Lowell Skoog

Note: This article was published in the Oct. 2010 issue of Off-Piste magazine (http://www.offpistemag.com/). Since my interview with Lowell, he has published on-line chapters to his book http://written-in-the-snows.net/

Lowell Skoog: Painting a picture of the History of Pacific Northwest Skiing

The best things in a man's life are often his hobbies, and if he will not take his hobbies seriously, life will lose half its charm. And mountaineering is something more than a hobby... And so I make no apology for this attempt to trace the history of our noble sport. --Arnold Lunn, History of Skiing

Lowell Skoog is a thorough and meticulous guy. It’s what you need in a preservationist. Getting the details right is a required historical imperative. But he is also a passionate and poetic guy when he writes about his love of ski mountaineering in the Cascade Mountains. As he says, “Skiing isn’t just about the turns, but about the people who make them.” At this time, in Lowell’s life, he is attempting to meld his two sides.

About ten years ago, Lowell started two big projects: building a database structure that would become the Alpenglow Ski Mountaineering History Project (ASMHP), and writing the book Written in the Snows, a book dedicated to the history of skiing in the Pacific Northwest. In a recent telephone interview, he said, “I describe this project like painting [a picture of] a house - only the thing is before you can paint it, you have to build it from scratch, one brick at a time. The bricks being the sources that you find and gradually, as you’re putting together chronologies and grouping things into subjects and finding different references to people and grouping them together, which is what the indexes are that I have on my site, you get a structure of what happened over a hundred years.” And after the house is built? Lowell says, “You stand back with a brush, canvas and easel, and render it into a story, something readable.”

Born in Seattle to skiing, Swedish parents, Lowell and his brothers, Gordy and Carl, grew-up hot-dogging at Ski Acres and Crystal Mountain, learned to mountain climb in college and began venturing into the “American Alps” of the North Cascades. A degree itter hot Springsin electrical engineering at the University of Washington, landed Lowell a job designing computer software, but he used his free time and new climbing skills to explore ever deeper into the Cascade range. Around 2001, he was laid-off from his job during the dotcom bust, and he and his wife, Stephanie, decided he should take 6 to 10 months to work on the history project. Later, working as an engineering consultant, Lowell was able to devote time to his ski research, a growing number of related projects, and additionally raise a son. His historical enthusiasm is also a way for him to connect to his father, who passed away when Lowell was 20 years old, and the old Scandinavian ski jumpers from his past.

On his vast Web site, Alpenglow.org, you can see that Lowell has been busy over the years, not only compiling his historical database, but also ticking off Cascade ski tours with his brothers and other ski partners. Many of the tours would, 25 years later, become the chain links for a ski route stretching, 362 miles, from Mt. Baker to Mt. Rainer called “Skiing the Cascade Crest.” The route is dedicated to his late brother, Carl, who died in a steep skiing fall in Argentina in 2005. The Cascade Crest is a poignant memorial to Carl Skoog, who was an accomplished skier and photographer and Lowell’s most consistent partner on countless trips. Carl’s beautiful imagery can be viewed on Alpenglow.org.

The seed that launched Written in the Snows was sown by Fred Beckey (the prodigious northwest climber, original dirt bag and guidebook author). Beckey mentioned to Lowell that Dwight Watson was the “key guy” in northwest ski mountaineering, and that his adventures dated back to the1930’s. There are references to Watson’s ski ascents and descents sprinkled around Beckey’s Cascade climbing guides. Watson, born in 1900, was the first to ski Eldorado Peak, North Star Mountain and Glacier Peak. Lowell says, “I think his tour de force, in 1939, was the ski traverse of Mt. Baker from the Kulshan cabin to [what is now] the Mt. Baker ski area, which I started calling Watson’s Traverse. So, Watson was the kernel that got me started on the whole project.” After Lowell read Dwight Watson’s obituary in the Seattle Times in 1996, he contacted the Seattle Mountaineers history committee and asked for information about Watson. He was given some of Watson’s old movies to look at and that was it, he was hooked.

Lowell eventually became a member of the Mountaineers history committee, allowing him access to more information and, importantly, the film archives. He refers to these old ski movies as “historical crack [cocaine] because the more you see, the more you want.” He is currently the chairman of the committee (like he needs one more thing to do) and uses some of their budget to digitally transfer these “dusty old films dating back to 1928.” He has also gained access to private film sources, like the Bob and Ira Spring collection. The digital video copies are archived at www.mountaineers.org/history/cat/movies-film.html.

Around 2002, the Mountaineers history committee wanted to revive the club annuals (journals documenting significant mountain related accomplishments and people), but after three years of trying, couldn’t seem to get it done. Around this time, climbing and skiing forums like cascadeclimbers.com were sprouting-up on the Internet. Lowell and some other like-minded climbers and skiers decided to produce an on-line annual of northwest ski mountaineering that was flexible and fresh. The Northwest Mountaineering Journal (NWMJ) was launched in 2004 to provide an edited, permanent, annual record of mountaineering in the Pacific Northwest. For seven years, Lowell edited and contributed to the Web site. The NWMJ publishes feature articles and short trip reports documenting new routes in the region. This visually stuning and informative on-line resource was “a very satisfying project” according to Lowell, “I liked to see all the routes the young hotshots were doing next to profiles of guys that are 70 years old and recalling their glory days.” He says, “It was bridging the generations and a very cool thing to be a part of, but very hard and time consuming, too.”

Lowell’s last issue, as editor, of the NWMJ was its seventh and was published last summer. The journal was stealing time from his book project, and he felt like, “his ski history stuff was getting starved”, so he resigned and hopes that someone will take it over. He also felt the need to go back to an engineering job, full-time. But he is obviously clearing the way to finish the book. He says, “I feel like this long drawn-out journey will be better for it. It [the book] remains this unifying goal that I have, this huge mountain that I have to climb, and I’m getting to the point where I have all these pieces that I’m weaving together, and I don’t have any obstacles in my way.”

Last fall and winter, Lowell realized that he needed more photography for his book. He says, “I spent a lot of time chasing down pictures at the University of Washington. Fortunately, because of my relationship through the [Mountaineers] history committee, I’ve got a really good relationship with the curators down there, and there is a big Mountaineers collection so anything that is Mountaineers related, I’ve got free access. They just let me go down there with my camera and make copies of old photos.” However, this endeavor also landed him another task and another distraction - archiving Bob and Ira Springs entire photo collection. For those unfamiliar with the Spring twins, they started a photography partnership in 1946 and the two set to photograph Washington State as it had never been photographed before and will never be again. Lowell has another daunting task ahead of him.

With book queries getting a luke-warm reception from publishers like The Mountaineers Books and Sasquatch Books, the publishing process frustrated Lowell. “The book that I have in my brain, would anybody publish it?” He wonders. He says that most publishers responded that the market for his book is too small. Most likely, he will not be publishing Written in the Snows on paper, but instead as an on-line document. I objected that some of us would like his book on our shelves alongside the other beloved tomes of outdoor reference and that he should get paid for all his time and effort. Without hesitation, Lowell says he prefers a living, editable document, more Wikipedia than coffee table book.

During our conversation, I mentioned that he has some classic Pacific Northwest ski descents featured in Chris Davenport’s Fifty Classic Ski Descents in North America, an up-coming, slick book of ski pornography to be published in November. I suggested he should do something similar for the Cascades, but he laughed and said he didn’t think his entries we extreme enough for the Colorado guys, “I didn’t put first descents in because how can those be classics? Classics should be routes that everyone wants to do. I mean, [first] descents are important, but that is only half the trip.”

Shifting our conversation toward Lowell’s vast personal ski experience, I asked him to name his best trip suggestion for a sunny, spring weekend in the North Cascades. He said, “Anything on the North Cascades Highway can be your personal cache of discovery. You can never go wrong.” When asked to name his worst bushwhacking “suffer fest” of all time he replied, “Carl and I were camped in the col by Mt. Logan, and it was raining and snowing. We gave up the climb and thrashed our way out Fischer Creek…it was soul crushing.”

Otto Lange, founder of the Mt Rainer Ski School, writer, filmmaker and all-around stylish Austrian, said before he died in 2006 that “ It doesn’t matter how long it takes you to write a book, it only matters how good it is.” Like the Italian guy that took four years to paint a ceiling in the Sistine Chapel, Lowell Skoog has taken his time writing the definitive history of northwest ski mountaineering, but when he is finished with his “painting”, I’m sure the details will be correct.