Still Teaching Skiing after 50 Years

BY DAN WHEAT

Wenatchee World staff writer

Spring 2003

ORONDO -He started skiing about 68 years ago on what was barely a slope in his parents' orchard just north of Orondo School.

Otto W. Ross and his older sister, Lois, had the latest gear -pine skis from Sears and Roebuck's that had no steel edges.

They wore work boots held onto the skis, at the toe, by leather straps that went through a hole in each ski. They got fancy. Their dad helped fashion an accessory -heel bindings from strips of inner tube.

With such rudimentary equipment, "going straight was what you did," Ross recalls. "It wasn't much of a slope, but if you packed it down (the hard way with your skis) and had wax you could get going fairly good."

Now, Ross, 76, a mostly-retired Orondo orchardist, and his buddy, Bob Church, 77, Wenatchee, are the most senior of the approximately 80 instructors of the Mission Ridge Ski School. Saturday, some of them talked technique indoors at the Ridge and hoped snow soon covers bare slopes.

The two have enjoyed skiing together since 1950 when Church talked Ross into joining him on th~ National Ski Patrol at Stevens Pass. They became nationally-certified ski school instructors in 1952. They recruited and trained Ski Patrol members in preparation for the opening of Mission Ridge Ski Area in 1966.

Ross switched from the patrol to ski school when the Ridge opened because instructors were needed. Church switched a year later.

"I regret I didn't keep a list of names of all the people I've instructed," Ross mused Saturday. "It would have been wonderful. People from allover the world. I did start a couple of people who are fairly famous."

One was radio commentator Paul Harvey, in about 1954 at Squilchuck ski hill, now Squilchuck State Park. Harvey came to town on a speaking engagement and decided to try skiing. Ross remembers Harvey was eager and continued skiing in subsequent years.

The other was actress Goldie Hawn in 1972 at Alpine Meadows, Calif., where Ross worked a couple of seasons.

"She was very nice. I think she had a body guard with her all the time and it was a nasty day -windy and blowing snow," Ross recalls.

His favorite moment was as one or six honor guard skiing along side two-time 1952 Olympic gold medalist Andrea Mead Lawrence carrying the torch down the slope to light the flame of the 1962 Olympics at Squaw Valley, Calif. Ross was a ski patrolman for the Olympics. He remembers it snowed hard for three days before the games, cleared for them and started snowing again as soon as they were over.

A close second, as a favorite, was getting the Moniteur de Ski – French ski instructor certification – and teaching at Megeve, France, in 1968.

That rally was and still in a big deal, says Sally Brawley, director of Mission Ridge Ski School.

“It doesn’t happen very often. You have to be very, very good to get that. They don’t give it out to Americans easily,” she said.

In the mid-1950’s, Ross helped start ski schools in Ardenvoir, Chelan and Waterville. Over the years, he taught his four chilfren and his grandchildren to ski.

Brawley says Ross now is teaching the kids of kids he taught. She says he loves the sport and loves teaching people of all ages.

"He can say it (give instruction) in a way that's simple so people can understand it. He's much-requested. He's very patient and compassionate. If someone is getting it, the light bulbs are going on, Otto will put in the extra time, even if the lesson is over," she says.

"Many instructors look up to him and hope to be teaching as long as him and have the following and popularity he has acquired over the years," Brawley says. "He trains just as hard as the rest of us. He's a great role model for the ski school."

He's so dedicated, she says, that his own kids knew he wouldn't take a day off last Jan. 27 to ski with them on his 76th birthday. So, without telling him, they booked a private lesson with him for the day.

His wife Shirley, whose skiing has been limited since a 1980 auto accident, says Ross loves teaching beginners and is good with women returning after quitting to have children. She said he understands their fears.

"His motto is one negative takes two positives, that you can't say a negative without coming up with two positives," she says.

Ross says smiling is key.

"A lot of times when people start they are very tense because they're on a slippery slope. Keep them smiling. That's important because if you smile you're much more relaxed and then you're safer," he says.

Ross learned to snowboard when he was 75. He thought about becoming a snowboard instructor but decided he didn't want to spend the two or three years necessary to get good enough to teach. He also says he didn't want to break a bone trying.

His goal is to teach until he's 80 and ski as long as he enjoys it.

"The moment I start failing and don't do a good job, I hope they kick me off (the ski school)," he said with a laugh.

But, it's with fondness that he remembers the early years.

"In high school (in the 1940s), there were four of us -Jim Wade, Gordon Fenton, Jerry Milliken and myself -who went to Stevens Pass on weekends as much as we could get gas and money," Ross said. "We would watch the better skiers and try to follow them."

Usually, they took Fenton's Dodge or Wade's car. When they didn't mind being cold, they took Ross’s 1930 Model A Ford. They got good at putting on chains.

Another fond memory was the time, in 1939, when his dad bought him a new pair of Northland skis with Hjalmar Hvan bindings, the first model with safety release, at a shop in Waterville after he broke his second pair of skis at Badger Mountain ski hill.

And it as dad who built a ski ramp for him in the orchard.

Like many in that era, Ross was inspired by the 1936 Olympics and the opening of Sun Valley with the world’s first chair lift in the same year. A year or two later, the movie, “Sun Valley Serenade,” featuring Sonja Henie, Olympic gold medalist turned actress, had “everyone” Ross says, “talking about skiing and wanting to try it.”

Dan Wheat may be reached at 664-7150 or by e-mail at wheat@wenworld.com  Reprinted in the Snowsport Instructor with the permission from the Wenatchee World.