This video was prepared by Rick Moulton of the International Skiing History Association for the Skiing History Week awards presentation in Sun Valley, Idaho on March 24, 2022. Written in the Snows received a Skade Award at this event. Video text: “Written in the Snows: Across Time on Skis in the Pacific Northwest by Lowell Skoog. In its 340 pages, Lowell Skoog’s detail-rich chronicle weaves the history of skiing with that of the Pacific Northwest. Beginning in the late 1800s with the introduction of skiing by the Scandinavian immigrants, he carries us all the way to the extreme challenges pursued by today’s ski mountaineers. The book shows the evolution of human-powered skiing into today’s elite ski mountaineering. Passionate as it is meticulous, and filled with wonderful photographs, the book presents a dizzying cast of characters, a parade of explorers, mountaineers, racers, developers, soldiers and rescuers. There’s a soul to this book that blends the smell of hot chocolate and wet wool with the fragrance of fir trees in the dense forests of the Pacific Northwest. The book includes an appendix detailing the region’s ski mountaineering highlights and closes with an epitaph on climate change and how the future of skiing will be written in statehouses as much as in the snows.”

The Alpenglow Gallery