Tuckerman Ravine | Timeless New England
Harold Orne captured the thrill and the drama of skiing New Hampshire’s awesome Tuckerman Ravine. In April 4, 1937, some 2,800 hardy spectators and a small number of ski adventurers, many of them members of the Dartmouth Outing Club, trekked the roughly 2.5 miles from Pinkham Notch, New Hampshire, to the base of the immense […]
Franklin Edson Memorial Race, 1937.
Photo Credit : Harold Orne/New England Ski Museum collectionHarold Orne captured the thrill and the drama of skiing New Hampshire’s awesome Tuckerman Ravine.
Photo Credit : Harold Orne/New England Ski Museum collection
In April 4, 1937, some 2,800 hardy spectators and a small number of ski adventurers, many of them members of the Dartmouth Outing Club, trekked the roughly 2.5 miles from Pinkham Notch, New Hampshire, to the base of the immense glacial bowl known as Tuckerman Ravine, seeming to fill the southeastern shoulderof 6,288-foot Mount Washington. Among the spectators was Harold Orne, a Massachusetts photographer who was making a bit of a name for himself in the nascent New England ski scene by lugging his Graflex Speed Graphic camera to mountains large and small, capturing the people who followed the snow years before ski lifts and ski resorts added comfort to the adventure.
On this day, ski history was being made, and Orne was there. A ski race named in honor of Franklin Edson, who had died a year earlier in a downhill race in Massachusetts, would for the first time feature carefully placed poles at strategic points to force skiers to control their speed: It was the first giant slalom race in America. “Tucks” had already been the scene of a daredevil race named “The Inferno,” and its steep, imposing walls tested even the most skilled skiers of the time.
Today, on sun-splashed days from early April into June, hundreds of skiers and spectators still trek to Tucks, where 50 feet or more of snow greets them—challenging intrepid souls to climb as high as they dare, to find their line down, while everyone’s eyes look upward. —Mel Allen
Mel Allen
Mel Allen is the fifth editor of Yankee Magazine since its beginning in 1935. His first byline in Yankee appeared in 1977 and he joined the staff in 1979 as a senior editor. Eventually he became executive editor and in the summer of 2006 became editor. During his career he has edited and written for every section of the magazine, including home, food, and travel, while his pursuit of long form story telling has always been vital to his mission as well. He has raced a sled dog team, crawled into the dens of black bears, fished with the legendary Ted Williams, profiled astronaut Alan Shephard, and stood beneath a battleship before it was launched. He also once helped author Stephen King round up his pigs for market, but that story is for another day. Mel taught fourth grade in Maine for three years and believes that his education as a writer began when he had to hold the attention of 29 children through months of Maine winters. He learned you had to grab their attention and hold it. After 12 years teaching magazine writing at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, he now teaches in the MFA creative nonfiction program at Bay Path University in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. Like all editors, his greatest joy is finding new talent and bringing their work to light.
More by Mel Allen