BRECKENRIDGE — Colorado ski history was shaped by some colorful Europeans who came to the U.S. after World War II with optimistic dreams and determination to put the war behind them by planting the soul of skiing in the Rockies.
Bavarian Willy Schaeffler, who ran the ski school at Arapahoe Basin after it was founded in 1946 and later coached the University of Denver to 13 national ski championships, was forced into a German penal battalion composed of anti-Nazis during the war. Wounded on the Russian Front, he was captured and escaped to the Austrian Alps, where he formed a resistance group and set about sabotaging German forces.
Another Bavarian, Klaus Obermeyer, taught skiing in Aspen’s early years before founding the ski clothing company that bears his name. Obermeyer skied at age 100 in 2019 and has avoided the slopes during the pandemic, but he hopes to ski again before this season ends.
Norwegian Stein Ericksen, an Olympic champion who was known for stylish skiing and a matinee idol looks that made him the sport’s first superstar in the 1950s, founded the ski school at Aspen Highlands in 1958. Another Norwegian, Trygve Berge, became a co-founder of the Breckenridge ski area in 1961 and ran the ski school for its first 10 years.
Berge, who lived under Nazi occupation during the war when he was a boy, is still skiing. In fact, when he heard a Utah skier named Junior Bounous skied into the Guinness World Records last year at age 95 by becoming the oldest man to go helicopter skiing, Berge got to thinking maybe he ought to go after the record when he’s old enough.
“Did you see that?” said Berge, who turns 90 in April. “Hell, that’s only in five years!”
Berge’s mind is sharp, and so is his wit. He is beloved in Breckenridge, having come to town when there were no paved roads or stoplights.
“He was an icon, having accomplished one of the first front somersaults on skis,” said Gene Dayton, who moved to town in 1967 and founded the Breckenridge Nordic Center. “He’s a nut case, and a mentor. He’s always been a very popular figure, a pillar of the community.”
Berge was 8 years old when the Nazis invaded his homeland on April 9, 1940, a date he accurately cites without having to look it up. Two weeks later the Germans bombed his hometown, Voss.
“We were sitting in the potato cellar, 29 people, peeking through the door to see where the next bomb dropped,” Berge said. “The whole town was flattened.”
There was a Norwegian underground, but it was dangerous to be part of it, as Berge was soon to learn.
“One day, an older man in the underground, his son was out playing with other kids, and he said, ‘My daddy talks into the stove.’ Well, that was kind of crazy, but then everybody knew he had a radio center in there. The whole family was wiped out. You had to be so careful, otherwise you’d get shot.”
After the war, Berge began ski racing. He was good at it, and he became a protégé of Ericksen, who took gold and silver medals at the 1952 Winter Olympics, then took three gold medals at the 1954 world championships. Ericksen was known for his elegance, skiing ankles together as if they were tied together by shoestrings. Years later in the U.S., folks would say Berge skied more like Ericksen than Ericksen did.
“I heard that comment from Stein’s wife and Stein’s friends at his memorial service,” said Bill Horigan, a friend of Berge’s. “It always amazes me to watch him get off a lift. Everybody is standing around and Trgyve glides through them. Skis are right next to each other, he’s just gliding through everybody, and everybody is (saying), ‘Who is this man?’”
Berge competed at the 1956 Winter Olympics. When Ericksen moved from the Heavenly Resort in California to Aspen Highlands in 1958, he asked Berge to work for him in the ski school there. Berge did, for two seasons.
The second winter in Aspen, Berge met a group of skiers from Kansas that included Bill Rounds, whose family owned a lumber company. They saw potential in Breckenridge and were planning to build a lumberyard there in the summer of 1960.
That summer, Berge and fellow Norwegian Sigurd Rockne worked at the lumberyard, and they took Rounds on a hike up Peak 8 to show him its potential for skiing. Rounds decided on the spot to pursue a permit to develop skiing there. The following summer, Berge and Rockne laid out the first trails on Peak 8 and the area opened in December 1961.
Initially, Berge and Rockne ran the ski school together, but after a couple of seasons, Rockne left to focus on a restaurant he had in town. Berge continued to run the ski school until the Aspen Skiing Company bought Breckenridge in 1970, when he went to work as a stonemason, a craft he continues to practice on occasion.
In a late ’60s, ski filmmaker Warren Miller did a feature on Breckenridge that focused on Berge and showed him putting on a show of amazing powder skiing. In his narration, Miller observed that the parking lot “conveniently held the usual 13 cars, two Volkswagens, three motorcycles and a Summit County school bus that broke down.” In 1971, Berge appeared on the cover of Skiing magazine, skiing beside French Olympic hero Jean-Claude Killy. In the 1980s, Berge snagged a great side gig with Scandinavian Airlines, leading ski tours to Europe.
He always did know how to have fun.
“Trygve is more into today than sitting and thinking about yesterday,” Horigan said. “Every day we come up with, ‘What are we going to do today? It’s a new day, and we’re going to have fun.’ Trygve is very good at having fun, and he has the greatest friends in the world.”
And, after a lifetime of skiing, he’s always looking forward to the next elegant turn on a bluebird day.
“I love it, and I’m still doing it pretty good,” Berge said. “The feeling of just being out there is so fantastic.”
