Still Going DownhillLegends of Showdown · The Ski Club years, 1936–1956
Dan Moran
Free Sunday lessons in 1940, the lodge committee of 1946, and a team leader in the 1956 stock drive
Legend of Showdown
- Born
- First skied at Showdown
- by 1939
- First worked here
- January 1940, announced as the club's free Sunday instructor at Kings Hill
- Years at Showdown
- Positions
- Free Sunday ski lessons for the Great Falls Ski Club, announced January 1940
- Director, Great Falls Ski Club, 1946
- Co-head of the special lodge committee, with Cliff Rumford, 1946
- Head of the crew that started putting in a new lift, August 1948
- Great Falls Ski Patrol, by November 1950
- One of the seven team leaders of the 1956 stock drive for a lift
What they did
20 entries
- Winter 1939-40Modeled ski clothes for the Sears, Roebuck store at the Great Falls Ski Club's style revue
- January 1940Named to the five-man Great Falls team for the Sun Valley tryouts at Anaconda
- January 1940Announced as the club's free instructor, teaching anyone who wanted to learn at Kings Hill every Sunday
- 17 March 1940Raced the club downhill from the top of Porphyry Peak in 1:52.9
- 31 March 1940Tied for fourth in the class A slalom of the club championship, in 2:08
- 5 January 1941Third in the downhill and second in the slalom at the Neihart selection races, and named to the six-man Great Falls squad
- 3 February 1946A director of the Great Falls Ski Club, on the officer slate the Tribune printed
- Early 1946Photographed with the crew that hauled the club's new tow motor up to the ski shack
- 6 February 1946Named, with Cliff Rumford, to head the club's special lodge committee; the lodge was built in 1947
- 24 March 1946Third in both the downhill and the slalom at the club's first tournament after the war
- 30 March 1947Won the club's men's combined title, in 2:07.4, after a slalom run in a heavy snowstorm on the power line run
- 14 March 1948Raced the club downhill as defending champion, three seconds behind the winner, Joe Taylor
- August 1948Headed the crew that started putting in a new lift, the upper tow
- 27 March 1949Third in the city men's downhill, in 1:54.07
- The Great Falls Ski Club's men's combined champion
- November 1950One of six members of the club's ski patrol who joined the air base's search for two airmen lost hunting in the Logging Creek country
- 18 March 1951Second in the senior men's downhill, the first race run on the new Funnel, in 1:51.6
- 29 March 1956One of the seven leaders of the stock drive for a mechanical lift, each with an eight-man team
- Bought a share in Ski Tow Incorporated, the stock drive he helped run
- Skied behind a car on the end of a long rope with Jack Throckmorton, on the road from Kings Hill down to Neihart, as Throckmorton told the Tribune in 1988
In their own words
Photographs
1 in the archive
In the papers
3 documents
- Jack Throckmorton’s scrapbook Club papers, membership records and cuttingsc.1937–1957 · pages 1, 8, 17, 19, 21, 37, 56, 57, 58, 65, 66, 67, 69
- Jim Hasterlik’s scrapbook Cover, 8 intro leaves, 43 pagesc.1937–1942 · pages 21, 37, 41, 49
- Ski Tow Incorporated Stock subscriptions — the founding list1956 · pages 1, 3