Skiing and the NFS

According to U.S. Forest Service Visitor Use Monitoring Surveys the number one reason people visit National Forests is to hike. But guess what activity is a close second? Of course, downhill skiing! Each year about 57 million people visit U.S. ski areas and of those, almost half, visit ski areas that operate on U.S. Forest Service land.

Congress entrusts the National Forest Service (NFS) to “make such rules and regulations and establish such service as will insure the objects of the [national forests], namely to regulate their occupancy and use and to preserve the forests thereon from destruction.” According to a recent “water clause directive”(a strategy for providing adequate water to ski areas described in the Federal Register) issued by the NFS “there are 122 ski areas that encompass about 180,000 acres of lands managed by the Forest Service. [Those] ski areas receive roughly 23 million visitors annually, who contribute $3 billion yearly to local economies and support approximately 64,000 full- and part-time jobs in rural communities.” NHSC members are regularly skiing in the mix—both out west and in the east.


The first eastern ski area on federal reserve land was Wildcat, in New Hampshire. The ski area maintains a park-like setting with no on-site lodging and plenty of brown-bag lunches in the base lodge. The slopes here are steep and fast and the view from the summit (at over 4,000 feet nose level with Mt Washington’s 6,000’ summit) is consistently voted among the most scenic in all North American ski resorts by readers of Ski magazine. Many NFS areas are like slopes in a time capsule—except for the fact that modern high speed lifts now bring skiers and boarders uphill.


The first ski trail at Wildcat was cut by the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) in the summer of 1933. With no lift at that time, skiers would hike up most of the day in order to ski down the mile and a half trail. It was 60 feet wide in places and dropped 2,000 vertical feet. In the winter of 1957-58 Wildcat introduced a top-to bottom gondola that provided access to a trail network that included the original CCC trail. It is still skiable today—and with a $10 trail pass one can skip the liftline and hike up the mountain to access it--just like they did in the old days.

Ski Songs

I was reminiscing with friends recently about singing songs around the campfire.  A long time ago.  In the summer.  Songs about mountains, rivers, skies.  Songs about canoeing, sailing, hiking. Our instruments of choice then were guitars and harmonicas.  There were lots of fun memories but talk soon shifted from the season that was over to the season that is here.  Which meant songs were irrelevant because—we could not think of one song about skiing!  Seriously!  Are there any?

Googling the phrase “songs about skiing” yields a list of websites that feature “Top 10 skiing songs.”  Or “Top 5.”  Or, “Best.”  Point being, these are songs that have been judged great to listen to while skiing.  They are not about skiing. (Though it's true that The Doors’ Riders on the Storm and Bowie’s Rebel, Rebel are pretty sweet powder tunes…)  I thought my research might be more successful if I searched for the lyrics themselves.  At the Lyrics.com database a truncated search strategy worked, sort of.  This technique involves putting an asterisk at the end of a root word that might have many different endings, in order to find various forms of the research term, ie ski*. In this case the letters s,k,i begin all of the words ski, skiing, skier, and skis.  Unfortunately, they also start the word skies, about which many songs have been sung! So, this librarian suggests that you use the truncation trick in research databases or library catalogs, where you can also include a “this, but not that” key word directive.

Some of the songs I did find?  How about Billie Holiday’s Moonlight in Vermont with the lyrics: 

Pennies in a stream/Falling leaves a sycamore/Moonlight in Vermont/Gentle finger waves/Ski trails down a mountain side/Snow light in Vermont.

Sara Vaughn and Count Basie did a pretty good job with it too…Just ask Alexa.

In To Be Given a Body Torres sings:

Where would I have been if/Not safe in the middle/Pressed between/His right shoulder/Your left shoulder/Drowsy on the ski lift/Drowsy on the ski lift…

Let’s just say, the song was not a hit.  Four Bitchin’ Babes sing:

Look at me I'm skiing/When I do not like skiing/But he loves skiing/And I love him/I rent the boots and poles/ I shiver in the cold I'm charging down the mountain/Risking life and limb/There's no exhilaration /I am only feeling terrified/Everyone everyone around me's having/Such a great time/I do not like skiing/But look at me I'm skiing/It's a good thing He can't read my mind.

Hmmm...a tune that is both a song about skiing and a ballad about a doomed relationship.

A number of raps about ski masks and guns can be found on the Amazon “ski-word” playlist but I’m pretty sure they have nothing to do with the actual sport.

I gave up on the web and the free pseudo-databases and went to Worldcat.org, a giant catalog of items held in libraries all over the globe, where I found what I was looking for.  An album by Bob Gibson, produced in 2008 called Ski Songs.  Perfect for a summer camp chorus-- vocals, banjo, guitars and surely a harmonica or two.  The song titles on the album are: Celebrated skier, In this white world, Super skier, Highlands Lassie, Bend in his knees, Talking skier, Ski patrol, Skiin' in the mornin', Super skier's last race, What'll we do, Skol the skier.  Now this is an album of ski songs!  You build a campfire in the snow while I look up the chords!

(Find the album in a library near you at http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/225876490)