By Karen D. Lorentz
Editors’ Note: This is part of a series on factors that enabled Killington to become the Beast of the East. Information is from author interviews for the book Killington, “A Story of Mountains and Men.”
The rapid learning with GLM was made possible in part by the use of top-of-the-line equipment. The short skis were not children’s skis nor the more common older wood skis. Killington invested in specially designed metal skis with the right camber, sidecut, and flex for beginners. By November 1967, the area had spent $100,000 on skis.
Top-of-the-line buckle boots and poles were used along with the best and latest release bindings. Spademans, the most advanced and expensive binding in its day, were used, and the new fiberglass skis were also purchased for the program.
Buying three pairs of skis for just one person to use in a week was a phenomenal investment — three sets cost $500, or $4,875 in today’s dollars.
However, the program proved so popular that significant outlays continued to be made to meet demand.
Ski school builds business
By the early 1970s, an average of a thousand skiers a day were learning to ski at Killington, with half enrolled in GLM and half in the traditional learning method. The versatility of the ski school was an attraction for ski vacationers as families could start new skiers out in GLM while their experienced members took advanced lessons in the American Teaching Method.
When asked about the most significant aspect to GLM, Leo Denis, a ski instructor turned ski school director during this era, replied that it proved that “learning could be fun.”
The entire concept was predicated on learning to ski as an enjoyable experience, and falling on short skis was not the ordeal that it was on full-length skis.
An introductory movie, part of the GLM Ski Week, helped alleviate the typical fears of beginners and highlighted the variety of psychological research that went into the ski school program.
There was a spirit of having a good time, and by the end of the week, most people were skiing from the top of the mountain. The result was that the drop-out rate among new skiers was greatly reduced, Denis noted.
A special ski week committee was established with directors and managers from various departments, including skiing, marketing, repair shop, rentals, ski school, and ski vacation, to discuss and design programs that meet the needs of the growing market of “ski weekers.” A “ski vacation coordinator” was hired, and a social program was offered with different nightly activities, including a welcome party, ski movies, dances, clinics, demonstrations, and lively ski-week award parties.
Denis commented that it was the phenomenal midweek revenues that allowed Killington to grow, expand, and become so successful. He also pointed out that Killington was one of the first areas to include the ski school director as a part of the management team.
The 1970 Annual Report noted that the most impressive facet of growth was the midweek ski business, reporting that Killington had the largest ski-week attendance of any Eastern ski area.
The Uni-Ski vacation
With the promise of parallel skiing in just five days, Killington inaugurated a Uni-Ski vacation for the 1966–67 season — the first year it offered the GLM option to all customers.
Uni-Ski included a $42 five-day learn-to-ski package with all GLM equipment and daily two-hour lesson, lift ticket, and après-ski social program, and $57 for food and lodging. The total cost was $97 ($897 in today’s dollars)!
The Uni-Ski Week made it easier for the new skier to take up the sport, and Killington became the first ski area in the country to market a comprehensive ski package, offering both traditional and GLM learning options.
In addition, Killington expanded the rental and ski school areas and built the Ski Vacation Center (adjacent to the Snowshed Lodge), where introductory clinics and pre-class movies could address the three fears most common to new skiers — the fear of injury, falling, and the unknown.
For intermediate and expert skiers, the instruction part of the Uni-Ski program included “booster lessons,” whereby the shorter skis were used to speed up the learning process. Pfeiffer had found that for those having problems mastering some aspect of parallel skiing, a brief remedial lesson on short skis worked wonders, as a four- or five-foot ski helped an intermediate skier break the stem habit. When the better skier mastered a particular maneuver on shorter skis, he went back to his regular height-appropriate skis.
Accelerated Ski Method
Initially, GLM was exclusively taught at Killington, but as word of this breakthrough in ski teaching spread, others began to adopt the idea. The system, as taught at Killington, brought rave reviews by skiers and increased word-of-mouth business. Always interested in expanding the potential market of skiers, Killington favored franchising the method, but difficulties and misunderstandings with SKI magazine prohibited their doing so.
Recognizing the importance of the GLM instruction method, Smith and Killington were disturbed by the many variations of GLM springing up elsewhere. In some schools, the skier began on 3-foot skis, and in others, on 4-foot skis. In some, poles were issued; in others, they were not. At smaller ski areas, GLM skiers could be integrated into classes with those using their own longer equipment. Some places taught snowplow on short skis and dubbed it GLM.
These were just a few of the versions of “GLM,” which had become ubiquitous in the ski world during the late 1960s and early 1970s. If you search for GLM on the internet today, you will find a plethora of articles that demonstrate the pervasiveness of the permutations of GLM, accompanied by a lot of misinformation — such as who developed the method — leading to considerable confusion in the historical record.
Because GLM, as taught elsewhere, did not offer “all” the necessary elements considered to be paramount to the success of the method, Killington set itself apart by renaming its program the Accelerated Ski Method in 1970.
The right rental equipment, a pre-class orientation that included a movie, a specially trained instructor, and the gentle Snowshed novice slope with snowmaking and meticulous grooming were some of the ingredients that were missing elsewhere but which, together, distinguished the rapid learning taking place at Killington.
Due to the tremendous investment of time, personnel, and capital that went into developing the learning progressions and GLM, the ski area was reluctant to be associated with a “GLM” that essentially became an adulteration of original objectives and techniques.
“If it could have been more controlled, it would have been better, but what happened in reality is that GLM lost the focus,” Pres Smith noted.
Worried that if the method as taught elsewhere failed to deliver what Killington so boldly promised in its promotion, “We’ve got one million that says you’ll learn to ski at Killington,” it would reflect negatively not only on GLM but also on Killington’s future business and growth, Killington changed the name of their program.
The 1972 Annual Report noted that the “backbone of our winter operation revolves around the ski vacation plan.” It also highlighted the “Accelerated Ski Method” as the key to continued growth, adding, “Killington’s midweek-vacation business can be considered the single most significant factor in the growth of the area over the past four years.”
Comments are welcome, email [email protected] to share your thoughts about skiing in the 1950s -60s.The Beast series will continue in July with more that made Killington.
Skiers at The Beast in the 1960s took classes to learn how to ski on short skis.
