ISHPEMING, MI (Nov. 6) – Paralympic champions Chris Waddell and Sarah Will highlight a group of eight athletes and sport builders named for induction to the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame. They are joined by adaptive skiing pioneer Jack Benedick, legendary big mountain skier Doug Coombs, noted industry writer and instructor Stu Campbell, veteran ski jumping champion Ansten Samuelstuen, the father of southern skiing Sepp Kober and longtime U.S. Ski Team press officer and journalist Paul Robbins.

The late Doug Coombs may be the most recognizable skier in this year’s class for his appearances in many ski films in the 1990’s.  A former ski racer from Montana State University, he is regarded by many as the most important skier of his generation in popularizing adventure skiing.  He and his wife, Emily, started the first heliskiing operation in Alaska’s Chugach Mountains.  He held steep skiing camps in Switzerland, France and Greenland. The complete expert skier, he won the first two World Extreme Skiing Championships. Although his skills far surpassed those of most of the people he guided, he had a capacity to make every skier who came into contact with him believe they could try bigger challenges. He died while attempting to rescue a friend in a skiing accident in 2006.

From the Bozeman Chronicle

PHOTO BY WADE McKOY/FOCUSPRODUCTIONS.COM Doug Coombs skis to a first-place finish in the first World Extreme Skiing Championships held in Valdez, Alaska in this 1991 photograph. Outdoors Magazine once called Coombs “the best skier in the world.” A master of steep skiing, he helped pioneer the sport of adventure skiing.

He won the first two World Extreme Skiing Championships, won the national Powder 8s three times and was a stuntman in Hollywood movies, even skiing a frozen waterfall for the film “Aspen Extreme.”

He died in April 2006 at age 48 while trying to rescue a friend during a skiing accident in France.

“The life of Doug Coombs reads like the resume of five people, but he lived his life simply and with deep joy and great energy,” according to a biographical sketch posted on the Marmot Web site. “He lived to be in the mountains and ... once said in an interview, ‘The mountains are my religion.’ He went to this church often and taught those around him to be respectful and humble in the mountains.”

Coombs was on the MSU ski team in the late 1970s and earned a reputation for making the most difficult terrain look easy. He was “incredibly precise and sure-footed,” Tom Jungst, who hiked the Ridge at Bridger Bowl with Coombs in those days, told the Chronicle when Coombs died.

Bozeman Photographer Lonnie Ball shot Coombs skiing several times and later recalled an extreme-skiing contest at Bridger where Coombs jumped a cliff, smacked into a tree and “slithered down.”

“He kept skiing and won the event,” Ball told the Chronicle in 2006.

Coombs also had a reputation for being a bit of a cheapskate. He often slept in the back of his Volkswagen van. At one point, he refused to pay $35 a month for a room in a downtown apartment building where other members of the MSU ski team were living. Instead, he found a Bozeman homeowner to rent him a screened-in porch for about half the price, simply bundling up on cold winter nights.

“There are just so many stories,” Jungst said.

The man called the “Clark Kent of skiing” also listened to the Grateful Dead and had a reputation as a friendly, approachable guy.

“Doug always had a boyish enthusiasm that drew you to him like a magnet,” Rusty Squire of Bozeman, Coombs’ former MSU teammate and friend, told the Chronicle in 2006.

After four years racing on the Montana State University ski team, Coombs graduated with a geology degree and moved to Jackson, Wyo., where he worked as a geologist in the summer and a ski technician in the winters, Coombs wrote in an autobiographical piece posted on the Doug Coombs Steep Skiing Camps Web site.

He and his wife, Emily, later moved to Valdez, Alaska, where they started the first heli-skiing operation in Alaska’s Chugach Mountains.

“He pioneered more heli lines in Alaska than anyone in history,” Squire said.

Coombs went on to ski in Kyrgystan and Antarctica and held steep-skiing camps in Switzerland, France and Greenland, eventually falling in love with the Alps and moving to France.

“Although his skills far surpassed those of most of the people he guided, he had a capacity to make every skier who came into contact with him believe they could try bigger challenges,” the Hall of Fame, based in Michigan, said in announcing his induction.

Coombs is one of eight skiers in the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame’s 2009 class of inductees. The induction will take place during a ceremony in Colorado in April.

Additional Skiers include:

The late Stu Campbell lived in Stowe, VT and was a writer, instructor and resort executive who impacted millions of American skiers over a career that spanned five decades.  He was the author of six books on ski instruction, served as an equipment consultant to several manufacturers, raced and coached racers and provided television commentary.  For thirty years he was the instructional editor for SKI Magazine and was recognized, prior to his death in 2008, by the Vermont Ski Museum with its Paul Robbins Award for ski journalism.

The late Paul Robbins spent three decades as a ski journalist and a U.S. Ski Team press officer.  He possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of skiing and ski racers of every discipline that he willingly shared with anyone who asked.  Ski jumper Jeff Hastings wrote: “His breath filled the sails of the athletes he covered.”  Remembered by all who knew him as the man with the Scottish tam, Robbins died suddenly in 2008. The Paul Robbins Award for ski journalism is presented annually by the Vermont Ski Museum, as well as the Paul Robbins Outstanding Athlete Award by the North American Snowsport Journalists Association.

"Paul Robbins left a lasting impact on ski racing," said Marolt. "His wit, charm and beret were Paul's trademark. But his vast knowledge and tireless work ethic were instrumental in telling our U.S. Ski Team story for three decades."

Sepp Kober (Hot Springs, VA) is known as the "Father of Southern Skiing."  After immigrating to the United States and instructing at Stowe, he was the first ski instructor at the first southern ski area to open a rope tow, Weiss Knob, in 1958. From then he worked to prove that skiing could exist south of the Mason Dixon Line. Today the Southeastern Ski Areas Association, which he founded, consists of 20 ski areas serving four to five million skiers annually and is considered the largest feeder of skiers to the mountain resorts in the west.  He led the Southeast in as a charter member of the National Ski Areas Association.

Ansten Samuelstuen (Louisville, CO) first arrived in the United States in 1951 and set a hill record for distance of 316 feet at Howelsen Hill in Steamboat Springs that stood for 12 years.  After immigrating to the U.S. in 1954 he successfully won three national titles in ski jumping, (1957, 1961 and 1962) and held four North American titles (1954, 1955,1957 and 1964). He competed for the United States on two Olympic teams and was the top U.S. jumper with a seventh place finish at the 1960 Olympic Games in Squaw Valley.

The induction of the Class of 2009 will take place in Colorado on April 9, 2010.  They will also be honored in September by ceremonies in Ishpeming, the home of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame. 

Nominations for Honored Membership in the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame are received throughout the year from across the country. A Selection Committee under the chairmanship of Paul Bousquet (Woodstock, VT) reviews all nominations. Successful nominations are placed on a ballot that in 2009 was voted on by a panel of 100 electors.  This year’s class brings the number of Honored Members to 368.

Since 1956, the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame has provided highly respected, national and perpetual recognition of athletes competing in skiing and snowboarding and of the builders of those sports who have made the highest level of national and/or international achievement and contribution to those sports.

Words:

US Ski Team

Bozeman Chronicle