Early Skiers

Stumbled into this on National Geographic. Completely worth 3 minutes to watch and admire these folks. Brings a whole new meaning to boutique gear! I'd love a top sheet like they have! Let alone the skins.



Enjoy!

Nice video!  I had just read the article in National Geographic and video complements it well.  Nils Larsen and David Waag went to the Altai in 2005 and documented their ski history Altai skiing .  Nils and a friend now make Altai skis for sale Altai skis for sale .  Werner Herzog spent a year in the taiga with indigenous people and in his documentary film there are good scenes and discussions about how to make skis (different skis for different uses), well worth watching Happy People .

that is some great stuff - thanks for both those posts

Skiing in the Adirondacks in the 1970s was similar.

The Tupper Lake skiers skied flawlessly on mismatched pairs of wooden skis and the Plattsburgh/Cliff Haven crew had effectively skied their wooden skis into a reverse camber that miraculously suited the narrow trails.

A few years ago, a neighbor's friend, a women in her late 80s, told us how she made her own wooden skis in high school in Tacoma (a teacher offered a course) and used to take them to ski from Narada Falls to Paradise (and back); they used canvass sleeves for skins; given her age, she must have been doing that in the late 40s/50s.

I also enjoyed Happy People.

Heads-up for movie buffs - one of the people in the taiga was related to Tarkovsky.