Legends of Showdown · The Ski Club years, 1936–1956

1965 Ski Hut Jim hasterlik with beardThrockmorton Collection · The History Museum, Great Falls, MT

Jim Hasterlik

He built the Ski Hut — twice

Legend of Showdown

Born: 24 January 1923
First skied at Showdown
First worked here: working on the ski run itself in 1937, in exchange for a ride up to it
Years at Showdown: 1937–c.2023
Positions: Founder and president, Great Falls High School Ski Club, 1939
Great Falls Ski Patrol, 1941-42, under Richard Voorhees
Great Falls Ski Club arrangements committee, October 1941
Lodge concession, 8 March 1953
Ski area manager, Kings Hill — in the job by 1959
Manager of the new lodge at Big Mountain, Whitefish, 1960
Proprietor, the Ski Hut, from December 1962 — at Kings Hill, and from 1966 at Holiday Village Mall in Great Falls, twenty-six years
Director, Ski Lift, Inc., July 1956

What they did

9 entries

March 1940Second in the Great Falls Ski Club men's class B slalom championship, behind Ralph Savage
1940-41Class B downhill champion, Great Falls Ski Club
January 1942Led the Great Falls high school downhill trials at Kings Hill in near-blizzard weather
February 1942Second at the state high school ski meet at Whitefish
1952Bought the Neihart General Store and fifty acres
1956Took four Ski Tow, Inc. class B shares, the second-largest holding on the original stock subscription list
March 1957Won the Great Falls Ski Club men's senior downhill outright, in 1:53 over a 3,600-foot course, before five hundred spectators
March 1963Raced the men's over-forties class in the Great Falls Ski Club's city giant slalom, at age forty
1984Raced in the first Corporate Cup on his own Ski Hut team with his son Steve, at about sixty

8 in the archive

5 documents

Jack Throckmorton’s scrapbook Club papers, membership records and cuttingsc.1937–1957 · pages 19, 30, 37, 40, 55, 58, 61
Jim Hasterlik’s scrapbook Cover, 8 intro leaves, 43 pagesc.1937–1942 · pages 3, 26, 29, 30, 37, 43, 44
Ski Tow Incorporated Stock subscriptions — the founding list1956 · page 1
Montana Parade “Skiing In Montana”Sunday, 28 January 1962 · page 2
Kings Crier Vol. II, No. II — price 10¢4 December 1964 · page 2

Built the Ski Hut, 1962-63 — the 1945 rope-tow motor shed renovated, at the bottom of Bovey. Special Use Permit No. 301 was issued to him personally on 1 December 1962, with his partner Butch Jones
Built the A-frame Ski Hut, 1964 — its first season was 1965. The only Legend with two buildings to his name