Last week marked the 50th anniversary of when the Stowe Winter Carnival was “resurrected!” While Stowe had a Winter Carnival as far back as 1921, in 1975 Stowe hadn’t had a Winter Carnival for quite a few years. Enter Gar Anderson! Gar decided the town needed a Winter Carnival, but not just any Winter Carnival. Gar helped organize a 10 day extravaganza with everything “from a ham-and-bean dinner at the Community Church to a polo demonstration at an indoor stable!”
Gar wanted a signature event for the carnival, an event that would draw national attention. He landed both the men’s and women’s Professional Freestyle Associates tours. There would be mogul, aerial, and ballet competitions with all the big names in freestyle. The men’s tour was sponsored by Midas Mufflers and the women’s tour by Colgate. So the event earned the unwieldy title of the Stowe Midas Ski America Colgate National Freestyle Championships!
Despite the elongated title, the event did attract national media. That included the ABC Wide World of Sports which provided TV coverage with Donna De Verona, Bud Palmer, and Billy Kidd providing the play-by-play.
The mogul competition was held on the Upper National with natural snow, skier-created bumps. I say that to distinguish between today’s manicured, artificially-created mogul courses!
Regular contributor Norma Stancliffe had the answer that the mogul event was on the National. She remembers seeing it there plus shared that she competed in a later mogul competition.
One reason I’m highlighting that 1975 mogul event is that it was held on one of those “frigid” days that I’ve been writing about the past couple of weeks. I was there to watch the competition and as I recall it was 10 below zero with a brisk wind! I remember going into the Octagon to get warm before the event and all the competitors were also in there bundled up doing the same thing!
Now in that era the competitors wore the “uniform” you’ve heard me talk about so often: stretch pants and sweaters. This was not a sweater day! But in the true spirit of freestyle, when their number was called, the competitors peeled off the extra layers and launched themselves down the National to the music blaring from the huge Ski America speakers. I did notice that nobody hung around the finish area very long!
As I wrap up this sequence on frigid weather, I’ll share some of the reader input I’ve received on the topic. I’ll start with Norma Stancliffe who said she suffered her first frostbite as a baby in her parents’ backpack riding up the single chair in 1948!
Steve Berry shared this story, “On one 30 degree below zero New Years Day we woke up at the Yodler (Now the Stowe Village Inn) to find that no cars would start. It wasn’t until noon that a Tow Truck from Morrisville arrived with charging cables and slowly worked through the parking lot to get cars started. Once running, we drove home to Boston never turning the car off to risk the battery being too dead to start us up again.”
Cheryl Brayman says, “The worst case [of frostbite] I ever saw was a woman coming off the single chair at Stowe. It was a 4 blanket day. 3 for your body and 1 wrapped around your head. Her cheek was frozen and split quite deeply.”
I received the following from R. Rafael, “In the late 80s I convinced my father to take me up to Jay Peak so I could ride the tram. When we went out to our car Saturday morning it was 20 below. The car had summer weight oil and the car would not crank. The tow truck came and hooked up the battery to the (Briggs and Stratton?) generator and revved the generator way up to get the car to turn over. We missed a 1/2 a day of very cold skiing. I did get to ride the tram though.”
I got the best answer to my “what is frostbite” trivia question from John Thurgood. He says, “I think one experiences frost bite when they forget their anniversary!”
One last item from that 1975 Winter Carnival, yours truly won the speed skating race in the adult division! But that’s a story for another time!
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