airlines Ski Competitions and are held all around the world.
It was an amazing accomplishment, especially in the early years of how Alyeska, and the entire village hosted between 250 to 300 racers and officials, especially since there was no hotel or lodge in Girdwood at the time, and private cabin owners hosted all the skiers.
I participated for the first time in March of 1964 and was skiing for SAS. Most of our team stayed at Bob Atwood's chalet, Stumpy Faulkner hosted the Delta team and later I normally hosted the Lufthansa or Condor team. We normally had between 25 to 30 U.S. and international airlines that sent their skiers to Alyeska every March.
The local population and sponsors looked forward to this annual competition that also turned out to be the international social event of the ski season.
