I learned to ski at Vail, Colorado days before the arrival of President Ford.
Let’s start at the beginning. As a White House Communications Agency radioman, I was part of the advance team which set up radio and telephone communications systems for the President, his staff, and the US Secret Service. We set up radio systems and relays from Grand Junction east along Interstate 70 into Aspen and Vail. The Aspen systems deployed in case the President or member of the first family decided to ski or enjoy the après ski nightlife. In 1975 we traveled in station wagons that made the snow and ice a good test of your driving skills. The on-mountain portions of our work were in all cases accessed by snow cat. Fun the first time, slow and noisy after the initial fun wore off. On the Grand Junction side, a co-worker and I boarded a snow cat at 0500 for a five-hour ride to the top of a mesa covered in what I did not know was ten or more feet of snow. I exited the back of the cat excited to see the vista and was surprised when I caught the bottom of the door frame as I was disappearing into the deep powder. Back inside the cat, the driver and my co-worker were having a good chuckle. We unloaded out the front, next to the base of the tower and control room. I was looking up at the ice laden tower thinking about how much fun it would be to climb loaded down with an antenna while pulling the cable too. I turned at the noise of my co-worker yelping and short of breath. Sitting behind him on the trip up I had not noticed the signs of altitude sickness. But now the climber had been chosen.
Normally we put our antennas on the top of airport control towers and buildings. I’d had to climb towers before but always in warmer weather where I did not need a hammer to break ice while I climbed. Outside I checked and confirmed that I could not use the safety harness as intended during the climb as the rod it connected to was covered with a half inch of ice. But the harness had clips I could attach the antenna and cable to, and I carried a locking carabiner and some tubular nylon in my backpack, So I tied into the harness and would use it for safety if I stopped on my climb or at the top while working. I was glad for my winter gear but found out one third of the way up the tower that it was insufficient when the wind kicked up. Hammering the ladder steps with the hammer was time consuming but it kept me warm, sort of. Near the one-hundred-foot mark I had the line of sight needed. I locked myself in using my expedient safety and started beating the ice off the tower. With the antenna and cabling secure I headed back down whole-body shivering. About sixty feet up I stopped to blow warm air into my gloves, slipped and fell to the end of the safety line I had created. Hanging horizontally to the tower and snow below I thanked my setup, pulled myself upright, and continued down at a slower pace with more attention to secure hand and foot placement. I don’t remember how long we were at altitude but when we got below what the cat driver considered seven thousand feet my co-worker improved.
Bone tired on our return to Vail, we walked into our command center across the drive from where the President was staying. It wasn’t his home in between the 4th and 5th holes on the golf course but a friend’s house near Gondola One. Looking up at the ops board I saw my name and next to it a note - Ski Lessons 0800.
Thinking I was being given some time off, and not sure why, I asked and found the Air Force guys had decided the Army guy (me) should be the one carrying the Army radio that would be the backup to the system we had deployed for the secret service all over Vail. Having gotten more than my money's worth climbing the tower I was pleased and secretly terrified that I had three days to learn how to ski and ten test the radio’s capabilities on runs the President was likely to ski which were blue thankfully not black!
The next morning me, one teenager and six kids under ten started class. My skis (190cm – 6’ 3”) were longer than I was tall. My body ached and my legs were shredded from the tower climb. After the class and snow plowing for what seemed hours. I hit the sauna to work out the kinks. I ate lunch and took the gondola to mid-Vail and fell down enumerable times on my way to Gitalong Road which was the road used to access the mountain during the summer. Lots of pushing and a little skiing later I was finding my balance. So, the next morning, pass and skis in hand I took the gondola to Mid-Vail and the chair lift to Ski Patrol headquarters on top of the mountain. From there I proceeded to make a nuisance of myself slowly going down the one green run then switching to the blue runs. Graceful I was not, scary to some no doubt. But I worked at it all day. I was twenty-two years old skiing Vail with the beautiful and rich. I was also using every large and unseen muscle in my body to stay upright.
That evening I can still remember sitting in the sauna thinking football two a days and wrestling had not prepared me for a sport requiring balance and fine motor control of one’s limbs. The next day was more of the same but a bit more controlled and in the afternoon, I packed up the radio and skied the blues channeling the spirit of the famous 10th Mountain Division.
The following morning, I got a list of likely runs President Ford would ski and took off to complete the survey. Luckily, I could get line of sight from one side of the runs or the other so the backup plan was set. Once the President arrived my only job was to head up the mountain with the Ski Patrol before the lifts opened and then from Ski Patrol headquarters join the secret service team when the President decided to ski.
The first two days went well as I stayed on the uphill side of the protective detail keeping my distance. The third day as we collapsed in near the bottom of the run the President slid out, not really a fall, and I had to exit stage from behind the President to not hit him. That got a laugh and a mention from the lead agent skiing with the President that I should back off some more for the President’s safety. That agent Larry Buendorf would later stop an assassination attempt on President Ford and go one to become the security officer for the US Olympic Committee.
The following day the President was not skiing, and I was requested to support the detail going with the President's son’s skiing the back bowls at Vail. The back bowls are ninety percent black diamond runs except for the road accessing the area and some blue runs of China Bowl. When they went diamond, and double diamond skiing I stayed up on the ridgeline where I could communicate through a repeater, we installed at Ski Patrol headquarters. Luckily the snow wasn’t too good back there that year and it was a short and uneventful day. The rest of the trip I stayed farther back as requested by the secret service and got to join the Ski Patrol on a rescue call at the end of the day on a blue run. A lady had gone into the trees and found one face first. She would be okay, but her ski trip was over.
As you can imagine, when I joined the Army, I had no idea I would get paid to learn how to ski, much less spend three weeks in the winter and another three in the summer for two years in a row in Vail Colorado.