“You owe it to yourself to do it at least once!” I’m guessing most readers have heard this from well-meaning friends applying peer pressure to influence your decision on something. Well, back in the late 1970s, my friends used this logic to convince me to enter the Stowe Derby!

Back then it was just the Stowe Derby and by that I mean one race. There weren’t categories for classical or freestyle or both, and fat tire bikes didn’t exist.

I succumbed to the peer pressure and entered the race. I think there were about 400 entries that year and I was bib number 151. The race started at the top of the lift-served Toll Road. That is where the Nose Dive goes right and the Toll Road goes left, not where the Derby starting point is these days. We started at intervals in groups of 5 by our starting number. To say I was nervous would be an understatement. When I lined up with my starting group I was glad to see only one in a fancy Nordic racing suit. The rest of us looked far less competitive, but I was definitely on the older end of the age scale.

I had decided on a strategy to let the other 4 in my group get ahead of me so that when we got to the first serious turn on the Toll Road I’d have room to maneuver. We started and the guy in the fancy outfit was poling and skating. The others seemed to also be trying to go faster while I just stood up and let my skis run. We all got to the first turn at the same time! One young lady in our group didn’t make the turn, but the rest of us somehow made it.

I had done enough downhill skiing on my cross country skis that I was able to navigate the Toll Road pretty well. That was helped by the fact that there had been about five inches of new snow the night before which kept the surface more forgiving. I did wipe out on the hairpin turn at the bottom of the Toll House slope. I’d been warned about that turn, but it fell away more than I anticipated so I fell with it.

My main problem occurred on the hill behind the Matterhorn. All the snow had been skied off by the time I got there leaving an impenetrable ice surface. I tried everything I knew to slow down and was still gaining speed so I dove into the snowbank on the side of the trail. Herb Swift, a friend from IBM, apparently passed me at this point. After the race he asked if that was me in the snowbank and I acknowledged that it was. Herb said, “I thought I recognized the bottoms of your skis.”

There was no bike path in those days so the trail was a little more circuitous leading to town. The finish line was literally the Church parking lot. That meant scrambling up the steep embankment from the river level. The snow on that embankment was the result of plowing the parking lot so it was a rough mixture of new and old. As you tried to herring bone up the steep slope, the snow would break down causing you to slip back. I felt bad for this one woman who had passed me in the fields leading up to the finish only to have me pass her as she struggled with the rotten snow.

When was the first Stowe Derby? I didn’t receive any answers. Maybe everyone was busy skiing the powder or being stuck in traffic! The first Stowe Derby was held in 1945. Local legend has it that it was the result of a bet between Sepp Ruschp and Erling Strom. There may have been a bet, but in searching through the Mount Mansfield Ski Club newsletter online archives that Mike Leach maintains, I found an article by Erling Strom in the January 1954 newsletter that shows more planning went into it.

Strom says the idea originated in the fall of 1944 while Sepp, Erling, Charlie Lord, and Rolf Holtvedt were clearing brush on the Nose Dive. They conceived of a race from the Octagon to the Memorial building which would highlight the oldest form of skiing competition. Since they felt younger people weren’t interested in cross country skiing, they’d restrict entrants to age 35 and up. But their hope was that eventually young people would be interested. That hope was realized and I have to think those founders would be amazed to see what their idea has become today!

I only did the Stowe Derby that one time, but hey, you owe it to yourself to do it at least once!