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Bill Briggs ’50: ‘King of the Hill’
Exeter Bulletin, Winter 2005
Photo Caption: Bill Briggs ’50 is now in his
36th year as director of the ski school at the Snow King Ski Area
in Jackson, WY. (Photo Credit: Jim Evans.)
Bill Briggs ’50 is described in skiing circles as the “Father
of Extreme Skiing,” and small wonder. A string of daring first
descents would justify the title, as would the fact that he has skied
mountains deemed unskiable. He made the first ski descent of Middle
Teton and South Teton in 1967, Mount Moran in 1978, Grand Teton in
1971 and Mount Owen in 1974. He also pioneered the 100-mile trek
from the Bugaboos portion of the Purcell Range to Rogers Pass in
Glacier National Park, British Columbia.
But concerning his early years on the slopes, he says, “I could
ski well, yet I didn’t know what I was doing.” So he
began to study what he calls the “mechanics or engineering
of skiing,” and through research developed his own way of teaching
the sport, the Certainty Training Method (CTM). As head of the ski
school at Snow King Ski Area in Jackson, WY, for 36 years, he has
had skiers “describe what is happening and thus study the movements
of skiing in an intellectual way.”
An important influence, he says, has been the Church of Scientology,
which he credits with assisting not only his teaching but also his
life. The roots of this interest he attributes to his introduction
to non sibi as an Exeter student. While at the Academy, Briggs was a member of the squash team and
skied only recreationally, if not to say religiously. “The
only skiing I did there was on Sundays and I got out of going to
church to do it,” he recalls. While Sunday church attendance
was a school requirement, Briggs “went to the dean who agreed
it would be just as good spiritually for me to be skiing. It was
very gracious of him to accept my way of doing things, participating
in an outdoor activity instead of an indoor one.”
Briggs was a member of the Mountaineering Club at Exeter. “Bob
Bates ’29 was my English teacher as well as the club adviser.
I remember a December trip with the club to climb Mount Lafayette.
The temperature went well below zero and the wind came up. I found
myself in a leadership position in the group. I had never thought
of myself as the person who would lead the group and find the hut
or do anything like that. But at the time, it seemed easy. That was
really the beginning of my mountaineering career.” After college,
Briggs became a mountain guide for 22 years with the Exum Climbing
School and Mountaineering Service in Grand Teton National Park.
Briggs prefers to think of his exploits as “ski mountaineering” in
part because “extreme skiing today has the reputation of doing
huge athletic endeavors at the edge of sanity, like jumping off high
cliffs or over crevasses. That is not me. I skied these mountains
for the first time, but I did it cautiously and sanely. I don’t
take chances.”
What’s remarkable is that Briggs’ accomplishments came
despite the fact that he had his hip fused to handle the combination
of dislocation at birth and eventual arthritic deterioration. “I
don’t have the flexibility others have,” “but I
can still ski well.” Briggs’ devotion to skiing extends off the slopes. He is an
accomplished alpine yodeler and about to release a CD of ski songs
including the 10th Mountain Division’s “Two Boards on
Cold Powder Snow” to which he has added a Swiss yodel. — Julie Quinn
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