Who invented the Graduated Length Method for teaching skiing?
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I want to say Cliff Taylor at Hogback Mt. I remember he called them shorties and you moved from 2 footers to five footers. I seem to think the GLM was still the term that Jay Peak used along with Natur Teknik. Jack Pickett
It was Clif Taylor. My father (Victor Coty) took many movies of him on his short skis. In fact, I grew up using his short skis which he gave to Vic in appreciation for the exposure the movies gave him. It’s a good thing they were free as they were made of wood, and I would often snap them like cold Popsicle sticks bombing down the Front Four. At the time, there was a great deal of snobbery directed at them from the established elite. “Short skis suck, long skis truck” was their motto, and although I was left behind on the runouts, I would ski circles around them on the steeps. I can tell you being upstaged by an arrogant young kid on these radical skis made them furious. The calmer ones just called me a “cheater”, and as I look back at my contacts with the more belligerent I feel lucky I didn’t get my face punched in. It took many years, but over time the advantages of shorter skis began to sink in (it was evidently OK to cheat after all) and they slowly became acceptable. Now, no one takes notice of the size of my skis. During this transition, countless people would ask me why I had given up my short skis, and I would have to remind them it was their ski length that had changed. Clif was a visionary, though condescension rather than commendations was mostly what he received in his heyday.