Back in Jack Pugh’s day, there was no such thing as lycra or carbon fibre. Ski bindings tightened with lugs and cables, and after you climbed up a mountain with 215 cm wooden skis on your “bedroom slipper” lace-up boots, you wrapped your seal hide skins around your waist to descend.
Jack will be 90 this year, but back in 1952, he was one of the guys to beat in any kind of race that involved skis. That year, he won the Marmot Derby.
“It was a pretty back-woodsy kind of thing at that time,” the life-long Jasperite said.
“There was no money involved.”
Back-woodsy or not, the Marmot Derby was a long course. It took competitors from just below the peak, down the mountain towards Slash and culminated about half way down the Marmot Basin Road. It was a spring race that, in a sense, looks a bit like a predecessor of the upcoming Ski Mountaineering Canada event: Marmot’s Revenge.
On March 17 the Canadian SkiMo race circuit will bring dozens of competitors to Marmot Basin to skin up, ski down and bootpack more than 1,800 metres of vertical gain in less than three hours. Retired pro cycler and SkiMo athlete Alex Stieda promises Jasperites and Marmot Basin guests an “unbelievable show” when racers suit up and put on a cardio clinic.
“Because the course is lift accessed, you can really set up to enjoy it,” he said.
In the early 1950s, getting to Marmot Basin’s skiable terrain wasn’t so easy. Pioneer skiers hopped aboard a snow bombardier where Portal Creek meets Hwy93A, then up a steep road to the Martin Cabin—not far from where the Paradise (upper) Chalet sits today. From the Martin Cabin, it was a self-powered affair; there were no ski lifts in those days, and Jack says getting two runs in a day was considered ambitious.
“You’d take off your stuff, get in that old snowmobile and get back up there,” he said.
Jack remembers duelling with famed ski instructor Tom McCready for top honours in the Marmot Derby. McCready obviously considered the Derby an important event: his widow Faye said the couple moved their 1953 wedding by a week just so they could take part.
“I didn’t mind,” Faye said. “It was the life we lived.”
On March 17, Ski Mountaineering Canada is inviting anyone who wants to get a taste of the SkiMo life to register in the event’s recreational category. The course is shorter and contains less elevation gain than the track the pros will follow, which Stieda likened to the equivalent of competing in a triathlon.
“There are Tour de France-level athletes,” he said. “They’re so fit, their skill level…it’s unbelievable.”
Perhaps that how spectators would have described a young Jack Pugh when he was winning the Marmot Derby in 1952. Sixty six years later, he still remembers the burn in his quads.
“You were pretty pooped by the time you were done,” he said.
