What is your age now, and how did you learn to ski? What brought you to this area?
Bill: I am 86. I was born in Boston in 1937, before WWII. If I was a building, there, I would be “Historic.”
There was a rope tow ski area about 5 miles from my house in Boston and I went there as much as I could on my wooden skis. I learned to ski by just doing it. Back then it was just skiing, The front of the binding was called a “Bear trap.” If you wanted to walk on the skis, you just unhooked the cable around your boot from the side of the ski.
I was living in Petersburg Alaska working for the Forest Service in 1977 when I was told that I had been picked to be the lead engineer for the Deschutes National Forest. I never heard of Bend other than that it was a great place to live. Three weeks later we were living in Bend.
Jinny: I am 80. I was born in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1944. I did not learn to ski until after I married Bill in 1963 and I moved from Tennessee to Provo, Utah, to begin our married life. Bill worked for the Forest Service and we moved often - living in Jackson, Wyoming; McCall, Idaho; Challis, Idaho; and Petersburg, Alaska before moving to Bend in 1977.
Bill, given your job experience, could you explain a little about the relationship between CONC and the Forest Service and creating skiing trails?
Bill: My main job in the Forest Service was to manage the development of logging roads in the Forest, maintenance of all the roads, water systems, fire lookouts, and the oversight inspection of the development of Mn Bachelor among several other things. Trails were just a very small part of my job. .
Trails management was switched from Engineering to the Recreation Staff on the Forest since I moved here. Before moving here one of the things I really enjoyed was locating trails. When I came to Deschutes National forest I was more in the approval position of someone else's flag line. For example my first trail project was to approve the location of the Flagline Trail from the Mount Bachelor area to the Swampy trail head area. Plastic ribbons had been tied to tree branches through the forest (a flag line , that's how it got its name) and the route was skied for a few years before we (the Forest Service) approved the route. Once that was approved, different groups helped clearing the trail. One youth group under the supervision of the Forest Service was used to clear the lighter brush and trees. There was no one way that trails came into being.
A new trail route will be checked for threatened plant species, Native American Indian artifacts, other human signs of use, landslide and avalanche potential, and affect on other recreation uses like snow mobiles. The grade of the trail is critical and should be laid out with grade control by a clinometer or Abney level to prevent erosion or steep hazards to ski. It is a mistake to walk through the woods with blue diamond markers and just hang them up on the trees as you wander toward your destination.
Now the ski clubs and trail user groups will make a proposal to the forest service to approve their proposed trails. This is not a rule but is what usually happens. Most of the projects now are just short connection trails to relocate the mistakes of the past.
Most of the existing ski trails are on logging roads. The newer trails in the Meissner area were proposed by a Forest Service specialist that came to propose trails for the enjoyment of the skier. They are rolling grades with a lot of turns like the "Currant" trail. I was in the Langlauf Club, the CONC, and the Mt Bachelor Ski Foundation at the same time and remember helping maintain the Meissner trails as a group of volunteers. I think the Langlauf Club did a lot of the initial clearing of the newer trails. Side note: the trails are all named after plants because Virginia Meissner on her hikes would be telling you what the names of the different plants were- just like Linda Frost does now when she is on a hike!
So your question is very difficult to answer and this is just my viewpoint on how the trails came to be.
How did you become involved with the Nordic club? What experiences/roles have you enjoyed or held with the club over the years?
Bill: When you move into a new town the best way to adjust is to join groups aside from your job. My wife and I joined for social contact and to be able to ski with adults in addition to our kids. The club was mainly interested in maintaining cross country ski trails and stocking a few shelters and group tours. I had a chainsaw and used it a lot with several other sawyers to keep the trails open. There were only a few trails, some were marked with wood signs that had a letter on them like A, B, C, etc. The only shelters were Swampy, Meisner and Swede; these have been rebuilt in different locations. I think the club was called the “Slat Rats “ back then. I still have a Slat Rats Tee shirt.
I have had several roles in CONC: I wrote the monthly paper newsletter in the early days. I, along with Michael Geisler, organized the ski swap, up until 2006. Virginia Meissner was the president when I joined, and she led the ski trips. I also led trips and somewhere around 1995 I was elected president for a long time. There were no hiking trips until Linda Frost became president.
I liked the monthly meetings. The political issues at the time were Snowmobile conflicts, and dogs on the trails. Michae Geisler and I co- chaired the annual XC ski swap for a couple of decades. I was also the ONC Delegate representing the CONC. Presently I am the High School XC coordinator between the High Schools and the ONC.
Jinny: As Bill said, we joined the Nordic Club to be part of a ski community and ski with adults in addition to our ski outings with our children. I was not as involved with trail maintenance as Bill was, and I did not lead trips or take on officers’ jobs or other leadership roles.
In 1999, I spearheaded an effort to develop a high school ski racing program.
Jinny, could you tell us more about this?
Jinny: Bill was president of the CONC when we were working on this Pilot Program that was being supported by the CONC. We used the ONC insurance to give the volunteer coaches liability coverage. The coaches registered as Tour Leaders; the students registered as CONC members; and the training and racing events were CONC “activities.” This activity fit within the stated mission of the Oregon Nordic Club to encourage people to become engaged in winter activities; however, the ONC organization was not set up as a youth sports organization. So we ran the Pilot Program through CONC for only one year. Proving the program would work, we were accepted within the Oregon Interscholastic Ski Racing Association (OISRA) the following fall. OISRA had governed only alpine ski racing prior to 2000.
The other person in CONC who was instrumental in helping launch the high school ski program was Karen White. She was the CONC newsletter editor, and she put in an ENORMOUS amount of time helping get this program started. Carl Anderson made the plaques in the shape of the state of Oregon for the state meet team awards. Both Karen and Carl drove skiers to on-snow practices. We had a policy that students could not drive themselves to on-snow practices, and there weren’t enough parents to transport all the students to practice during the week. Karen and Carl each drove a car full of kids to practice, stayed at the ski area and skied themselves, and then drove the students back to town.
The program is now 24 years old, and CONC continues to support the high school program by sponsoring the first high school race in the race season (the Jamboree) and paying for League awards. There is a citizen’s race at the Jamboree event, where parents, siblings, and alumni join in the fun. I wish more CONC members would drop in to the Jamboree and see what the high school program looks like – and play in the citizen’s race.
The Jamboree is held on the first Saturday in January - unless that falls on New Year's Day - and, then it is held on the next Saturday.
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