The Old Ski Bowl

words :: Steven Threndyle illustration :: Lorne Craig

This is the story of the Kincardine Ski Bowl, where I learned to ski from 1971 to 1973. Like hundreds of other ski hills, it’s no longer in operation. In the scheme of things, the Ski Bowl was a pretty forgettable place. So forgettable, in fact, that my attempts to find photographs— my own, or from others—turned up nothing.

There are practical reasons for that. As the Bowl’s former part-time manager John Kloosterboer says, “Film was expensive in the 1970s.” And it’s true—affluent parents seldom took their precious cameras to the hill, let alone gave them to a bunch of unruly high-schoolers. (Teenagers without camera phones. Like I said, it was a long time ago.) Memories are all that’s left.

The hill, in this case, was a 150-foot cut bank of the Penetangore River in Bruce County, about eight kilometres north of my hometown of Kincardine.

The Ski Bowl was where I developed my passion for skiing. There were larger and more expensive hills farther afield, but the Ski Bowl was cheap in a way that’s unimaginable today. Many of the workers at the nearby Bruce Nuclear Generating Station could probably put in one hour of work and buy a pass, as it was only $10. For the entire season.

A day in the life of skiing there consisted of very little more than yo-yoing up and down the rope-tow slope. The two main runs to the left and the right of the tow were unremarkable, but there was an opening in a copse of evergreens that I’d sneak into. (The homemade sign on the tree read “Wood Trail.”) The crux came halfway down, where you had to make an off-camber turn, duck under a fallen tree and then pop out the other side about 50 vertical feet above the tow. It could be exhilarating, especially later in the season when the gap between tree and snow shrunk. In my mind, it was like going under the train trestle on the Lauberhorn.

We took a school trip one day during the week. More than a foot of fresh snow had fallen since Sunday (the Bowl was only open to the public on weekends) and there were maybe a dozen of us on the hill. Mike Milne, whose father “Doc” had donated the funds to buy the engine and rope tow, said, “To ski untracked snow, you have to keep your knees together and kinda pump your legs.” Four floating turns later and I was a powder virgin no more.

“You were making some pretty good parallel turns there,” Mike said. I was bursting with pride—stoked, even. Mike was a few years older than the rest of us and his family belonged to Beaver Valley Ski Club. He owned metal-edge skis.

A desire to replicate this feeling grew stronger, leading to my discovery of a short descent several hundred metres south of the rope tow. Back in the days of spring-loaded heel cables, it was easy to clomp forward as though you were on a flatland NordicTrack, and in a few minutes I was in a sheltered opening amongst a grove of evergreens where prevailing westerlies deposited wayward snow. Some days it was great—well, as great as a five-turn run can possibly be. I was so stupidly keen that once I got my driver’s license, I’d head out on that muddy country road to ski after the hill closed for the season, traversing and herringboning from bottom to top.

There was a rustic warming hut looker’s left of the rope tow. Depending on the firewood pile and who was stoking the stove, after five minutes you almost felt like stripping down and rolling around in the snow to cool off. The kettle was always hissing, and Carnation hot chocolate packets cost a dime. An old issue of Ski Canada magazine featured a cover photo of a fellow wearing a big pack and a jaunty cap skiing down a wide-open glacier. “Heli-skiing in the Bugaboos” was the title.

Like outgrowing a pair of boots, I can’t recall the final day I skied at the Kincardine Ski Bowl and moved on. The Milne family began inviting me over to Beaver Valley on weekends. I’d con my mother to drive me to Georgian Peaks and Blue Mountain, where I rode chairlifts with people who had skied in the Alps, or in Banff or Whistler!

The Ski Bowl couldn’t survive continuously warm winters, dwindling enthusiasm and—I’m guessing, here—mechanical upgrades and liability insurance. But it served its purpose: On this small hill, I could fantasize about how the future might unfold. First tracks, outstanding vistas, new friends and a lifetime pursuing that weightless, floating sensation we all crave lay ahead.