A N S W E R S F R O M VA I L T R I V I A G A M E , C I R C A 19 8 5 : N O R T H E A S T B OW L . C A S C A D E V I L L A G E . VA I L A S S O C I A T E S I N C . G O R E C R E E K . S K I N N Y S K I I N G . T H R E E T I M E S
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85th, 86th and 97th mountain regiments became the 10th Mountain Division on July 15, 1943, becoming the only American regiment trained specifically for mountain warfare, according to the 1996 documentary film, “Fire on the Mountain.” That film can be viewed all day, every day, at the Colorado Ski Museum, and it’s also available for sale on DVD. Training for mountain warfare seemed harder than war itself, recalls Brown. “It was tough training. We thought combat was easier than this,” Brown said. “Our training was in that cold weather all the time. We’d go out all day long.” The men put in long days in extreme conditions. A “normal” In an article about the 10th day began with a rude awakenMountain Division by Lauren ing at 5:30 a.m., Brown said, Moran, for the Colorado Ski followed by roll call at 6 a.m. Museum, Parker recalls arriv“And you better be ing at Fort Lewis and seeing dressed,” Brown said. so many great From skiers. He said there, the day he thought he would include was in heaven. anything and IT WAS TOUGH By the time everything from TRAINING. the men got mule training WE THOUGHT to Camp Hale to dog trainCOMBAT and experiing to ski and WAS EASIER enced the harsh weapons trainTHAN THIS weather and ing. And the subsequently men carried 90 harsh trainpounds on their ing conditions, they still backs plus a machine gun for made the best of it. Actually, those in the weapons platoon. they even had some fun. Bob Parker remembers the “A lot of us younger, less difficulties of the training, but experienced skiers learned a also the good times. Parker, lot from some of the old pros,” who would later become Vail’s Parker said in an interview for first marketing director, first “Fire on the Mountain.” “My arrived at Fort Lewis, in Washmentor was Gordy Wren. He’d ington, before the troops were lead us off into the woods transferred to the permanent training grounds at Camp Hale. and we’d bushwhack down
P H OTO C O U R T E S Y C O LO R A D O S K I A N D S N O W B OA R D M U S E U M
In April 1945, the 10th Mountain Division fought its way across Northern Italy, taking some of the heaviest casualties of the war. OPPOSITE: The Pando Valley where Camp Hale was built filled with coal smoke from coal stoves used for heat and the coal-fired steam locomotives that rolled through. Soldiers who breathed it got what they called the Pando hack.
the mountain, definitely in a non-military way. Although we did ski in formation and so forth, we also had a lot of fun in the woods. …” The fun would always end, though, as the training was not easy. During training called D-series, the men went up on Shrine Pass for several weeks in freezing temperatures and modest food rations. When they’d go to sleep in their tents, Brown said they had to put their boots inside their sleeping bags or they’d freeze.
“When we came on D-series the first time, anybody could leave that wanted to — and a lot of them left,” Brown said. The Rio Grande railroad also traveled directly through the Camp Hale valley and soot from the trains hovered over Camp Hale. “Fire on the Mountain” reported that many soldiers suffered a perpetual cough, known as the Pando hack. Hacking, cold weather, frostbite, hypothermia — it was all a part of the training for America’s first mountain regiment. RIVA RIDGE
The 10th Mountain Division men were never certain they’d go to war, but in the summer of 1944 their orders came in. By December of that year, they were on their way to Italy to fight the Germans out of the Apennine Mountains. The Germans had been atop Riva Ridge, holding off advances by the Americans, { continued on page 120 }
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