The Plastic Snow Man

Canadian-born skiing enthusiast Jacques "Jack" Brunel dreamed he could make snow on Mount Beacon in August. The Beacon resident's dream became real in the summer of 1956, when skiers in bathing suits and shorts schussed down his man-made slopes on artificial snow--with this crazy scene gaining national attention when covered by the "Sunday Daily News" newspaper magazine.

Jack Brunel was an ingenious innovator when it came to making ersatz snow. A ski jumper/ski instructor by talent and trade, Brunel came to Beacon after service in World War II and built a small ski jump area in the foothills of Mount Beacon near the Mt. Beacon Incline's base station. The inventor side of him asked, Why not make artificial snow and practice year round? With a Rube Goldberg-style of creative thinking Brunel's "snow" was a concoction of ground up pieces of plastic placed over a matting of surplus nylon parachutes, which in turn lay on a base of cotton batting. (Brunel later would be granted a patent for his "Artificial Skiing Mat.") The late Gordon Ticehurst, a skiing friend of Brunel's, recalled that Brunel obtained poker-chip "seconds" from a factory in Cold Spring, along with plastic shuttlecocks used in badminton, for his plastics mixture. For the base of his ski slope Brunel got cotton batting from the Atlas Fibers factory in Beacon. This colorful mix of reds, pinks and whites plastics proved a passable substitute for real snow. Skiing in 90-degree weather had come to Beacon, thanks to Jacques Brunel.

Photos: From the centerfold section of the "Sunday News"--September 2, 1956.