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| Walter
Foeger on the Open Slope,
Jay Peak, in spring of 1959.
Old warming shelter is behind
him; further left is the instructor's
and first-aid shack |
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Photo courtesy Richardson
Studio, Newport |
Walter Foeger's story is an American story.
An American dream realized and lost. Arriving with a background in Alpine ski
racing, ski teaching, and mountain management, on a day in December more than
forty years ago carrying little more than his Kneissel skis and a dictionary,
the simple beginnings at Jay Peak might have dismayed a lesser man. But Walter
was entranced by the area and saw its possibilities as probably few did. As
he shortly thereafter advised Rhoda Berger (clerk and reporter for the Richford
Journal-Gazette) in thickly accented, broken-English, "Zuh money, it is
not down here vis four-leg vuns, but up zhere vis two-leg vuns". This was
his moment, a young Caesar in Gaul, if only he had the courage and the strength
to seize it. The mountain lay before him like a fresh canvas awaiting the first
strokes of his imagination. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and Walter did
not shy away. Far from it.
On that day in December 1956, Walter saw that the 'Open Slope' (which
had been cut under the direction of Jay Peak president Harold Haynes and Perry
Merrill (Vermont State Forester), on advice from Sepp Ruschp and Charles M.
Lord of Stowe), while an excellent trail, was too steep for the experience and
equipment of most of the expected skiers. What was needed, in addition, was
a trail that sought out the natural contours of the mountain and found an easier
route to the bottom. Three weeks later, on January 1, 1957, he started cutting
trees for the Sweetheart Trail, in -25 degree (F) weather in deep snow with
his boss, Harold Haynes, leading a second crew of cutters up from the base (Haynes,
a Newport high school teacher at the time, was an early Jay Peak visionary who
had spearheaded the effort to bring this young Austrian ski pro to America.)
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