I'm not advocating holding races or Olympic tryouts again or anything, but the park's own Administrative History has some unusually colorful descriptions of Paradise ski history:
www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/mora/adhi/chap10.htm
"Among ski enthusiasts, the Paradise area acquired national renown in the 1930s. For a short time, winter sports loomed so large at Mount Rainier that the superintendent described them as the park's most important public use. Mount Rainier's emergence as a major ski area followed fifteen to twenty years of increasing local use of the park for winter recreation.
In 1930, the park road was kept open to Canyon Rim and two years later it was plowed as far as Narada Falls. Increasing numbers of winter recreationists drove to the end of the road and skied the last few miles to Paradise.
In April 1934, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer sponsored an event at Paradise that definitely put Mount Rainier on the map of national ski competition. The first annual Silver Skis race featured a five-mile course from Camp Muir to Paradise Valley, with an elevation drop of approximately 5,000 feet. Sixty contestents made the arduous trek from the end of the road up the slope of Mount Rainier, then came racing down before a large crowd of spectators. The route was thought to be one of the most challenging in ski competition. Eight months after the race, in December 1934, the National Ski Association voted to use the lower part of the Silver Skis course for the site of its national championship downhill and slalom ski races, to be held the next spring.
This contest attracted more than the usual amount of interest because it also served as the occasion for the Olympic ski team tryouts. The downhill racecourse started at Sugar Loaf at 8,500 feet elevation and descended past Panorama Point into Edith Creek Basin, near the Paradise Inn. The course had an overall pitch of 33 percent. The slalom course was set up on the uphill side of Alta Vista, a prominence above the Paradise Lodge. Sportscasters from the Columbia Broadcasting System provided live coverage for radio listeners throughout the United States, while three wire services described the event for newspapers. Moving-picture photographers documented the contest for newsreels. An estimated 7,500 spectators drove approximately 2,000 automobiles into the park and hiked up to the Paradise meadows to get a view. {Supt.}Tomlinson had the road plowed a mile above Narada Falls to provide extra parking space. It was the busiest weekend in the park's history up to that time."
1st female olympic gold medal in skiing winner trained at Mt. Rainier with Otto Lang
A slight correction, Andy. Gretchen Fraser won the first Olympic alpine skiing medals by any American, male OR female:
www.alpenglow.org/ski-history/notes/peri...tml#isha-1994-aut-p4
