Dartmouth Becomes "Ski-Conscious" as Faculty and Students Enjoy Outing Club Activities on Many Snowy Mountain Slopes

There is no doubt about it; Dartmouth is becoming ski-conscious. Everyone in New England is more or less familiar with the old story of the Dartmouth Outing Club. It has been often told how through the efforts of this group the Dartmouth undergraduate was persuaded to leave the warm stove about which he had formerly clung from December until April and to take advantage of skiing conditions that few other colleges enjoy. Then came the development of the unique Winter Carnival and the formation of a winter sports team, and Dartmouth became known as an "outdoor college."

Skiing a Recent Development

Thus a pair of skis came to be associated with the popular idea of the "Dartmouth type" who was supposed to be traditionally dressed in corduroy trousers and a dirty sweat-shirt. But until recently those skis were more or less of a myth. Strange as it may seem to those brought up on the Dartmouth outdoor tradition, hundreds of men graduated from the college without knowing a telemark from a gelandesprung. Skiing was left to a comparatively small group of outdoor enthusiasts of the dyed-in-the-wool sort.

Recently, and especially within the past year, there has been a marked trend toward a popularizing of winter sports and especially of skiing. Perhaps it has been because of the sudden popularity of winter sports throughout the country, perhaps it has been because of the marked trend away from highly organized sports such as football and toward the sports-for-all program. Undoubtedly a large share of it has come from Coach Otto Schniebs, Dartmouth's new winter sports coach.

Schniebs' New Methods

Previous to his coming to Dartmouth, Schniebs had had considerable success in coaching the Appalachian Mountain Club and the Harvard Mountaineering Club. He hailed from the Black Forest region in Germany, and he was a famous skier of the Arlberg School. He had a lot of new ideas about skiing methods, and he proceeded at once to put them into effect. His Arlberg methods changed entirely the technique of skiing at Hanover.

It might be noted that the Arlberg School differs primarily from other schools in that a crouching rather than upright position is assumed, and from the three fundamental crouching positions which reduce the center of gravity of the skier, it is easy to swing into turns and stops.

The result of all this was not only an unusually strong winter sports team, but large classon of beginners and novices who took to the sport under the ideal snow conditions of the 1930-31 winter. Instead of fulfilling their physical training requirements (called "rec" in Dartmouth parlance) in the gymnasium, the undergraduates flocked to the surrounding hills, and under the guidance of Schniebs and three assistant coaches they proceeded to turn their attention to Arlberg methods.

Skiing by Night

Even the faculty and their wives became interested. They formed themselves into classes to receive instruction. The Dartmouth Outing Club installed lights on one hill so that night skiing, otherwise a very tricky affair became possible. A nearby cabin on the Outing Club chain was opened as a resting station and a coffee-house for those who took long afternoon jaunts.

Of course this meant that more competitions in skiing were revived and initiated. For one thing Cabin and Trail, consisting of about sixty-five men who govern the Outing Club, journey eight miles out to Moose Cabin, stayed overnight and then raced back to the campus next morning in a traditional event that had been dropped along with several other fading traditions which have lost importance in this blase collegiate era.

Mt. Washington on Sklis

Another traditional event was put over with excellent success. It was the annual Mt. Washington Senior Trip. This affair is for seniors only, and they must be fairly rugged ones, too.