Silver Belt: Reliving the historic race

Babette Haueisen has little patience for inaccuracies.

“The Silver Belt was a giant slalom, not a downhill,” the 79-year-old Truckee resident says with a dry and matter-of-fact tone, referring to a Jan. 3 article in the Sierra Sun previewing Sugar Bowl’s Silver Belt Banzai.

Curt, but accurate. The original Silver Belt race held from 1940 to 1975 was in fact a GS.

Besides her sharp memory from which she plucks old names and relives her racing heyday like yesterday, Haueisen’s collection of historic books, both written by local ski author Robert Frohlich, offer a priceless glimpse into a black-and-white past.

The books also confirm Haueisen’s claim as the woman sipping the “bubbly” from the 1955 winner’s trophy — a silver champagne bucket — in one of the two photos that ran with the article (above, left). The man in the photo tipping the bucket for her? That’s Bill Beck, “from Dartmouth,” Haueisen recalls.

The skier in the second photo, shown checking his speed on a steep section of the Silver Belt course, is Peter Picard, competing in the first-ever Silver Belt race in 1940 (left).

After establishing the facts — the article stated the race was a downhill, and the photos ran sans names — Haueisen relaxes her guard and lets the ski stories flow.

“The year that I won I couldn’t have been a longer shot,” she says, explaining how she had learned to ski just six years earlier while attending college — on 2,571-foot Mount Tamalpais north of the San Francisco Bay.

“But we didn’t stand up and ski; we sat on the skis and used them as a toboggan,” says Haueisen, who grew up in Wisconsin before moving to the Bay Area as a young teen. “Then the next month we went over to Mount Diablo, because those were the years of big winters. We decided we’d stand up on that one.”

Despite crashing in mud and rocks at the bottom of the hill — no one showed her how to turn or stop — Haueisen had discovered a sport that suited her. A year later she left college and joined the Berkeley Ski Club, then landed a job at Sugar Bowl.

“And that’s how it all started,” she says.

SILVER BELT RACE The invite-only Silver Belt race helped put Sugar Bowl on the map in the early days of ski racing. Sanctioned by the California Ski Association, which later became the Far West Ski Association, the Silver Belt race survived from 1940 until 1975 and featured some of the biggest names in skiing. Top skiers from Europe and the United States were put up at the resort and in private residences for the end-of-the-season race, usually held in April. The giant slalom course started at the top of Mount Lincoln, sending competitors down 1,300 vertical feet of steep, gully-filled terrain. The course was rated the steepest race terrain in California and the fifth most difficult in North America. After the start of World Cup competition in 1967, the Silver Belt lost luster on the upper-tier race circuit. A new amateur points system, revisions in scheduling and increasing costs eventually led to the end of the race.

Racing days

Athletic and competitive, and a quick learner, Haueisen was invited to compete in the Silver Belt for the first time in 1953. She went on to place second the following year and won in 1955, upsetting a strong field of international racers. She competed four times, racing to three podium finishes.

In those days Haueisen and company had to earn their runs, as racers were required to hike up Mount Lincoln the day before the race and sidestep down the mountain with their skis. They called it “grooming.”

“You’d start at the bottom and put the skis on your shoulders, and then you’d boot pack up the course as it was being set,” Haueisen says. “So you get to the top and the course setters go, ‘OK, put on your skis, we are now going to groom the course.’ So we groomed the course as we went down.”

It was a tiring exercise, but one that had to be done.

“Oh, sure it was. But you did it,” Haueisen says. “The Europeans always wanted to do a little slip-slip, but there were people on the course who would say, ‘Go back and put your edges into that slip-slip part you did, or you don’t race tomorrow.’”

On race day, the skiers rode up the Disney chairlift and then walked across the Palisades to the start gate — even though the first chairlift on Lincoln was installed in 1950.

“And then it was, ‘Racer ready. Three, two, one, go, and away we went. It was something else.”

Conditions varied from ice to spring slush and everything in between, says Haueisen. And there was nothing easy about the terrain, especially when coupled with a tightly set course.

According to Frohlich’s book “Skiing with Style, Sugar Bowl: 60 Years,” two-time Olympian Billy Kidd found out about the course’s challenges the hard way.

Former Sugar Bowl General Manager Don Schwartz is quoting telling the story:

“One year, ski school director Toni Marth set a pretty tight course. The steilhang, which is the last section of the course, is damn steep. Once the racer made the turn down it, there were two gates close together. It had a lot of racers worried. But Billy Kidd kept saying that it wasn’t a big deal and he was going to rip this course up. The next day he fell right at those two tight gates and knocked himself out. We carried him off on a stretcher, but only his pride was hurt.”

Haueisen says she became adept at popping back to her feet after a fall and still finishing among the race leaders. They skied on large, cumbersome wooden skis, after all.

Once the race was in the bag, the invited skiers loosened up with a friendly, and often goofy, game of baseball — played on skis.

“It was a way to relax after you’d been all tensed-up for the ski race. And then we’d go to the banquet to see who won. That was always fun,” Haueisen says.



— Sources: “Skiing with Style, Sugar Bowl: 60 Years,” “Mountain Dreamers: Visionaries of Sierra Nevada Skiing"

SILVER BELT WINNERS 1940 Friedl Pfeifer Gretchen Fraser 1941 Chris Schwarzenbach Clarita Heath 1942 Chris Schwarzenbach Kaki Henck 1943-1945 Cancelled due to WWII 1946 Alf Engen Rhoda Wurtele 1947 Kristofer Berg Ann Volkmann 1948 George Macomber Brynhild Graesmoen 1949 Yves Latreille Dodie Post 1950 Guttorm Berge Jannette Burr 1951 Guttorm Berge Sally Neidlinger 1952 Yvan Tache Mary Jane Griffith 1953 Christian Pravda Janette Burr 1954 John Cress Bamse Woronovsky 1955 Bill Beck Babette Haueisen 1956 Christian Pravda Sally Deaver 1957 Christian Pravda Staff Walton 1958 Kenny Lloyd Cathy Zimmermann 1959 Buddy Werner Linda Meyers 1960 Tom Corcoran Starr Walton 1961 Chuck Ferries Linda Meyers 1962 Buddy Werner Linda Meyers 1963 Willy Favre Jean Saubert 1964 Leo Lacroix Pia Riva 1965 Rod Hebron Jean Saubert 1966 Philippe Mollard Kathy Allen 1967 Scott Henderson Lee Hall 1968 Rick Chaffee Marilyn Cochran 1969 Eric Poulsen Barbara Cochran 1970 Eric Poulsen Marilyn Cochran 1971 Pat Simpson Cheryl Bechdolt 1972-1974 No races 1975 Greg Jones Cindy Nelson — Information from “Mountain Dreamers, Visionaries of Sierra Nevada Skiing”

SILVER BELT BANZAI In 2004 Sugar Bowl and Red Bull teammed up to hold the first Silver Belt Banzai on the historic Silver Belt race course. The race, which returns to Sugar Bowl on Feb. 14 and 15, features a skiercross format that pits six racers against each other. Qualifying and invited skiers will race for a piece of a $10,000 prize purse. Entry fee is $100 per qualifying racer and free for invited racers. To register go to www.sugarbowl.com/silverbelt-banzai.