Bill Briggs (skier)

Last updated

Bill Briggs (William Morse Briggs) born on December 21, 1931 in Augusta, Maine, is notable as the first to ski the Grand Teton on June 15, 1971, [1] and as a result is said to be the "father of extreme skiing" in North America. [2] He is the director of the Great American Ski School, formerly located at Snow King Mountain in Jackson, Wyoming in the United States.

Contents

First Descent of the Grand Teton

His route required a free-hanging rappel down a 165-foot (50 m) cliff face, which he completed with his skis on. Realizing, the next day, that his story would be doubted, he convinced Virginia Huidekoper to fly over the still-visible ski tracks with a photographer on board and document his feat from a Cesna 182. [3] The photograph of Briggs graceful ski turns winding down the face of such a famously steep and treacherous mountain sparked widespread interest in extreme skiing. That interest, which in many ways was born in Jackson, WY, has grown into a significant industry of extreme backcountry and heliskiing such as the World Extreme Skiing Championships, the World Heli Championships, hundreds of feature films, magazines, specialty equipment manufacturers and a global fan base.

Additional Skiing Records & Awards

Bill Briggs also made first descents of other mountains in the Teton Range, including Middle Teton, South Teton, Mount Moran, and Mount Owen. He was the recipient of the 2003 Utah Ski archives Historical Achievement Award [4] for his contributions to skiing. The International Skiing History Association awarded Briggs with a 2006 Lifetime Achievement Award in Ski Song for his six-decade career as a musician. [5] [6]

In 2008, Bill Briggs was inducted into the U.S. National Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame, [7] with his citation reading in part:

Bill Briggs is regarded as the father of big mountain skiing in the United States. He was able to imagine and believe it possible to ski in places where no one else had skied before. His first ski descent of Wyoming’s Grand Teton on June 15, 1971 is regarded by most as the single crystallizing moment in American big mountain skiing. He also completed the first high ski traverse in the Canadian Rockies and the first modern ski descent of Mount Rainier.

Personal life

Briggs attended Dartmouth College in 1953 but eventually dropped out. While at Dartmouth, he discovered his love for skiing and mountaineering as a member of Dartmouth's Outing Club, and his love for music, including interest in yodeling and string instruments. [8] Briggs is a founding member of the Stagecoach Band, which has played country and bluegrass music every Sunday since 1969 at the Stagecoach Bar in Wilson, Wyoming. [9] He also founded and presides over the Hootenanny, an open mic music event that happens every Monday in Moose, Wyoming. He plays banjo, auto-harp and six and twelve-string guitars. Briggs sings traditional and contemporary folk songs, specializing in mountain yodels.

Related Research Articles

Jackson, Wyoming Town in Wyoming, United States

Jackson is a small city in the Jackson Hole valley of Teton County, Wyoming, United States. The population was 9,577 at the 2010 census, up from 8,647 in 2000. It is the largest town in Teton County and its county seat.Jackson is the principal town of the Jackson, WY-ID Micropolitan Statistical Area, which includes Teton County in Wyoming and Teton County in Idaho. The town, often mistakenly called Jackson Hole, derives its name from "Jackson Hole", the valley in which it is located. Jackson is a popular tourist destination due to its proximity to ski resorts: Jackson Hole Mountain, Snow King Mountain and Grand Targhee, as well as Grand Teton National Park, and Yellowstone National Park.

Tuckerman Ravine mountain in United States of America

Tuckerman Ravine is a glacial cirque sloping eastward on the southeast face of Mt. Washington, in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Although it draws hikers throughout the year, and skiers throughout the winter, it is best known for the many "spring skiers" who ascend it on foot and ski down the steep slope from early April into July. In this period, the temperatures are relatively mild but the natural snowpack — which averages up to 55 feet (17 m) in a typical winter — is still adequate to ski most seasons. The record-setting high winds atop Mount Washington scour a massive amount of snow from the surrounding highlands and drop it here or in the adjacent Huntington Ravine.

Extreme skiing

Extreme skiing is performed on long, steep slopes in mountainous terrain. The French coined the term 'Le Ski Extreme' in the 1970s. The first practitioners include Swiss skier Sylvain Saudan, who invented the "windshield wiper" turn in the mid-1960s, and in 1967 made the first descents of slopes in the Swiss, French and Italian Alps that were previously considered impossible. Saudan's 'first descent' in America was at Mt. Hood March 3, 1971. Early American practitioners include Bill Briggs, who descended Grand Teton on June 16, 1971. The Frenchmen Patrick Vallençant, Jean-Marc Boivin and Anselme Baud and the Italians Stefano De Benedetti and Toni Valeruz were among those who further developed the art and brought notoriety to the sport in the 1970s and 1980s.

Jackson Hole Valley in Wyoming, USA

Jackson Hole is a valley between the Teton Mountain Range and the Gros Ventre Range in Wyoming sitting near the border of Idaho. The term "hole" was used by early trappers or mountain men, as a term for a large mountain valley. These low-lying valleys surrounded by mountains and containing rivers and streams are good habitat for beaver and other fur-bearing animals.

The music of Wyoming includes a number of well-regarded music festivals, as well as a heritage that includes Native American, European, and American music.

Grand Teton mountain in United States of America

Grand Teton is the highest mountain in Grand Teton National Park, in Northwest Wyoming, and a classic destination in American mountaineering.

Mount Moran mountain

Mount Moran is a mountain in Grand Teton National Park of western Wyoming, USA. The mountain is named for Thomas Moran, an American western frontier landscape artist. Mount Moran dominates the northern section of the Teton Range rising 6,000 feet (1,800 m) above Jackson Lake. Several active glaciers exist on the mountain with Skillet Glacier plainly visible on the monolithic east face. Like the Middle Teton in the same range, Mount Moran's face is marked by a distinctive basalt intrusion known as the Black Dike.

Alex Lowe mountaineer

Stewart Alexander "Alex" Lowe was an American mountaineer. He has been described as inspiring "...a whole generation of climbers and explorers with his uncontainable enthusiasm, legendary training routines, and significant ascents of rock climbs, ice climbs, and mountains all over the world...". He died in an avalanche in Tibet. The Alex Lowe Charitable Foundation honors his legacy.

Grand Targhee Resort

Grand Targhee Resort is a ski resort in the western United States, located in western Wyoming in the Caribou-Targhee National Forest, near Alta, the closest town to the resort. It is 42 miles (68 km) northwest of Jackson and is accessible only from the west, through Driggs, Idaho. The border with Idaho is less than five miles due west.

Kit DesLauriers is an American ski-mountaineer and the first person to ski down the Seven Summits. Her ski-mountaineering feats earned her a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year award in 2015. She is the first woman to have won two consecutive World Freeskiing Champion titles, in 2004 and 2005.

Rob DesLauriers is an American businessman and property developer who was one of the originators of extreme skiing. He has skied from the summit of Mt. Everest and developed two luxury condominium hotels at the base of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort.

Steep is a 2007 documentary about extreme skiing written and directed by Mark Obenhaus. Steep explores the history of extreme and Big Mountain Skiing, starting with its roots in 1960s and 1970s North America and Europe, with Bill Briggs' now famous first descent of the Grand Teton, and progressing through to the current day sport.

Stephen Koch is an American adventurer, extreme snowboarder, mountaineer, and pioneer in the field of snowboard mountaineering, a term he coined. He is best known as the first and only person to snowboard on all Seven Summits, the highest peak on each continent. Koch is also the first to snowboard all the major Teton peaks in Wyoming.

The Owen-Spalding route is a technical climbing route on Grand Teton, the highest peak in the Teton Range in Grand Teton National Park in the U.S. state of Wyoming. It was pioneered by William O. Owen, Franklin Spalding, Frank Peterson, and John Shive on August 11, 1898, during the mountain's first ascent. While Owen, who had made previous attempts in 1891 and 1897, organized the 1898 effort Spaulding was the more experienced mountaineer and first on the summit.

Teton Valley, Idaho Region in the United States

Teton Valley is an area located on the west slope of the Teton Mountain Range and is known as "The quiet side of the Tetons." It is composed of the cities of Victor, Idaho, Driggs, Idaho, Tetonia, Idaho, and Alta, Wyoming. Teton Valley is a rural, agriculture and ranching based economy with a shifting emphasis towards recreational tourism.

Passion for Skiing is a book that was published in 2010 about the contributions of people from Hanover, New Hampshire and Dartmouth College to winter activities, particularly the sport of downhill skiing and highlights this history of skiing from 1910 to the current era. It was authored by Dartmouth alumnus Stephen L. Waterhouse, a native of Sanford, Maine and part-time Vail, Colorado resident with the help of other alumni and ski historians. The entire 426-page book, with its more than 50 contributing authors scattered across the US and abroad, was edited solely via email by Nick Stevens, a former Dartmouth ski instructor, on his home computer in MD and printed by Whitman Communications of Lebanon, NH.

Hoot In The Hole: The Story of the Jackson Hole Hootenanny is a 2008 music documentary that tells the story of the Jackson Hole Hootenanny, a bluegrass and folk music concert that takes place every Monday evening in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Directed by documentary filmmaker Juliet Sonnenberg throughout 2006 and 2007, Hoot In The Hole memorializes the show's 14-year history through a number of interviews with weekly performers at the Hootenanny such as Anne and Pete Sibley, John Byrne Cooke, and John Kuzloski, as well as performances from recording artists such as Tom Rush, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, the Wilders and The Hot Club of Cowtown.

Kristen Ulmer is a former professional extreme skier who retired in 2003 to study and teach about fear.

Breccia Peak (Wyoming) mountain in Wyoming, United States

Breccia Peak is a mountain in the southern Absaroka Range in the Rocky Mountains. It is located in Teton County in U.S. state of Wyoming near Togwotee Pass and close to the southwest border of the Teton Wilderness within the Bridger-Teton National Forest.

"Sick" Rick Armstrong is a professional skier, freeskiing pioneer, mountaineer, paraglider, businessman and serial entrepreneur based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He was a pioneering guide in the early years of Alaska Heli-skiing while working as a lead guide for Valdez Heli-skiing and Doug Coombs as chronicled in the 2007 feature film Steep. He was a member of the ultra-elite group of skiers called the Jackson Hole Airforce who transformed skiing in the 1990s and 2000s. He is known for having skied unskied lines such as his first and unrepeated massive drop into the left side of the notorious Corbet's Couloir at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. He was the first person to have both skied and snowboarded the Grand Teton in Teton National Park. He has many first ski descents in China, Alaska, Europe, Antarctica, South America, and South Georgia Island. He was an athlete in the 1998 and 1999 Winter X-Games in Crested Butte. He was Awarded sponsorships by The North Face and Salomon. He also became an athlete talent scout for The North Face building a world-class ski team by discovering soon to be ski stars such as Sage-Cattabriga-Alosa, Ingrid Backstrom, Kitt Deslauries, Griffen Post, and Hillary Nelson. Armstrong was also a co-founder of the Teton Gravity Research film production company. He served on the board of directors for Intrawest from 2012 to 2017.

References

  1. ↑ www.wildsnow.com, Bill Briggs biography.
  2. ↑ "Steep", a 2007 documentary film by Mark Obenhaus (writer/director).
  3. ↑ "Who took the photo? Stories Conflict for Image of Ski Tracks on the Grand | WyoHistory.org". www.wyohistory.org. Retrieved 2019-01-25.
  4. ↑ "2003 Ski Affair". The Utah Ski Archives.
  5. ↑ Association, International Skiing History (June 2006). Skiing Heritage Journal. International Skiing History Association. p. 42.
  6. ↑ writer, CHRISTINE PETERSON Star-Tribune staff. "Wilson band plays nearly every Sunday night for 45 years". Casper Star-Tribune Online. Retrieved 2019-09-28.
  7. ↑ "U.S. National Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame" Archived April 25, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  8. ↑ www.wildsnow.com, Bill Briggs biography.
  9. ↑ "First Man to Ski the Grand Teton Celebrates 47th Anniversary of Descent". POWDER Magazine. 2018-06-15. Retrieved 2019-01-25.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.