LaConte: Like a candle in the wind
Skiing with torches was once quite the fad.
There was torchlight ski racing, torchlight ski ballet, and what I’m certain would have been a favorite event if it was still around today — torchlight ski jumping, where ski jumpers hit massive jumps at night, taking flight while holding an Olympic-style flame, which only burned brighter as the wind blasted it in mid-air.
But while none of those ski-torch events managed to catch on in the United States, there was one that would stand the test of time: the torchlight ski parade.
The first documented ski torch parade to receive a write-up in the U.S. was an event at Norway’s annual Holmenkollen Ski Festival in 1903, which was covered by the Minneapolis Journal.
“To see these processions come like an illuminated serpent winding down the hillside through the winterly dressed forest of firs was a sight never to be forgotten,” the Journal reported. “It was like a scene from the Arabian Nights fairy tales … even an undertaker or pawn-broker would grow romantic at such sights.”

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The first torchlight ski event documented in Colorado occurred in 1938 in Aspen and was brought to town by visiting German ski teams.
“As the course is visible from all parts of Aspen, practically everyone in the city saw the brilliant display and were amazed at the skill and dexterity with which the German boys executed the various formations and drills while coming down the steep slopes,” the Aspen Times reported.
Motion pictures of the torchlight ski parade down Aspen’s Roch Run were taken by Universal Newsreel cameramen to be shown throughout the nation. That event occurred in April, and the Holmenkollen Ski Festival was a February-March event, but before long torchlight ski events started becoming a staple of Winter Solstice, Christmas and New Year’s Eve celebrations in December.
Oddly, though, torchlight ski parades haven’t been limited to winter holidays in America. A torchlight ski parade was once a hallmark event of an annual Fourth of July celebration in the famed Tuckerman’s Ravine backcountry on Mt. Washington in New Hampshire but was canceled in 1953 as people realized that despite the ample snowpack, there might be a little too much fire danger at that time of year to be skiing down the slope with the type of flame that’s purpose-built to be nearly unextinguishable.
In Eagle County, the first torchlight ski parades weren’t held on Vail Mountain, despite what you might assume. It was actually the long-defunct Meadow Mountain ski area that held that distinction, gathering the community together for a Christmas Eve torchlight parade each year starting in 1966. Anyone was welcome to join in, as long as they were an advanced skier, and free spaghetti was given to all participants at Meadow Mountain’s restaurant, the Rathskeller, following the performance.
A few years later, in the 1968-69 season, the Vail Ski School started putting on a torchlight parade of its own on Golden Peak. The first year, it was held on Christmas Eve, but in 1970, the event was moved to New Year’s Eve, where it has remained ever since. This year’s event is scheduled to begin at 6:15 p.m.
The Christmas-New Year’s holiday week often attracts mega-celebrities and public figures to Vail (more on that in next week’s Time Machine, our “this week in local history column, publishing on Monday), but, interestingly, they don’t seem to be as drawn to the big events like torchlight ski downs.
Seeing the slopes glowing with movement seems to capture the awe and imagination of regular folk, who visit the mountains to see something larger than life, while the world’s most important people just want to live like the locals for a few days while they’re here.
Gerald Ford often came to Vail to ski, but it wasn’t until he was the president of the United States that he took it upon himself to learn something considered pretty basic by locals — avoiding the snowplow-style turn.
In 1974, amid scores of reporters and secret service agents, Ford made an admission from Ski Patrol Headquarters at the top of Chair 4.
“I never learned to ski parallel until I took instruction out here from the Vail Ski School,” he said, adding that ski instructor Dennis Hoeger and others had gotten him away from “the 30-year aerobird techniques,” whatever that means.
Ford was given a Vail Parallel Pin in recognition of the progression he had made in his skiing.
While a sitting U.S. president would seem to be the most distinguished guest Vail could host over the holidays, that may have been outdone 20 years later when one of the most recognizable people on the planet visited Vail for New Year’s — Princess Diana.
The Vail Trail lived up to its name in attempting to track her movements, following a trail of local sightings. And, according to the paper’s coverage, it sounds like The People’s Princess may have outdone Ford in her ordinary-person approach to her vacation.
While crowds gathered at the base of Golden Peak to see “an illuminated serpent winding down the hillside through the winterly dressed forest of firs,” to borrow the Minneapolis Journal’s description of a torchlight ski parade, “One burger flipper at Wendy’s revealed that Di hit the drive-through,” the Trail reported, “and headed toward Forest Road with a No. 2 Combo with everything on it.”
John LaConte is a reporter at the Vail Daily who authors the weekly Time Machine feature that runs on Mondays. Email him at jlaconte@vaildaily.com