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Lowangle's thread on "Memory Lane" inspired me to flip through some old albums while I am here at my parents house in VT. I started racing in the "5 and under" lollipop races and kept a little album including ribbons, newspaper mentions and photos. ironically that album is at my house, but here are a couple of pics that I found here in VT.

1975. I was 5yo, trying to get my skis on for the race. my mom's note on the back of the pic is how I know its me, a race, and my age. this pic is the 3 of us kids. I'm rocking the sweet rainbow hat. that would have been about 1978. I believe we had just returned from alpine skiing judging by my wood skis and cable bindings. I hated those skis because I was always the slowest kid in my group lesson. my little brother looks like he belongs on postcard for rural VT in the 70's. the red hillbilly hat is awesome. ah the awkward 80's. prob 1983 or so. I'm wearing knickers for gods sake! in a ski race ! and the hat with ear muffs and braids...good lord ! I can't tell in this pic if my skis are fiberglass or wood, but the red/white/blue boots were some intermediate duckbill width

My skiing pre-dates photography

Nice pix.

The photos are from
Dec 31, 1983 and Jan 2, 1984

We skied across the Sierra Nevada in 10 days.

I had a pair of Galibier Makalu double boots for climbing. I had mounted toe and heel plates to the leather boots so that I could do mountain approaches with skis instead of snowshoes. I was running a Fischer ski with the original Ramer bindings. Kind of a randonee setup. So that's what I used for the ski trip.

I HATED skiing in rigid boots, and switched to tele after that trip.

Hey, I found an even earlier photo. This is definitely the oldest photo I have of me skiing.
Southeast side of Denali, June 1983
Fischer skis, Makalu boots, Ramer bindings

It was pretty quiet on the SE side, we didn't see another person for an entire month
After our attempt on Denali, we took a few days to ski part-way down the Great Gorge

This is the Great Gorge (aka Ruth Gorge):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Bra ... -gorge.jpg
The glacier running right-to-left in this photo is a mile wide.

No photo but I didn't fall.

OK, I'll bite. Not my oldest photo, but a funny photo none the less. Circa 1973. Europa 77's, silvretta cable bindings, mountaineering boots, home sewn powder suit. The equipment sure has changed over the years, but the Wyoming powder and my smile has remained the same. I no longer rock the icicle beard
This guy from 1973 couldn't even imagine the technology that made this shot possible. (Jan 28, 2022)

awesome old photos and vids.

I just remembered to find my old scrapbook and found a few pics. when I was 7yo I was crushing the lollipop race circuit in nordic and jumping. lol. sadly I cannot find any pics of me ski jumping. back then we would wait anxiously to see if our names got printed in the weekly local paper...and my name was usual spelled wrong in the paper because my 7yo hand writing was not very good and I filled out my own entry cards. what's amazing about racing back then is my parents spent every weekend from December to March driving us to races and jumping all over the Northeast.

I believe I "peaked" in my racing career by age 11. I was good enough for top 10's in high school, but not good enough to ski in college. although I believe I could have made the Tele Team by age 14 if there had been such a thing.