I stated skiing at Skyline Ski Area (Pebble Creek) in the late 1950s when Cubco bindings were popular.
The bindings would release my skis from my boots in a hard turn, as well as in any kind of fall. The skis were connected to the boot by a cord so that the skis would stay connected to the skier instead of continuing downhill during a fall.
Having the bindings release the boots in a fall and the cord keeping the skis connected to the skier's boots may have saved a lot of broken legs and sprained ankles, but it did cause some other problems.
Whenever I fell going pretty fast, or on steep terrain, the Cubco bindings released the boots the way they were supposed to do, and the cord holding the skis to my boots allowed the skis to batter my shins until I was able to stop falling and sliding.
In another incident, my friends and I had made a fairly nice jump on a fairly steep hill, so that we could take turns seeing who could jump the farthest down the hill from the jump.
The idea was that someone would position themselves down the hill to check the distance of the jump and signal the jumper when the landing area was clear of people. As I got ready to jump, I looked down the hill and our spotter signaled that all was clear.
I pushed off and got low to limited wind resistance and hit the jump as fast as I could. As I vaulted off the end of the jump, I saw a lady crossing the landing area below me. For a split second, I couldn't believe she was there, then I realized my right ski was going to hit her in the ear.
I moved my that ski to the right about 10 inches and landed on top of her, causing both of us to tumble down the hill together. The Cubco bindings that both of us had on our skis released our skis from our boots, and the cords that held our skis onto us got tangled, allowing the skis to beat us up pretty good as we tumbled to a stop, about 55 further down the hill.
We were both OK and there were no broken bones or really serious bruises, but she bawled me out while I was trying to figure out how to untangle everything. I finally just disconnected the cords and was able to get clear and we went our separate ways.
In 1960, I received a new pair of skis with Marker bindings for Christmas. The new skis were made by Head, and the Marker bindings were much better at holding my boots to the skis during hard turns but would release if I took a really hard fall. I used those skis and bindings all through high school, until 1963.
In 1963, I asked for a pair of head downhill racing skis and put Marker bindings on them along with long leather straps called Long Thongs, which racers used to secure their boots to the skis along with screwing the tension on the bindings pretty tight so that the boot wouldn't normally release in a fall unless a blow from the side was unusually hard.
I tried out for the Ricks College (now BYU-Idaho) ski team when I was 18 years old and secured a place on the the team as the no. 2 downhill and giant slalom racer on the team, which made me an alternate if the no. 1 racer was injured.
The team trained at Jackson Hole, Wyoming. One Saturday while training, the No. 1 downhill racer went a little wide on one of the turns and went into ungroomed snow and crashed, breaking one leg and tearing the ligaments in the opposite knee.
Seeing the crash and hearing him scream in pain prompted me to make an important decision. I resigned from the team and decided to get a pair of Head 360 skis without Long Thongs. It was a good decision.
The Head 360 skis were such nice recreational skis that I could even ski deep powder without any trouble, and without the Long Thongs to hold my skis to my boots, the Marker bindings would release when they needed to release, so I wouldn't get hurt.
I really enjoyed recreational skiing the rest of that year, but left home and college for a couple of years that next summer, and didn't ski again until the winter of 1966. More about that in the next column.
Smokey Merkley was raised in Idaho and has been hunting since he was 10 years old. He was a member of the faculty of Texas A&M University for 25 years. There he taught orienteering, marksmanship, self-defense, fencing, scuba diving and boxing. He was among the first DPS-certified Texas Concealed Handgun Instructors. He can be contacted at mokeydo41245@hotmail.com.
