Bonanza in the Wilderness

On the twisting trails that lace the flanks of Vermont's Mt. Mansfield, traffic was so heavy that skiers had trouble keeping out of one another's way. On Michigan's Boyne Mountain, colorfully garbed schussboomers cheerfully endured long waits to ride lifts up the glistening white mountainside. Restaurants on Colorado's Aspen Mountain were overrun with crowds. Thousands left their sitzmarks on the deep powder slopes of California's Sierras and Washington's Cascade range. Whenever there was snow, busloads of weekend skiers left New York and Chicago at first light, and in Nevada deserts, sweaty cowboys watched mountain-bound cars go by, skis lashed to the roofs.

From Fanatics to Families. In less than 25 years, skiing has been transformed from an eccentric practice pursued by a handful of fanatic, chilblained young men to the U.S.'s fastest-growing outdoor winter sport. Today, anybody skis--corporation president and office boy, college student and secretary, parents and children. It is no longer a pastime for the well-heeled who could afford to go to Europe to learn. The skiing establishment at Aspen, Colo, is a typical example of what the sport has added to the face of the U.S. A broken-down mining settlement as late as 1946, Aspen now boasts some 50 ski lodges, offers a wide range of overnight accommodations, from Ed's Beds ($2.75 and down) to the luxurious new Villa Lamarr ($8 and up), financed by Hedy Lamarr's estranged husband Howard Lee and promptly dubbed Hedy's Beddies.

Keys to the U.S.'s ski boom were the rope tow and its more advanced counterpart, the chair lift. The first rope tow, a jury rig powered by a truck engine, was installed at Woodstock, Vt. in 1934, the first chair lift at Sun Valley, Idaho in 1937. Until then a skier had to be young and determined enough to rise at dawn, spend most of the day trudging up the side of a mountain for the sake of one or two swift descents. The tow made skiing a downhill run all the way.

This winter an estimated 3,000,000 skiers will be out on slopes from Maine's Sugarloaf Mountain to Oregon's Mount Hood. There is skiing in Taos, N. Mex. and on North Carolina's Mount Mitchell, and ski clubs have appeared in Amarillo, Texas and Louisville, Ky.

Snow Fever. Resort owners are convinced that the boom is still young, and are pushing ahead with expansion plans, undismayed by the uncertainties inherent in snow itself--not enough of it in the East, where slopes must be closely tended to preserve what falls, often too much of it in the West, where gun crews must shoot down avalanches to ensure safety and jumbo storms can seal off an area for days. Vermont's Mt. Snow opened the first outdoor swimming pool at an Eastern ski resort. California's plush new $1,750,000 inn at Mammoth Mountain was doing a land-office business. Michigan's Boyne Mountain resort was plowing back $250,000 a year into improvements. All in all, there were no fewer than 90 new overhead lifts operating in U.S. areas this winter, and more were on the way.

For the past year, the most feverish of all ski area preparations have been centered in and around a narrow, steep-sided valley high in the California Sierras, 200 miles northeast of San Francisco, 40 miles southwest of Reno, and six miles from Lake Tahoe. Despite the snow and cold last week, work crews poured into Squaw Valley to put the finishing touches on four handsome, pastel-shaded dormitories, transform a shell of bright orange girders into a skating rink, build lift towers. Navy snow-compaction teams experimented with tamping down a large meadow to serve as a parking lot. A year from now, some 1,000 athletes and 35,000 spectators from all over the world will jam Squaw Valley daily during the 1960 Winter Olympic Games; to make sure that all will go right, the state of California and the U.S. Government are pouring millions into a place that only a decade or so ago was wilderness.

Tact & Tactics. Squaw Valley's position as a ski resort and Olympics' site is the work of a tall (6 ft. 5 in.), slat-lean man of Eastern socialite background (New York, Newport) and upbringing (Groton, Harvard) named Alexander Cochrane Cushing. With no experience at developing or running such a place, Alec Cushing proceeded purposefully through trial and error at Squaw Valley, made some horrendous mistakes in judgment and tact en route. But he pulled a master coup in wangling the Olympics for his own backyard, a tactic that will leave him, after the Olympics are over, in the center of a $14 million establishment which will put Squaw Valley squarely in the top rank of U.S. ski areas.

Such figures no longer startle ski men, for skiing has become big business. This year skiers will spend an estimated $120 million on accommodations, transportation, lift tickets and equipment. They will pay $5,000,000 for skis, a like amount for pants and parkas, $4,000,000 for boots. East and West, ski shops reported business at new highs, up as much as 40% from last season.

Floating & Defying. Ski equipment comes in a wide price range--most of it expensive. Most beginners find themselves impelled to spend at least $150 if they are to feel properly equipped. As for clothes, an old pair of jodhpurs and an old sweater will no longer do. Even the raw novice feels a compulsive need for skintight Bogner stretch pants ($50), quilted parka ($30) and Alpine sweater ($30).

But the dedicated scorn details of money. Sometimes they seem to consider skiing less a sport than a mystical experience. They get rhapsodic when they try to explain the feeling that makes a few hours on a slope worth the long tortuous trip to get there and the possibility of a broken bone. "When I ski," explains one buff, "I feel like a fellow in a dream, floating through the air, defying gravity, conscious only of the hissing of the skis through the snow. The only thing that vaguely resembles the sensation is flying. Unlike any other sport, the skier is completely on his own. Once he begins his descent, no one can help him."

The Cult. By common consent, skiing is the greatest device for social mixing since the decline of the office party. Among its rituals are the hot buttered rum around the fireplace in the evening, the songs, the exchange of stories on the day's moments of triumph or disaster. "Where else can two young people get to know each other better than at a ski resort hundreds of miles from home?" asks one resort owner. "A girl can look real cute in a ski outfit, especially in those stretch pants," a ski tour director points out.

Skiers develop a language of their own, happily swap such German terms as gelaendesprung (a jump), schussboomer (one who dashes headlong straight down a slope) and sitzmark (the imprint left in the snow by a fallen skier's hindquarters), refer familiarly to moguls (bumps in the slopes) and snowplows (a novice's slow stop maneuver). Even skiing's hazards "provide a bond of sorts. Ski magazine estimates that in an average year one in every ten skiers will injure himself more or less seriously. Every ski lodge boasts its quota of walking wounded. Most innkeepers consider them poor advertising. Grumbles one healthy skier: "They wear their plaster casts like badges of honor. As a come on, they usually ask you to autograph the cast."

Stalking through his Squaw Valley lodge last week, Alec Cushing signed no plaster casts. He is not the type. He sees no reason for making small talk with people he does not know, feels little of the easy camaraderie that skiers cherish. Most skiers concede a grudging admiration for his salesmanship, immediately follow with the charge that he sold Squaw Valley to the Olympic nations, not on the basis of what was there, but on what he hoped the state would provide. In fact. Cushing at the time owned only one chair lift and just six acres of level land on the valley floor. But by the imperatives of terrain, every one of the ski runs ends at his front doorstep. In effect, he owned home plate, and the authorities could not do without him even if they wanted to.

"I'm Terrible." Western skiers dislike Cushing because he is Eastern, because he barged into Squaw Valley, ultimately (and legally) took the ski operations there away from a California native who planned the area and owned most of the valley land, and because he has the annoying habit of walking precipitously away from a guest, leaving a conversation dangling in midsentence. Says the wife of a neighboring resort owner: "I'd like to like Cushing, but he's so rude. We've been introduced 26 times, and he never remembers me." Admits Cushing: "I'm terrible with the public. I don't like that professional, oily quality, but I guess I'm wrong. People at resorts like to say the owner talked to them. Here they say, 'That sonofabitch Cushing didn't speak to me for the 13th consecutive day.' "

To his friends, and to strangers when he wants something from them, Cushing can display a formidable charm, and a determination that is awesome. But Alec Cushing had a certain rudeness about him from the beginning. "He was a beautiful baby," recalls his older sister, Mrs. Lily Cushing Boyd. "He was also the most determined boy you ever saw. Whenever people came up and went itchykoo at him, Alexander would lie back and bark like a sea lion." He was born to wealth. His grandfather, Robert M. Cushing, was an old Boston tea merchant. His father was a talented painter, died when Alec was four. Young Cushing grew up in New

York and Newport luxury. A gangling, tree-tall adolescent with a huge head topped by unruly red hair, Alec inevitably got the nickname "Pin," learned to play tennis well enough to reach the quarterfinals of the Newport Invitational when he was 16. He prepared for the match (against Wilmer Allison) by drinking till dawn, then amazed himself by taking a 4-1 lead in the second set. At this point his hangover caught up with him. Says Cushing: "I had a total blackout. When I tried to throw the ball up for service, I almost went flat on my face. At least that's my story. My friends say Allison looked at his watch, noticed that it was nearly lunchtime, and quickly ran off five straight games."

At Groton, the gangling Cushing was a good-hit, no-field first baseman ("I couldn't bend over far enough to get to ground balls"), did the crudest kind of skiing (classmates recall he was forever stepping out of his bindings, losing skis on the slightest of hills). At Harvard he played squash, flopped at crew ("I learned a wrist trick--a way of making a big puddle without actually pulling hard. The coach caught me one afternoon, stopped the boat and took me off").

As a matter of course, he made the Porcellian Club. Summers he traveled abroad, became expert at living like a first-class passenger on a third-class ticket. On one voyage, he ingratiated himself with Boxing Manager Joe ("I should have stood in bed") Jacobs before the ship left the dock, spent most of the trip playing poker on A-deck with Jacobs, Max Schmeling and Morton Downey. In his sophomore year Alec decided summer trips were too short, set out to get his degree in three years, didn't quite make it (he lacked one-half unit), but managed a nine-month tour of the Far East (on which he visited with Fred Astaire) while his classmates labored back in Cambridge.

Graduating in 1936, Cushing cast around for something to do, decided to go to Harvard Law School. "I had no particular love for the law," he admits, "but the alternative was going to work."

Matter of Contacts. Before he left Harvard Law, Cushing married blonde, blue-eyed Justine Cutting, socialite daughter of Dr. Fulton Cutting of New York, professor of physics at New Jersey's Stevens Institute. His closest friend (and fellow Porcellian), Alexander McFadden, had married Justine's older sister. All through his life Alec Cushing has known important people, and casually made the most of his contacts. Desultorily looking for a job. Cushing ran into his old Groton classmate, Stewart Alsop, through him got an interview with Justice Department Trustbuster Thurman Arnold, who promptly hired him.

With the outbreak of war. Cushing was commissioned in the Navy ("I figured I'd get drafted anyway"). Assigned as a troubleshooter for Naval Air Transport Service, he traveled to all war theaters, worked as he never had before.

On one occasion he flew to Brazil, found a Naval transport station sorely in need of dockage equipment. Ironically, the very equipment needed was stored only four miles away but assigned to the Rubber Development Corporation. Federal law forbade transfer to the Navy, so Cushing decided the law needed changing. He flew back to Washington, went to Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, got his backing, helped prepare the legislation, all in one stretch of 60 hours without sleep. The bill passed, but the strain proved too much. He collapsed, wound up in Bethesda Naval Hospital.

The Nut Ward. "When I came to." he recalls, "I was in the nut ward. My face was totally paralyzed. My eyes were frozen open. The nurses had to tape them shut at night so I could get to sleep.'' From his bout with hard work. Lieut. Commander Cushing was left with a partial paralysis of the left side of his face that still pulls down the corner of his mouth, gives him a quizzical look. He was philosophical ("There was not a damn thing I could do about it. so what was the use of worrying?"). At war's end he went back to the law (in Wall Street), stuck it out for two years, quit in boredom ("The war taught me life could be exciting").

Tragedy. Cushing first saw Squaw Valley in 1946. hiked into it (there was no road then) with a likable skier and Pan American World Airways pilot named Wayne Poulsen. who had bought up much of the valley's land. Over the bridge table that night, Alec cautiously asked his wife: "How would you like to live in these mountains?" Justine did not look up from her cards. "Are you out of your mind, Cushing?" she inquired icily. But two years later the Cushings and the McFaddens headed west once more to check on Squaw as a possible ski resort. They never got there. Skiing down a dangerous slope at Aspen with two experienced skiers one morning, the two brothers-in-law were trapped when a huge avalanche cut loose above them. Cushing was buried to his neck. Alexander McFadden died under tons of snow. The death of his closest friend was a profound shock to Cushing, still reduces him to sobs whenever he tells the story.

Despite the tragedy. Cushing was obsessed with opening a ski area, went into partnership with Airman Poulsen to develop Squaw in June 1948. Poulsen supplied the land--640 acres--and Cushing the money--$400,000. Alec and Justine invested $145,000 of their own, got $50,000 from Laurance Rockefeller, the rest from other friends.

Poulsen and Cushing had differences almost from the start. Cushing allowed Poulsen to reserve 42 acres of land for homesites, found belatedly that Squaw Valley Development Corp. was left with only six acres of level ground. Cushing wanted to operate restaurant, bar and lodging facilities at Squaw. Poulsen wanted to lease them out. Cushing went ahead anyway, bought a set of old Air Force barracks, had them trucked into the valley, put the corporation in the hotel business.

Trouble. In Squaw's first five years of operation, avalanches ripped out lift towers three times. The lodge was cut off four times by bridge washouts, flooded out twice, later (in 1956) burned to the ground. Poulsen and Cushing had increasingly sharp differences. The showdown came in October 1949, when, in Poulsen's absence on an international flight for Pan Am, his wife Sandy fired off letters to Squaw stockholders accusing Cushing of mismanagement. A stockholders' meeting was called, and the result was inevitable, since Cushing owned 52% of the stock, his friends another 46%. After an audit showed nothing legally wrong, Cushing replaced Poulsen as president of Squaw Valley Development. Today, a bitter Poulsen still controls choice homesites in the valley (and stands to become a millionaire with the land boom caused by Cushing's getting the Olympics), but Cushing and the corporation have exclusive ski rights, since they possess the only lift permit allotted to the area by the U.S. Forest Service.

The opening of Squaw Valley Lodge on Thanksgiving Day, 1949, was a memorable fiasco. Cushing had to hire strikebreakers when his union workmen struck the week of the opening, hooked up plumbing himself. Justine hurriedly summoned the domestic couple from their New York home, pressed a friend into service as a chambermaid. One woman guest arrived early, found Cushing still at work on the plumbing. Snarled Alec: "Madam, come back in three hours, and we'll be ready. Meanwhile, don't bother me." That night everything went wrong. There was no dinner until 10. Only one toilet was working, and the waiting line for it snaked out into the lobby. One of Cushing's daughters tripped, broke her leg. A guest ran over one of his dogs. The whole thing was, to use Cushing's word, "ghastly."

To Get Space. One day in 1954, a two-paragraph item in the San Francisco Chronicle caught Alec Cushing's eye. Reno had bid for the Olympic Games. Cushing had only one chair lift at Squaw then, but he decided to apply too. "I had no more interest in getting the games than the man in the moon," he admits. "It was just a way of getting some newspaper space." The space he got in West Coast papers brought a flood of encouraging letters, made up Cushing's mind: "When I got letters from all those people saying what a nice thing I was doing, it made me feel bad."

There were only six weeks in which to ready Squaw Valley's bid for consideration as the U.S. nominee to stage the games. Cushing moved quickly, enlisted the support of California State Senator Harold ("Biz") Johnson and Governor Goodie Knight, got the legislators to revive an old bill that had promised Los Angeles money to back its successful 1932 Summer Olympics bid, pass a new version to guarantee $1,000.000 for Squaw. Old Friend and Squaw Stockholder (5%) Laurance Rockefeller gave his support. With evidence of financial backing, a hastily prepared brochure and a charming dissertation on Squaw ("I'm a very strong speaker when I'm convinced"), Cushing sold the U.S. committee. His next target was the delegates to the Paris meeting of the International Olympic Committee, who would decide the site of the games.

The Triumvirate. For the selling job, Cushing called on two fellow Harvardmen for help: George Weller. globe-trotting reporter for the Chicago Daily News, and Marshall Haseltine, urbane expatriate who lived in Europe. Weller got a leave of absence to work with Cushing. He drove into Squaw Valley over the rutted dirt road from State Highway 89, took one horrified look and decided on the spot that the pitch had to be a return to Olympic ideals of togetherness and simplicity, in contrast to Europe's ornate resorts.

Applicants' brochures were customarily printed in English, French and German. Weller noted that "only two countries spoke German, and they both wanted the Olympics in their own area," ordered Spanish substituted for German to please Latin American delegates. Weller embarked on a four-month tour of South America to emphasize the advantages of an Olympics in the Western Hemisphere. His next trip was to Scandinavia, where he plugged the idea of a simple Olympics to thrifty Swedes and Norwegians. Cushing and Haseltine took on other European I.O.C. representatives. *The Soft Sell. By the time the crucial meeting convened in Paris, Cushing & Co. had made personal contact with 42 of the 62 delegates. The three Americans hung out unobtrusively in cocktail bars frequented by delegates, never pushed themselves, but were always available. Cushing had ordered a huge (7 ft. by 12 ft.) relief model of Squaw Valley at a cost of $2,800, had it shipped to Paris for $3,000. The monster proved so big it would not fit through the door of the I.O.C. exhibit room, but after lodging was found for it down the street, delegates went out of their way to go see it, thereby giving the Americans a chance to practice the soft sell away from competing exhibits.

Despite all the groundwork, the outlook was not bright for Squaw when the meeting opened. Huffed a German delegate to Cushing: "Don't think you are going to parlay one ski lift into an Olympic Game." Even a U.S. delegate sneered: "Who's going to vote for you? I'm not." Austria's Innsbruck was Squaw's chief competitor, and seemed a sure winner when one of the delegates charged that Squaw was totally unprepared to stage an Olympics, furthermore should be disqualified because it was not a town (it still is not). Summoned to the meeting room for an explanation, Cushing turned on the charm. There should be no fears about readying an Olympic plant at Squaw, he argued. After all, there were four years in which to build it, said he, and had not the governments of both California and the U.S. endorsed Squaw's bid? As for the town technicality, "We're all sportsmen here, not politicians." Squaw Valley won the bid, 32-30 over Innsbruck, on the second ballot.

Conflict of Interests. Triumphantly Cushing returned to the U.S., ran headlong into a stern warning from the I.O.C.'s crusty chairman, Avery Brundage: "Cushing, you're going to set back the Olympic movement 25 years." For a time, it appeared that Brundage had something. Cushing could count on the piddling $1,000,000 voted by the state, but even in his most poor-mouth moment, he never envisioned that the games could be staged for less than $2,000,000.

Somehow he managed to inveigle a group of prominent Californians to serve as a watchdog commission over the steadily expanding state expenditures at Squaw. He became president of the Olympic Organizing Committee that had been set up to stage the games. The conflict of interests was obvious at once to everyone but Cushing. He stubbornly insisted that Cushing the Olympics promoter and Cushing the resort owner could lead separate lives, finally stepped down in December 1955 as cries mounted for his scalp.

The Price Goes Up. The new committee chairman, tough-talking Prentis Cobb Hale, head of a West Coast department store chain, promptly told Cushing to go back to Squaw and keep his nose out of Olympic business. "He treated me like a criminal," complains Cushing. "He gave orders that none of his employees were to talk to me when they came up here." Saddled with making good on Cushing's extravagant promises to the Olympic nations, purposeful Prentis Hale brooked no nonsense, made few friends, but ultimately got results.

An architect's survey determined that there would have to be sewage and flood-control facilities, access roads, an ice skating stadium and practice rinks, a ski jump area, at least three new lifts. On top of that, dormitories would have to be built. Total estimated cost: at least $8,000,000. Hale got $4,000,000 from the legislature, had to go back for $2,990,000 more. When the state finally balked, he got $4,000.000 from the Federal Government.

The Olympic program for Squaw Valley is rolling along on schedule. The 3,300-ft. lift for slalom runs is finished; another up Squaw Peak is under construction. The dormitories are virtually complete, the jump is ready, administration buildings are up, the skating arena is well along. At the state's insistence, Cushing has built a spectacular new 5,000-ft. lift up the side of Squaw Peak's neighbor, KT-22.

Home from Hot Dogs. Cushing's own property stands at the focus of the Olympic activity area. He has survived criticism and natural catastrophe with great aplomb. The burned-out lodge has been replaced, is now an adequate blue-pastel structure featuring a radiant-heated outdoor dining terrace and candlelit cocktail lounge in which Jazz Pianist Ralph Sutton displays his talents. Critics still complain that Cushing begrudges many comforts, that his sleeping quarters are still far from first class, overpriced ($18 a day) and resound to every footfall. Cushing admits that his accommodations could be better, will decide after the Olympics just how to improve them.

The Cushings live just 100 yds. from the lodge, in what once was a hot dog stand in the resort's early days. It has been converted and expanded into a comfortable, split-level home, featuring bright crimson walls and ceilings in the main living area. Here Alec and Justine can relax with their three daughters--Justine, 18 (at Radcliffe College), Lily, 15 (at swank Foxcroft in Virginia), and Alexandra, 10, who attends school in nearby Truckee.

Though he will have no direct stake in the Olympics (the state will run his lodge and lifts during the games), Alec Cushing is in sight of the big payoff. He has contracts for a ten-year lease on the new lifts the state is building. A new superhighway to the valley entrance from Reno and San Francisco will make it easier than ever to get there. Later this month, as a testament to the revitalized valley, the North American skiing championships will be held there for the first time.

Cushing stands at his front doorstep, gazes fondly at his lodge, at the Olympic work progressing all around him, listens contentedly to the soft whirring of the lifts. His blue eyes roam up and down the white, pine-pocked slopes. He smiles faintly. "We should do pretty well here from now on," he says, "unless we hack things up--and we probably will."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.