66th Running of The Hochgebirge Challenge Cup
Ski Club Hochgebirge (SCH) ranks as the oldest continuing Alpine Racing Club in the United States. Organized in Dec. 1930 by 10 young Boston Businessmen in Brookline, MA. and is now located in Franconia, NH. Over seventy years ago the SCH began sponsoring and hosting a team race which was soon to become a classic in US Skiing. The 1st race was held March 29,1931 on Mt. Moosilauke's Carriage Rd. It was a downhill team race, the first of its kind. The order of the finishing teams were: Dartmouth Outing Club Old Timers, Dartmouth Outing Club, Appalachian Mountain Club, Stem Like Hell Club, Katzenjammer Club, and Ski Club Hochgebirge.
By 1933 the made-for-skiing Taft Trail had been cut on Cannon Mountain and the race was moved there. Back then it was a combined Downhill and GS event. During the first 25 years the race was studded with Olympic stars from US, Austria, Norway and Japan, including Alex Bright, Bob Livermore, Brooks Dodge, Sel Hannah, Dick Durrance, Tor Arneberg, Otto Linherr, Bill Beck, Eddie Mull, Colin Stewart, Chick Igaya, Karl Farhner, Ralph Miller, Tom Corcoran and George Macomber to name a few.
The 1946 Challenge Cup was the 1st post war United States Downhill and Slalom Championships. Between 1946-56 almost all of the best racers in the US attended this event, with additional trophies added for individuals' best times in various categories. In 1955 the SCH event hosted the Olympic Team Trials, with Dodge and Corcoran taking the highest honors.
By 1958, the top racers started going elsewhere for national seeding points and Olympic Trials. This lead to a format change in 1960, to an all Masters Giant Slalom, with Masters Racers eventually becoming those over the feeble age of 21 years. Through the following twenty years the race continued as a prominent GS and the competition for the Team Trophy has retained all of its prestige.
In 1974, the most recent change in format was to Slalom and the event was added to the Sise Masters Series. The SCH sent out the 1st invitation for women's teams in 1984. Not very many ski clubs in the world can boast 65 consecutive annual races over the course of seventy-two years. With all but two of those races being held on Cannon Mountain! (7 others were scheduled only to be cancelled because of war, lack of or get this- too much snow)
So put your team together and try to go down in ski history as the winner of the 66th Hochgebirge Challenge Cup, to be held on Cannon Mountain Sat. February 21, 2004. Post race festivities, awards and dinner held at the hallowed halls of The Hochie Hilton in Franconia starting at 4 pm. For more information contact SCH race chairman Derek Griggs: griggsd@thepipeline.net or call him at 603-474-5695. |