Earl's a Hall of Famer Now

Dale, Earl & Ray Miller

It's been a long time coming, but the day has almost arrived. Tomorrow night, Earl Miller will be inducted into the Intermountain Ski Hall of Fame. As far as I'm concerned, there's nobody in Utah who's had greater influence on the sport of skiing, than Ogden's own Earl Miller; and there's no one more deserving of Hall-of Fame status.

Not only did Earl Miller operate the Snow Basin Ski School for 44 years; he coordinated the Standard-Examiner/Ogden City Recreation ski school program for almost that same length of time. This program, a veritable low-cost ski instruction factory, offered affordable basic ski lessons to thousands of northern Utahns who otherwise would not have been able to afford the more expensive traditional variety of ski teaching.

Moreover, Earl was a renowned instructor and racing coach, and an innovator of American Ski Technique. And when it came to writing the book in American-style ski instruction, Earl Miller was just the man to do that. Earl Miller is a local legend, as the Standard-Examiner's Bryce Petersen explains, in this morning's Xplore section article. I'll incorporate a few of Mr. Peterson opening paragraphs here:

At least we've got M. Earl Miller.
On Thursday, the longtime Snowbasin ski school director and Weber State College coach will be inducted into the Intermountain Ski Hall of Fame.
He will be one of only 21 in the Hall of Fame, which accepted its inaugural class in 2002. And he will be the only one there for his accomplishments in the Top of Utah.
In general, the Hall of Fame -- housed in the Alf Engen Ski Museum in the J. Willard Marriott Library on the campus of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City -- is an elite group of ski innovators, educators and resort founders from Idaho, Wyoming and Utah.
It's an extension of the Ski Archives, which documents and recognizes prominent skiers from the area. Among the files there are transcripts from a series of interviews that Ogden resident Joseph Arave recorded with Miller and his wife, Gladys, in 1990. At the time, Arave was the ski archivist for the fledgling museum.
"My charge was to do anything to document the history of skiing and I wanted to make sure Ogden didn't get left out, that it wasn't all Big and Little Cottonwood Canyon," Arave said.
Other Ogdenites have been recognized by the museum, but Earl Miller is the first to rise to the very top.
"There are a lot of people that the ski archive recognizes ... that probably won't rise to the level of Hall of Fame inductee but were very significant in the ski industry," said Arave, a member of the hall's selection committee.
But Miller, whose Ogden credentials are as impeccable as his ski credentials, made it.

You'll find the full article here.

This article runs along side a second companion piece, enumerating other notable local skier "celebrities" who might have a crack at Hall of Fame induction in the future. If any of our gentle readers would like to see whether they made the Hall of Fame short list, they can scour this second article here.

There's talk going around town that there's a possibility that Ogden city could become a notable "ski town," and that all we need to do to accomplish that is to build a couple of multi-million dollar gondolas. "Bullshit," I think to myself, every time I hear that meme. Ogden's always been a ski town, as far as I'm concerned; and it wasn't fancy contraptions, but rather people like Earl Miller who made it so. Earl Miller learned to ski in an earlier age, when skiers didn't need such fancy gizmos. The photo on the left demonstrates what an uphill ski conveyance looked like in Snow Basin's early days; and local legend tells that a similar ski "lift" was once situated at the bottom of Snow Basin's old "School Hill." Click the photo to enlarge it, so you can examine what was regarded as innovative lift technology around the year 1946.

I "borrowed" both of the photos in this article from the University of Utah Marriott Library Utah Ski Archives here. There are plenty of other interesting historical photos on that site, for anyone who'd like to take a look. The photo at the top, by the way, shows Earl Miller running gates with his two younger boys. That's Dale on Earl's left, and my old pal Ray on the right. The old axiom that "the family that plays together, stays together" was never more true than with the Miller family.

Anybody want to talk skiing today? How about Earl Miller anecdotes? Is there anyone among our gentle readership who remembers the days before trams and gondolas? How about some nice "when I was a youngster" stories?

Comments, anyone?