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A
BRIEF HISTORY OF WATCHUNG'S FIRST YEAR
By
ERLING OMAR OMLAND
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My interest in skiing, first tried and forgotten
in 1922 when I was five and slid on pine skis over the potato
fields of Long Island, then revisited when I at seven and
eight spent two years in Norway where I skied cross country
and learned to jump, |
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was renewed following the 1932 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid
. I was then living in Roselle and whenever we accumulated
a few inches of snow I stepped into my oak skis with Haug
bindings (steel toe irons and a strap that clamped around
the heel) and toured the open expanse of Warinanco Park. |
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Then in 1935 the superintendent of The Union County Park
Commission, F. S. Mathewson, inaugurated the first of several
annual cross country races held in the Watchung Reservation.
He later was the facilitator who, together with Bill Frutchey,
Dick Wade, Tom Huitfeldt and others, founded the Watchung
Amateur Ski Club on December 8, 1938. As a founding member,
active during the first fifteen years of Watchung's history,
and deeply involved from Vermont since I moved here in 1952,
I have followed the fortunes of our club now into its sixtieth
year. |
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Much of that history is archived in a my vast file of our
club publication HILL ECHOES, which I began editing and
publishing in 1939 with the prophetic first words "We
begin with a great faith in our future." Other fine
references are the special yearbook editions of ECHOES for
1958, '68, '78 and '88. (In my two historically correct
but also part fictional novels, also entitled HILL ECHOES,
there are nearly a hundred references to WASC with special
emphasis on the role of Watchung men who served in the Tenth
Mountain Division of WW2.) |
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"I think that weekend did more to make the club a unit
than anything that happened before or after ..." |
However, for this essay, I have chosen to peruse my annual
series of narrative photo albums from the first years of
our club, emphasizing the ski and social activities therein
recorded. |
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One of the early pictures shows Mt. Mansfield, the destination
of the first club trip only a few weeks after the founding
meeting of December 8th. I hitched a ride with Winnie and
Irma Starr, enclosed in the rumble seat of their Pontiac
convertible for the thirteen hour drive from Elizabeth to
Stowe. The Stowe thermometers registered at ten below. The
only uphill facility was the rope tow at Turks at the base
of the Toll Road where "Hoddy Beazlie and I tried to
comply with their requests for instruction." Later
and during the next two days we climbed the Toll Road several
times.
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Hoddy Beazlie
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used an hour and a half on the two and a half mile trek,
on skis well waxed, to reach the Stone Hut at the start
of the famed Nose Dive. My return to New Jersey was much
more comfortable in the front passengers seat. |
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Now I shall quote verbatim from my album about what happened
two weeks later. "The weekend in mid January saw Union
County with the
the Omlands likewise, for we had Pop on skis and
he and his brood (Jaxon, Inkie, Betty and Erling) enjoyed
the splendor of skiing in sunshine with friends." |
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"I think that weekend did more to make the club a unit
than anything that happened before or after ...I remember
Johnny Kaemphs distinct christy, the way he sent his long
legs into the turn and the special American Ski School technique.
I still see Fritz's (Lunde) red shirt tearing like a forest
fire through the improvised slalom which we set among the
trees. Frutchey's and Wade's feather dusters (on their alpine
hats) stand out in memory ...Mr. Nydecker, our oldest member
at 63, requested lessons in stem turns. I met two noisy
girls who turned out to be the Ritters...Veep Huitfeldt
was cornered by a plump matron who insisted he teach her
to stem ...she promptly forget to stop and knocked him off
his feet. Frutchey had procured some makeshift slalom poles
and we practiced on the hill north of the Tin Kettle." |
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"For the first time in history skiers outnumbered the
sleigh riders. Sunday the Fourth Annual Union County Cross
Country race was held in the Reservation with Watchung taking
the first three places: Omland, Lunde, Beazlie...After the
race we skied again at Galloping Hill, staying until long
after dark, for we felt it would be sacrilegious to allow
such snow to be unused. We were out again Monday, Tuesday
and Wednesday nights always finding club members to ski
with." |
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"On January 21 we were on skis again ...Seeking more
sheltered terrain we drove to the South Mountain (at the
deer paddock) arriving in time to see Bill Blanchard (an
early WASC member) come zipping down the slope, dig a ski
into a sitz‑mark crater and catapult into a spectacular
spill. When he got up he had two pieces of a broken ski
in his hand. But we consoled him by saying he was lucky
it wasn't a broken leg, and that a ski manufacturer (He
actually made skis in his construction company warehouse)
should have little difficulty in securing another pair." |
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Here
are some interesting entries about equipment.
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"I had graduated from Haug bindings to a cable binding..."
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"All I lacked was steel edges, and I trotted down to
Ray Blomquist (the pro and a WASC member) at Bambergers
in Newark and purchased the sectional edges and screws.
It took me six hours to gouge the ski edges with a special
plane that Pop made for me, carefully fit in the short steel
edge sections and drive about two hundred small screws into
the hard hickory, and to polish the job with steel wool." |
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"Watchung invaded the Poconos on January 29. We were
over thirty skiers from the club at Buckhill Falls ...I
saw Arnie Kirbach (a founding member and now, he at 85 and
I 82, my constant ski companion as we cruise the Pico snows)
ski and was impressed with his extreme "vorlage"... |
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In early February "we left N. J. in dismal rain at
two o'clock in the morning" bound for the village of
Lake George. (Where Fred Pabst had one of his ubiquitous
J‑Stick lifts set up on Scotts Cobble. He later gathered
all the J‑Sticks from Canada, New York and New England
and installed them at Bromley
where
they survived until long after chair lifts became the fashion.)
This was our introduction to downhill racing as "we
climbed the Little Lightning Racing Trail with fourteen
others..." |
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On February 10, 1939 "we all gathered at Pistors...That
was the first time I saw Walter Stocker, who soon became
a warm friend ...we were bound for Phoenicia in the Catskills
(Where Simpson Slope offered a spacious and wide rolling
ski slope with a very long rope tow. It even had a railroad
siding at the outrun where snow trains deposited hordes
of skiers.) |
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Dick
Wade
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At
noon "Dick Wade came limping up to us with one ski
on and the other, in two splintered pieces, in his hand.
His right leg was bloodsoaked and left a red trail where
he walked. Someone in the hut went to work on the leg, unceremoniously
cutting Dick's long underwear off at the knee (he wore knickers)
and painting the gash with iodine. Then he began probing
the long cut and said, "There's something in there."
To which Dick replied, "You're damn right, and it is
my shin bone."...In a few hours Dick was back on the
slope on rented skis." |
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The next day "we climbed part of the Spit‑Cat‑Spit
trail, finding it impossible to ski ...and the Cat gave
me a split ski for my troubles ...I confiscated Dick's good
ski and found it matched mine in length (7' 3")...it
was finished in a natural tone with an Attenhoff binding,
whereas mine was dark with a Gerber binding... consequently
I spent a great many minutes explaining my queer equipment
to the inquisitive Gothamites." |
Ted
"Schusser" Pistor
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noon we were more than thirty club members on the hill ...Ted
Pistor joined us ...and did a series of cartwheels over
the abrupt pitch which begins the lower half. I thought
he was dead, but he popped right up and tried it again.
I never saw anyone who had less respect for the workings
of gravity and the vagaries of ski terrain than Ted ...He
earned the name which he bore, and "Schusser Pistor"
it shall always be." |
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Watchung returned to Lake George's Cobble several times
and presently it was March 23 and more than sixty of us
gathered at the Winfield Scott Hotel in Elizabeth to inaugurate
the First Annual Banquet of the Watchung Amateur Ski Club. |
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weeks later Jim and Doris Spees invited me to join them,
and Beazlie and Kirbach, for a long Easter ski vacation
in the White Mountains. From Glenwood on the Saco we five
ventured into Tuckerman Ravine, an awe inspiring introduction
which led to my becoming so addicted that I still venture
into that formidable glacial cirque every spring. There
are ten wonderful pages covering that extended ski excursion
which found us skiing on the Headwall, down the Sherburne
and in subsequent days at Intervale, then on Cannon Mountain
with its funicular. Finally, late one afternoon, we climbed
the Sunset Schuss on Pico Peak (before there were any lifts
there) to slither down on breakable crust before satisfying
Jim's wish to investigate a new Chinese restaurant in Rutland.
In this brief history of Watchung's first year you have
learned about the equipment we used, the areas we visited
and you have met most of the characters who would carry
the drama through the crucible of the Second World War.
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