As time went by, Benedict’s enthusiasms evolved away from town and toward the backcountry trails, where he had always felt at home. He thought about building a trail system linking Aspen and Vail to the north, across some of the terrain the 10th had explored from Camp Hale. How about a trail sprinkled with rustic huts, each one a day’s ski from the next, like the Appalachian Mountain Club huts in New Hampshire or the alpine huts linking Zermatt and Chamonix along the classic, six-day Haute Route? Such a trail might, Fritz hoped, “help preserve a kind of simple enjoyment of the mountains.”
Other skiers around the country were forsaking the lifts and the manicured trails for the backcountry, becoming reacquainted with free-heel bindings and climbing skins. Enthusiasms were coming full circle, and in 1980 Fritz’s idea tapped into a groundswell of interest in skiing’s self-propelled, wild-snow roots. The new traditionalists could have been quoting from David Brower’s introduction to the 1942 edition of The Manual of Ski Mountaineering: “We have nothing against the practice slopes and the standard runs; but if that’s all you know, you have missed something special, something lost behind the ranges, a sparkling new white world with its hard edges covered over for the winter, and you its discoverer.”
Fritz also wanted to honor the ski troops, and so his idea became the 10th Mountain Division Trail and Hut System. The U.S. Forest Service gave its blessing. Tenth veterans, including Bob Parker and Bill Bowerman, got involved. Fritz donated an office, designed the first two huts, and enlisted a small army of trail cutters, cabin builders, fund-raisers, and reservations takers. The huts had wood stoves for cooking and heating, solar-powered lights, and bunks for up to twenty people. Skiers would carry their own bedding, food, and wine; drinking and washing water would come from melting snow in big pots on the stove. All the rest was there, everything grand about the 10th’s winter forays onto the peaks—the camaraderie, the spectacular vistas, the sharp air and powder snow—without the misery of C rations and snow caves.
The first two huts opened for the winter of 1981–82. Twenty more have been added since, completing a jagged, three-hundred-mile circle around the Holy Cross Wilderness: from Aspen north and east to Vail, then south across Tennessee Pass to Leadville, and west again to Aspen. Twenty thousand skiers glide through the system in a typical season. Most ski in for a night or two. A few, with strong lungs and a long holiday, make the complete circumnavigation. Hut 8, the 10th Mountain Division Hut, was funded entirely by 10th veterans, Bill Bowerman in particular. It sits at 11,370 feet overlooking Slide Lake and Homestake Peak, site of the early regimental training “disaster.” The ninth hut, Uncle Bud’s Hut, was built from stone on the site and named in honor of Bud Winter, the eager MTG stalwart and prolific letter writer. It is perched high on the side of Galena Mountain just off the route Winter and the others took on their famous “trooper traverse” from Leadville to Aspen in February 1944. The hut’s log contains a poem by Bud’s father, Fred, written soon after the family learned of Bud’s death. It reads, in part: “Sleep peacefully my buddy boy, beneath Italian skies / . . . And may God give you silver skiis, to ski celestial hills, / And fishing rods and lines and reels, to fish those streams and rills.”
Despite two heart surgeries in his seventies, Fritz insisted on skiing at least twice a week on the cross-country trails around Aspen and, on occasion, up to the huts, where he loved to drink bourbon and count stars with his skiing buddies. He died in 1995 at age eighty-one. In 1997, two small huts at 10,900 feet up Hunter Creek east of Aspen were added to the system in honor of Fritz and his wife, Fabi. Fritz’s wish for “an American Haute Route” to honor the nation’s first and only Army mountain division had become reality.
There were hundreds more who affected the world outdoors. Some we know about; many we don’t. John Jay finished up his war editing publications for the Air Force in the Philippines and occupied Japan. Then when he came home, he went right back to what he loved most: shooting, editing, scoring, and narrating ski movies. For the next twenty-five years he traveled the world’s great ranges, skiing and filming, and set the standard by which all subsequent ski films and travelogues were judged.
Monty Atwater, a Harvard grad who wrote juvenile fiction as a first career, took his Camp Hale experience with Rocky Mountain snow and turned it into a career as America’s preeminent avalanche-control expert. Atwater hired on at Alta soon after the war and began immediately to experiment with explosive control of dangerous slide paths. Drawing on Colonel Ruffner’s artillery exercise at Homestake Peak in 1943, Monty became the world’s first practitioner to regularly shoot down slides with military weaponry, including the 10th’s artillery piece, the 75-mm pack howitzer. Monty proved the then-radical notion that avalanches can be controlled. Atwater demonstrated how, rather than simply issuing warnings, as they had done in the past, in vulnerable areas, like ski resorts and slide-prone highways, snow rangers can trigger avalanches artificially and bring them down before they become monsters.
Another 10th man, Morley Nelson, moved to Idaho after the war, worked for the Soil Conservation Service, and became one of the nation’s foremost experts on raptors. Known as the “Birdman of Boise,” Nelson not only raised and rehabilitated dozens of birds, he campaigned tirelessly against the rampant shooting of birds of prey, designed safer power lines to protect birds from electrocution, wrote and lectured and lobbied for the establishment of the Snake River Birds of Prey Natural Area and the Peregrine Fund’s World Center for Birds of Prey. He also brought raptors into millions of living rooms and theaters by contributing to thirty films about birds of prey, including Disney’s The Eagle and the Hawk.
So many of these men lived, and continue to live, long and energetic lives. Their nonprofit 10th Mountain Division Association is one of the most active veterans organizations to emerge from World War II. Seventy-eight hundred 10th alumni were members at its peak. It still listed twenty-seven hundred members in 2003, though the roster—sadly, inevitably—shrinks almost daily. The related 10th Mountain Division Foundation raises money for college scholarships, for handicapped skiing, and for various memorials, including the 10th Mountain Division Trail and Hut System.
Minnie Dole gave the opening speech at the very first 10th reunion in 1946. He called his talk “Birth Pains of the 10th Mountain Division,” and in it he referred with parental affection to “our division.” He admitted that “my life was wrapped up in the division for the past five years, and your departure left a tough void to fill.” Following the war Minnie went back to the insurance business, but he never stopped pressing the Army to make ski training an integral part of military service. And he stayed close to many ski troopers, including General Hays, through the association. Minnie Dole died in 1976 at the age of seventy-six.
In 1980, together with mountain soldiers from eight other nations—Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, and Switzerland—10th vets organized the International Federation of Mountain Soldiers. Former allies and adversaries now get together regularly to remember the dead, no matter their nationality, and to strengthen their common bonds. To that end, the IFMS organized a reenactment of the 10th’s Riva Ridge climb fifty years to the day after the historic event. On February 18, 1995, a score of still-fit 10th troopers, including seven who had actually fought on Riva, made the climb up C Company’s route to Monte Serrasiccia. Now well into their seventies, they climbed it in daylight, and they had help from comrades in the Italian Alpini and from a handful of young men with the reactivated 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry). At the summit they were met by family and friends, and by German and Austrian soldiers, at least one of whom had been taken prisoner by the Americans that day fifty years before. Under flags of many countries, and some former enemies, the assembly dedicated a new twelve-mile long Peace Trail, the first of many planned for the Northern Apennines and the Alps.
The new 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry) was activated in 1984 at Fort Drum in upstate New York. Forty-nine years after the origin
al 10th was disbanded, the Army reassigned the name to a division trained for combat in “any terrain or climate.” Not a ski troop per se, it is a “rapid-deployment force” designed primarily for security and peacekeeping duties. Since 1992, the new 10th Mountain has been the most-deployed division in the Army, serving in southern Florida following Hurricane Andrew, in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Cuba, Kuwait, and Qatar. Johnny Litchfield (HQ/DIV), one of the original ski instructors with Friedl Pfeifer in Aspen, says of the new 10th, “We have a heritage, and they are carrying it on. The mission has changed . . . but the [Mountain Division] patch remains the same.”
Every year, the men who still ski—and there are a lot of them—congregate at a ski area out west for a reunion. It’s not just an annual meeting of the association but a real reunion with plenty of time for sliding on the mountain and drinking and singing the old songs together. Talk only rarely veers back to Camp Hale or Italy. Mostly, they talk about new skis and dear friends, and how John Woodward, in his nineties, still beats everybody to the bottom of the hill. (As former Skiing magazine and Aspen Times publisher Bil Dunaway said at a recent gathering, “Once you’re addicted to the outdoors, it’s pretty hard to stop.”)
Early on, the reunions were held at Vail, on Pete Seibert and Bob Parker’s mountain. In recent years, they’ve been hosted by Keystone Resort, also in Colorado. The men usually pick a day and drive over to Cooper Hill on Tennessee Pass for some skiing on the old Camp Hale trails. The T-bar has been replaced with a chairlift, and the area is now run by the community—not the Army—but the high, thin air and dry snow on the Continental Divide remain essentially unchanged.
After skiing, the troopers gather at the pass before an immense slab of polished Italian granite on which are inscribed the names of the 997 mountaineers lost in battle. Someone speaks a brief prayer. Someone else, usually Hugh Evans or Earl Clark, then leads the gathering in song. The voices are mostly still strong; a couple of brave tenors mix in harmony with many others deep and cracked with age. Finally, someone else reads a poem by Sgt. Ed Currie (G/85).
now who will sing
the April song?
the fluting voice
the silvered spear
lie crumpled on the ground,
and all we know of youth
and friendship
rattles in the gourd
we carry in our hearts . . .
Italia’s slopes are green
birds nest in leafless trees
the fluting voice,
the silvered spear . . .
lie crumpled on the ground.
There is no attempt either to cover up the horrors of the war or to glorify their part in it. As Art Delany (L/87) of Denver said, “It was a big war. Dead bodies are scattered all over the world. We did our share, and we did it well. That’s about as much congratulation as a person should take for the effort, I think.”
Instead of credit, the remaining men of the 10th Mountain Division want most to hold on to the feeling they all had at one time or another in the mountains. Ralph Lafferty (HQ/86) said it best in the film Fire on the Mountain: “You get to the top of a mountain, and you feel happy about the whole thing. You start to sing. That’s the spirit we had in the 10th.”
This somewhat romanticized 1943 Post cover served as an unofficial recruiting poster for the ski troops.
The 10th Mountain Division shoulder patch: a blue powder keg with red crossed bayonets indicating the roman numeral ten. The MOUNTAIN tab put the 10th in the “elite” league with Army Ranger and Airborne divisions.
Insurance man Minnie Dole (center), the 10th’s founding father (and mother hen) with Roger Langley and Paul Lafferty at Camp Hale, Colorado, 1943.
The 87th Mountain Infantry Regiment trained for one winter at Paradise Lodge, Mount Rainier, Washington, 1941–42.
Lt. John Jay, a fixture on the ski-film lecture circuit, became the 10th’s unofficial documentarian. Mount Rainier, 1942. (Charles C. Bradley)
Swiss mountaineer and Dartmouth College ski coach Walter Prager demonstrates rappelling technique on Mount Rainer, 1942. (U.S. Army Signal Corps)
Burdell S. “Bud” Winter, of Schenectady, New York, one of the most enthusiastic members of the Mountain Training Group, ca. 1943–44.
World-record holder Torger Tokle jumped 289 feet before becoming the 10th’s most famous enlisted man. Aspen, 1944.
Instant city at 9,250 feet. Camp Hale, Colorado. 1942–44. (Winston Pote)
MTG ski instructor Cpl. Harry Poschman shows off his Arlberg turns at Cooper Hill, Camp Hale, 1944. (Courtesy of Harry Poschman)
Hugh Evans dries his socks and felt insoles on maneuvers above Camp Hale, April 1944.
Former world champion and Sun Valley instructor Friedl Pfeifer rides the Aspen boat tow. (Courtesy of Heritage Aspen)
Front page of the Blizzard, the division newspaper, featuring a sketch by Sgt. Jacques Parker of the Riva Ridge assault, February 1945. (Courtesy of Jacques Parker)
Aerial tramway built by 126th Engineer Battalion to evacuate wounded and resupply troops attacking Riva Ridge, February 1945. (U.S. Army Signal Corps)
The 10th reinforcements move up Monte Belvedere. Riva Ridge in background left; Belvedere summit on right. February 1945. (U.S. Army Signal Corps)
Congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce visits the mountain troops in Italy. General George Hays at left. (Roy O. Bingham)
The 10th troops pinned down by sniper fire on the road to Castel d’Aiano, March 1945. (U.S. Army Signal Corps)
Sgt. Walter Prager finds a moment to write home prior to the Spring Push, April 1945. (Richard A. Rocker)
Highway tunnels on Lake Garda saw some of the last, grim fighting in northern Italy, late April 1945. (Richard A. Rocker)
“The Pianist.” David Brower in the Po River valley following the liberation of Verona. (Wilbur G. Vaughan)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Every summer, 10th Mountain Division veterans living in New England gather to climb New Hampshire’s Mount Washington, the highest peak in the Northeast. In August of 2001, I invited myself along and was graciously welcomed by the group, which included John Imbrie, Newc Eldredge, Bob Traynor, and Carlton Miller. We climbed the Boott Spur Trail, nearly ten miles and 4,000 vertical feet up to the Lakes of the Clouds Hut, where we spent the night before hiking on to the summit the next morning. It was slow going. These men are in their seventies and eighties now, and the trail winds through steep boulder fields much of the way. They never lost their good humor, though. At one point late in the day, I heard a clarion downeast accent: “We’re not to the top yet. But you could roll to it from here.”
They could have driven to the top, as indeed many more of their mountain division comrades did the next day for the annual memorial service. But those who can still make the climb prefer to hoof it. It’s in their blood.
Each of us carried a bottle of red wine in our packs. (Newc made sure to spread the weight around.) And at dinner that night in the hut, the men toasted the mountain and all the mountains they have known. They celebrated their own great good fortune and remembered those who had gone before them.
A book like this one would not be possible without the help and encouragement of surviving 10th Mountain Division veterans, a generous, inclusive bunch. In particular, I am indebted to Bob Parker, John Jennings, Robert Woody, and Harry Poschman, who loaned me their journals and other writings, shared their stories and memorabilia, and invited me into their lives.
At the same time, no book on the 10th would ever come together without the encyclopedic guidance of Debbie Gemar and Barbara Walton at the 10th Mountain Division Resource Center in the Western History/Genealogy Department of the Denver Public Library.
Many thanks to filmmakers Beth and George Gage, who generously shared 10th contacts; to John Imbrie, tireless 10th historian, for lightning responses to questions on anything and everything; to Newc Eldredge, 10th film librarian; Jacques Parker, unofficial division illustrator
; Phil Lunday, database and map man extraordinaire; Onno Wieringa for the wonderful things he saved; Mike Meyers and Georgianna Contiguglia for information on the 10th’s equipment and clothing; and to Dean Rolley, for sharing video of the veterans’ seminar in Telluride.
Special thanks to Ed Pitoniak, Gibbs Smith, Greg Poschman, Morten Lund, Heritage Aspen, The Colorado Ski Museum, and the 10th Mountain Division Hut and Trail Association.
Countless details came from countless hours of conversation with charitable 10th men Thomas Brooks, Bill “Sarge” Brown, Earl Clark, Hugh Evans, Bob Frausen, Leon Goodman, Nick Hock, Howard Koch, Ralph Lafferty, Bud Lovett, Jacques Parker, Crosby Perry-Smith, John Pierpont, Pete Seibert, Ernest “Tap” Tapley, Duke Watson, Onno Wieringa, Dick Wilson, John Woodward, and Herbert Wright.
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