Announcing the 

2022 Vermont Ski & Snowboard 

Hall of Fame Inductees

Limited Tickets are Now on Sale

After a two year hiatus, the Vermont Ski and Snowboard Museum is excited to host our Vermont Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony at Bolton Valley's newly renovated Timberline Lodge, Saturday, September 24th from 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm.

The who's who of Vermont's ski and snowboarding community will gather for a festive celebration to honor the Class of 2022. Recipients of the Paul Robbins Award and the Bill McCollom Community Award will also be honored.

Join us for a memorable Induction Ceremony where we'll be unveiling short documentary films created for each inductee. Mingle with fellow ski and snowboard history buffs while enjoying a delectable spread of hearty appetizers and hors d'oeuvres accompanied by live music. Vermont beers and signature cocktails will be available at a cash bar. We'll also be raffling off a 2022/23 Bolton Valley Season Pass.

We welcome everyone to join us with friends and family to congratulate our 2022 inductees. Capacity is limited to 150 this year. Don't miss out! Three ticket choices with options to include scenic lift rides or access to the mountain bike park are available. Bolton Valley is offering 20% off rooms. Please scroll to bottom of this email for more details about ticket options and room discount code.

Purchase Tickets

Ralph DesLauriers - Founder of Bolton Valley Resort

Ralph DesLauriers is the founder of Bolton Valley which debuted on Christmas Eve of 1966. Bolton Valley initially featured three double chairlifts serving 9 trails and 3 slopes spanning 963 vertical feet. Adding to the resort's atmosphere there was night skiing and a hotel that could sleep 144 people.

For its second season, improvements included new glades, a heated pool, and a skating rink. The mountain was known as a family-friendly area and drew skiers from nearby Burlington and beyond. 

Two famous extreme skiers, Rob and Eric DesLauriers, Ralph’s sons, grew up skiing at Bolton and went on to star in dozens of ski movies. Ralph continued to expand and improve the resort he founded and loved until 1997 when the resort changed ownership. In 2017 Ralph re-purchased Bolton Valley with his children, Lindsay, Evan, and Adam who now follow in his footsteps and run the resort. 

Ralph may very well be the last ski area founder alive today who still owns and operates the resort they built, demonstrating an incredible life-long commitment to the Vermont ski industry.

In addition to developing and operating Bolton Valley, Ralph served as a Board Member of the Vermont Ski Areas Association from 1967-1995, including as Chairman of the Board for twelve years. He served as the Representative for Vermont on the National Ski Areas Association Board of Directors between 1980 and 1986, including being Chairman of the International Marketing Committee for four years. For his pioneering ski industry work, he was the Vermont representative to the White House Conference of Small Business in 1978, which was hosted by President Jimmy Carter.

Jim Holland - Ski Jumper and Entrepreneu

Jim Holland might not be a household name outside the ski jumping crowd, but you might recognize the name of the outdoor gear online retail behemoth, Backcountry.com, which he co-founded. He’s inducted into the Vermont Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame, not for his business acumen, but for his ability to fly great distances on skis and for what he's given back to his community.

A 7^th generation Vermonter, raised in Norwich, VT, across the river from the Dartmouth ski jump in Hanover, NH, Jim and his older brothers all grew up ski jumping; and all went on to be Olympians. Jim and his oldest brother, Mike, were Olympic jumpers and Joe was a Nordic Combined athlete.

In 1987, during a training jump at Lake Placid, NY, Jim suffered a massive fall when his skis hit an ice patch while approaching take-off, something modern-day hill formats and preparation protect against. Breaking four vertebrae and undergoing back surgery at the age of 19, some might have believed his ski jumping days were over. However, never one to back away from a challenge, Jim went on to win six National Ski Jumping Championships and compete in two Winter Olympics.

Before the Olympic Winter Games in Albertville, France (’92), Holland drastically changed his technique. Instead of jumping the traditional way with skis straight and body extended forward, he turned the tips of his skis out like a “V” and sailed farther than he ever had before. His 12^th place finish there was among the top performances by a U.S. jumper. He jumped at the Winter Games at Lillehammer, Norway in ’94.

In 1995, Jim retired from ski jumping and after graduating from the University of Vermont he headed west to Park City. Inspired by his passion for ski mountaineering, he and his childhood friend from Norwich, Vermont, John Bresee created Backcountry.com just as Internet shopping was catching on. An immense success, they sold a majority interest in Backcountry.com in 2007. Jim remains involved as a minority shareholder and holds a seat on the board of directors. 

In 2007, the U.S. Ski Team abandoned ski jumping and Jim stepped in as the sport was unraveling. With no National Team, Jim helped start and fund USA Nordic Sports, a nonprofit in Park City that runs men’s and women’s national jumping and Nordic combined programs, keeping the sport alive. 

Today Jim continues to support the sport of ski jumping, including charitable support to Ford Sayre Memorial Ski Council’s jumping program. 

No stranger to confronting challenges head-on, Jim now faces his toughest yet. With a Parkinson’s diagnosis, Jim is determined to fight back and is putting resources toward research to find a cure. Someday, he’ll tell us all he had Parkinson’s.  

Last February we had the honor of inducting Jim as the first member of our Class of 2022 at the 100th anniversary of Brattleboro’s Harris Hill ski jump. 

Rip McManus - Olympian, Announcer, and Movie Star

At an early age Rip McManus was enrolled in Rutland, Vermont’s Pico Peak Junior Program, a multi-year comprehensive ski school. Thanks to the encouragement of Stevia and Keen Chaffee, Rip excelled at ski racing with the Pico Peak Ski Club. He joined the Rutland High School Ski Team and went on to set the record for the Pico Downhill Derby.

Rip deferred his admission to Denver University to join the European Ski Racing Circuit. Rip found his path by racing against the world’s best, the Austrian Alpine Ski Team.

During the off-season, Rip made Stowe, Vermont his training base. He joined Stowe’s ski lift tower installation crew and volunteered for the high-risk work. Mount Mansfield Ski Corporation’s Sepp Ruschp took an interest in Rip and so did Mt. Mansfield Ski Club. Rip and his friend Billy Kidd were featured together on the cover of the Club’s Magazine in November 1963.

Stowe’s Graphic Arts innovator, Joe Daley tasked Rip with developing the early chart-based version of the International Ski Federation (FIS) and World Cup point system that rapidly ranked ski racers at the end of each race.

Rip raced for the Denver University Ski Team and then enlisted in the Army to race worldwide within the International Military Sports Council for the United States Army Alpine Ski Team. After winning the North American National Championships, he was named to the 1964 U. S. Alpine Ski Team and raced with the team during the 1963-1964 season. At the 1964 Innsbruck, Austria Winter Olympics, he and his teammates cheered on Vermont’s Billy Kidd and Jimmie Heuga as they made Winter Olympic alpine ski racing history as the first American Men to win Olympic medals.

Following the Olympics, Rip finished his enlistment in the Army, married and went to work for a series of high-performance ski equipment companies: Head Skis, Lange Boots, Olin Ski Testing, and his own ski racer mail order business.

Rip worked in the sound booth with Jim McKay at the 1968 Grenoble, France Winter Olympics and worked with Robert Redford in 1969 as a cast member and ski racer double in the American sports film drama, "Downhill Racer". With a twinkle in his eye and a mischievous grin, Rip went through life promoting the growth of the American Ski Industry.   

Who knows how much more Rip could have contributed to skiing if his life hadn't been cut short by a traffic accident in 1982.

Betsy Pratt - Mad River Glen Visionary

Betsy grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut. After attending Vassar College, she moved to New York City and worked for the Ford Foundation. Her sister, Sally, talked her into coming to Mad River Glen for a ski weekend in 1954. There she met Trux Pratt, who was a member of the Montclair Ski Club. They soon married, buying a ski house in North Fayston on their honeymoon.

Mad River Glen was founded in 1947 by Roland Palmedo, who had previously developed Stowe. He and trail designer and long-time General Manager Ken Quackenbush developed Mad River to be less commercial than Stowe: a skier’s mountain, with trails designed to follow the natural contours of the mountain.

In 1972, Roland sold Mad River to a group of investment bankers and skiers led by Trux Pratt and Brad Swett. Unfortunately, when Trux passed away in 1975, the ski industry was going through tumultuous times. Betsy took the reins at Mad River, carefully guiding the mountain to preserve its unique character. Rather than bulldoze the terrain and coat the mountain with artificial snow, as most Eastern ski areas were doing by the 1980’s, Betsy fought to preserve and protect the mountain in its original state. She and marketing expert and MRG skier, Gerry Muro, developed the “Mad River Glen, Ski it if You Can” marketing campaign. The red and white bumper stickers turned Mad River Glen into one of the most recognizable brands in the ski industry. The plain meaning of the slogan was, “ski it when there’s snow,” but many also read it as a competition (ski it if you’re good enough), or a bucket list item (ski it if you get the chance). She also encouraged telemark skiing, which is still taught on the mountain to this day.

Mad River Glen flourished. By this time, Betsy had also purchased the Mad River Barn, just down the hill from the ski area. Her next challenge was transferring ownership in Mad River to a new generation who would also appreciate and expand on the mountain’s conservationist ethos. She did this by selling skiers on the idea of the first and only cooperatively owned ski area in the country. She talked about it everywhere: in the lift line, on the chair lift, in the Basebox lodge, and even at the grocery store. The transfer of the mountain to the Mad River Co-op finally took place in 1995.

Betsy continued running the Mad River Barn and being Mad River Glen’s biggest cheerleader until she retired in 2012, when she moved to North Carolina. Today, she still enjoys watching hikers, snowshoers, and skiers on Mad River Glen’s live webcams.

Special Awards

Greg Morrill - Paul Robbins Award - Ski Historian

Greg Morrill will receive the Paul Robbins Award for excellence in ski and snowboard journalism. He grew up and began skiing in the Eastern Slope region of New Hampshire. He really got hooked on the sport in college at the University of New Hampshire, and upon graduation in 1968 he moved to Vermont for a job at the IBM Burlington facility. This decision was made in large part due to the easy proximity to skiing!

He retired after 31 years at IBM and promptly began teaching Computer Science for 11 years at Saint Michael’s College. After retiring for a second (and last) time, Greg began writing about skiing history and nostalgia in a weekly Stowe Reporter newspaper column during the ski season. His Retro-Ski column is built around weekly trivia questions, which test reader’s knowledge of skiing history. Greg maintains a blog at Retro-Skiing.com which contains all his trivia and related columns.

His 2014 book “Retro-Ski: A Nostalgic Look Back at Skiing” follows his trivia format where each chapter asks and answers a skiing history related question. The book is available at the Museum and online.

Greg joined the Vermont Ski and Snowboard Museum Board of Directors in 2011 and is currently the Board’s Co-chair where his depth of knowledge is invaluable. You’ll still see him on the slopes of Vermont and Utah for an average of 80 days a season!

Catamount Trail Association - Bill McCollom Community Awar

This year the Bill McCollom Community Award is being awarded to the Catamount Trail Association. This award recognizes a group or organization within the skiing and riding community that is making a significant and unique contribution to further Vermont’s place in skiing and snowboarding history.

The 300+ mile Catamount Trail began with a dream three adventurous young Vermont men, Steve Bushey, Paul Jarris, and Ben Rose had in 1982 of skiing the length of Vermont. In 1984 Steve, Ben, Paul, and sometimes Jim Painter and some others, strapped on their skis and skied from one end of Vermont to the other establishing the preliminary route that would birth the Catamount Trail Association.

Thanks to the tireless work of countless volunteers and supporters, the Catamount Trail was completed in 2002, and is the longest backcountry ski trail in North America.

Today the CTA untiringly works to maintain 300+ miles of backcountry ski trails while continuing their ongoing efforts to permanently protect the entire trail and provide access to mountain lands that support backcountry recreation. This work is done through conservation easements and the acquisition of public land. They partner with other organizations on broader conservation projects, like the Bolton Backcountry conservation project, and efforts to conserve lands that contain managed backcountry zones.

They've expanded and increased access to Vermont’s backcountry and pioneered programs to expand equitable access to skiing, regardless of skier’s income or background. Launched in 2011, the Ski Cubs program provides over 500 youth the opportunity to experience outdoor winter recreation via cross-country ski each season, with a focus on partnering with underserved and New American communities.

We're sure the founders are pleased that their vision has led to so many people being able to enjoy backcountry skiing.

About Vermont Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame

Since 2002, Vermont Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame has recognized more than 75 people who have made history in snow sports in our state. Its purpose is to honor athletes, special contributors, and pioneers of Vermont skiing and riding who promoted and/or contributed to the sport of skiing and riding in Vermont; to document the histories of Inductees in the Museum's collection; and to recognize their accomplishments through the Induction Ceremony and the Hall of Fame exhibit. The Hall of Fame committee looks at candidates in three categories: Athletes, Pioneers, and Special Contributors. Learn more here.