Ski Guru Walter Foeger and his "Commuter Ski School" comes to Mount Beacon

Ski Magazine had called the American Parallel Technique "the best system ever devised" to teach novices how to ski. The system's creator was Austrian-born Walter Foeger who had been invited to join the staff of Beacon's Dutchess Ski Area as executive vice president in the winter of 1969. His task was twofold: to make over Mount Beacon so that it would be competitive with other big market ski areas in the East, and to start an instructional school that would attract novice skiers from the metropolitan region.

Foeger had earned world renown for his design of such ski areas as Jay Peak in Vermont, and Camelback in Pennsylvania. His "snowplowless" instruction of the American Parallel Technique had gained wide recognition in American ski magazines--a technique that guaranteed the newcomer to the sport they would master parallel skiing or get their money refunded. With Foeger now on board the Dutchess Ski Area was set to become the fourth largest in the state. Under Foeger's guidance, in the next few years new trails were cut on the mountain, including 3100-foot double chair lift that brought skiers to the summit. At the base Foeger had built a 350,000 gallon holding pond to ensure sufficient water for snow making. His Commuter Ski School attracted enrollments of 500 or more each year in a ten-week course of day or night skiing instruction with the guarantee you will be skiing in seven days or your money back.

But even a Walter Foeger could not overcome what the Fates had in store for Mount Beacon in the early 1970s. Warm winters with little snow plagued the resort. Though there were good days for the ski area scattered about in that half-decade (a good day would be 3000 lift tickets sold), the Dutchess Ski Area could not pay off its debts and went bankrupt in 1975.

"Skiing is a mosaic--many little pieces put together," Foeger once wrote. "If they are put together right, they form a beautiful picture." ... All that we now have are beautiful pictures of what once was the the dream of a Dutchess Ski Area.

[Editor's note: see the Beacon Historical Society's current photo exhibit of Beacon's ski area at the Howland Public Library, 313 Main Street in Beacon.]