TRANSCRIPT

Well the big problem with the Big Hill always was getting enough help to pack. You see for a ski hill, it has to be, you might say, rock hard, the landing. Not only because when you land you might make a depression and it'll trip the jumper. And also that if you fell, you would make a big sitzmark as they call it, which would cause you to go into tumbling action instead of sliding action and you could get seriously hurt. But then, I remember, we'd been up there before these big jumps and we'd tramp the whole hill first, by feet. Everybody went across the hill and just tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp all the way up to pack it. Then we'd pack it with skis to get it smooth, then rake the whole thing down nice and smooth and hard. So that was one of the problems with skiing is that you couldn't get enough help to do all that heavy work. But eventually the Parks decided to re-contour the Nels Nelsen Hill, because they didn't have the exact shape that international skiers would like. When you took off on the old Nels Nelsen Hill you went way out into space and it appeared as if you were going to land down in the parking lots, and you were way up above the landing when you first took off. Now they contour it so that they're never really that far above the hill, when it's contoured to the shape of the flight of the skier. In those days you were up in the air a long ways.