Toni Matt’s Talk to a New England Ski Museum audience at the Eastern Slope Inn, ca. 1982.

MR. SCHNEIDER: Thank you. It is certainly a great pleasure to be here and see the tremendous amount of people who come here and listen to what has happened in the past and it certainly gives me great pleasure to interview a good friend of mine. We grew up in the old country and used to ski together and have a few beers together and have a few wines together, even smoke some cigarettes when we were supposed to be working, and then when Hitler came in a few things happened to us and we decided, very fortunately, to come over here into the United States and North Conway. As Colin has said, I have known Toni for a long time and as my father used to say, he was one of the guys who always had the straightest line down the mountain than any racer he had ever seen and he had seen a few of them. Of course, that was in the younger days of Toni and, as Colin also said, my fame to Toni's famous run down the mountain, I carried up his lunch. I really did. And I carried down the sealskins that we used to climb up and I think the wax, which was a little Sohms and paraffin we waxed our skis with and when we got to the top of the mountain, the first time up they cancelled the race and so we skied down together. Toni had never been down the place. I had. So he listened to all of my advice and he heard about the Little Headwall and he said, "Herbert, what is the Little Headwall?" and I said, "Well, you remember that one little hill back in the old country. We used to refer it to as the Hog's Back because everybody used to fall down on it." "Oh," he said, "that's nothing." So anyhow, I prepared Toni very well for the race, as you can see. So I take all the credit. I was his coach and trainer. Now I don't know if Toni is going to have as easy a time coming through this crowd as he did coming down the Headwall. So, Toni, why don't you come out here and tell us all about your great run down the Headwall way back in 1939. I saw, there you are. You made it already. Toni good to see you.

MR. MATT: I had a halfback with my weight coming in here, but Herbert is right. He carried the lunch. It was a lousy lunch. He didn't make it. That's right. The Eastern Slope Inn did. It was frozen peanut butter. It was terrible. But anyway, I don't know talking about this Tuckerman Ravine. First of all, I'd like to say that I hope that we can raise, or you can raise, I don't know why I say we because I don't have a nickel. [laughter] You're the ones that's going to have to raise it. Don't laugh. It isn’t funny. That's what you're here for. You know, it's a good thing. And certainly the only man in this region who deserves to be in there and it's Hannes Schneider. After all, he's the Father of all the skiing. Certainly, our skiing, and our skiing is the best, so he has to be the Father of all the skiing. Right? Right, it's Reaganomics and you can deduct it. I was told that by Reagan. So, you know, no problem. If you just pull out your checkbook, sign it, and send it in. Lets not be chintzy. Well, let's see, where were we?

Well, you know, actually I was up in Tuckerman Ravine once before. '39 was a hell of a year here. It was a great year. I don't know what for. Certainly not for skiing because in '39 we had the skimobile to the halfway point and only the south slope, and we skied on it maybe for Christmas and New Year's and one day after and then it rained. And that was it, so we never skied there again. We skied on the North Conway slope. We skied up in some notch on the golf course. I remember I was a top instructor and you stood up on a tee and you looked down, you poled like hell and at the bottom you’d make one turn. Turn like crazy to the left. You climb back up, turn like crazy to the right the next time. We did that for three weeks. We had a hell of a time. Luckily, I got the hell out of here and went out west to do some ski racing. They had snow out there that year. '39. I told you it was a good year.

So I raced out there. Won the Nationals, the National downhill, because I couldn't win any slaloms because I couldn't turn. He said that turning stuff is against downhill. So, anyway, but that was the extent of it. So late in the year, we came back here and it was early in April and Hannes said they're going to have the Inferno. Well, it didn't mean much. Inferno, so what? He said, "Well, it’s on Tuckerman Ravine on Mt. Washington." He said, "You want to race in it?" I'll race in anything so we climbed up there. We got as far as Howard Johnson's and the soup came in and I never saw Tuckerman Ravine. So, okay, they say it's up there someplace. So we skied down the Sherburne Trail and went home. Next Saturday we went up again and we were lucky. We walked in there and, hell, I looked up and I saw the Ravine. It looked right straight at me like this. I said what the hell is this, people skiing on this? So my coach, Herbert, and I walked up there. I tried to get him to carry my skis but he wouldn't. He said it's too steep. I said, okay, I'll carry my own. When you carry skis in the Ravine, and I think most of you have probably been there, some of you have, you've got to go sideways so the tips can't go into the hill because they hit the hill. So you go up sideways. I said this is a crazy country. You got to go sideways up the goddamn mountain. So anyway, we walk up and we walk up. Finally we got to the top and he says what are you going to do and I said I'm going to go home. He says well, you skied in places close to this. Close to this doesn't mean anything. This is a thousand feet vertical drop. It's steeper than hell and you don't know whether you're coming or whether you're going. So, well, we discussed it and we couldn't come to any conclusion, but our friend, Walter Prager, who was the coach of the Dartmouth team in those days, also he was the course setter. He said, well, I'm going to do you a favor. I'm going to guide you in there. So 300 yards above the damn Headwall he sets one gate. That was it. He said the rest of the way you've got to sidestep up to the top of the mountain, so you can come down, because it was all powder snow up there, so we sidestepped all the way up. We're coming through the Sherburne Trail and the Ravine and we sidestep all the way up. Get to the top of the mountain. The wind is blowing 60-70 miles an hour. They got one shack up there that is maybe 10 x 12 and it's got a wooden fire in it and the wind is blowing down the chimney. The smoke's coming out, so if you held your nose, ran in there, for five seconds you could stay by the fire and come back out. So, anyway, they said we're just about ready. And I had number four. I've forgotten who had one or two, but it was two turkeys that we knew were not going to go straight, if they were going anywhere. And Dick Durrance had number three, so Dick knew that whoever was going to go first, the other guy had the advantage of following his tracks, at least on the upper part, you know. So we both put our skis on and number one left. It was the only race I've ever been in or seen where you stood with your poles in front of you holding yourself back because the wind was at your back blowing like crazy. All you had to do was lift the poles up and put your skis together and whooosh, away you went. So, we stood there and the two of them went down, so Prager said, "Well, who's ready?" Dick says, "Well my skis aren't right, you know." He was fiddling around with his binding and Prager looks at me and says, "You ready Toni?" and I says, "Yeah." He says, "Well why don't you go?" I said, "Well, it's not my number. It's Dick’s number." He said, "Well, go ahead." I said, "Well, I might as well." So I said, "Well, I'll go ahead" and apparently Dick’s goggles fogged up or something, but he never found the tracks. By the way this is ginger ale, terrific ginger ale

Well, anyway, we or I shouldn't say we, Herbert and I, his lunch and my feet went down the top of the mountain and nothing to the top of the mountain, because, you know, you've got to follow one track and I couldn't find the track. The two guys ahead of me must have gone off someplace. I don't know where they went. But, anyway, I looked for that gate that Prager set, you know, because when we went up we were talking about what to do, because we knew that Durrance won the race two years before by going over the head wall, making one turn, two and four, and finally maybe three quarters of the way down, he started schussing and even two of us stupid Austrians could figure out if we started schussing higher, that's the guy that's going to win. You can't beat going straight, especially if you can't turn. So, we decided if you're going to do this thing, you might as well do it right and start schussing whenever you can, you know. But we didn't decide exactly where we're going to start shushing. You realize now I am saying "we." He and I. So I says, well, when we get to it we’ll do it, because if you haven't skied it, how can you tell what you're going to do, you know. So I got to those flags and I said now is the time to start turning. I figured maybe making three turns and then running straight. I did make three nice turns I hope show up in the movies. I went right and then left and right and then said, well, now is the time to straighten them out. So I did and I kept waiting. Finally I dropped over the Lip. So the moral of the story is you started schussing too soon for your plan, but it helped for winning the race. So I schussed on top of the Lip, went over it, and by that time, you're doing maybe 80 miles an hour and there's no sense in turning, especially if you can't turn well. [laughter] So you say, well, you might as well go straight, you know, and hope for the best. So we went straight and hoped for the best. We hit the outrun. That's where your problem is. The outrun. There's a lot of ruts and looked like a plowed field down there, but I'm a farmer so I could handle it. Anyway, I got through that and I finally found where the - what you call it, Herbert? - Little Headwall was and I was the only one who ran over that without having to pole. And I even ran into the Sherburne Trail without having to pole. I said, jeez, this is great, they told me you had to walk it. I hated walking. So I went down the Sherburne Trail and I remember there was some S turns down there. Of course, by that time you're about three and a half miles, you know, and even at 19 you got kind of tired, and there was one turn, the last one of those S turns and you pushed your way out, and I saw this tree coming up and, man, I just made it. I've still got bark in my parka. But, anyway, we got home and I beat the record and cut it in half. I beat Durrance by a minute and people tonight ask me what the impact was. I didn't think there was anything about it. I won the race, fine. I got a spittoon as a prize. Honest. That's what it looked like. It didn't even say first prize, it just says "Inferno". Still got it at home. It's one of the prizes I kept. Usually I gave them away to girls. But this one, I kept. It's all it said. It didn't say anything. To me, somebody said, well was the impact great? It wasn't. You know, I won the nationals twice. I won the FIS once and so forth, but the impact was a year later or every year after that, it seemed to steam roll. Now every March or April, I pick up a magazine and there's Toni Matt schussing the Headwall. You know, it has steam rolled. I don't know, there is a romance about this thing and people keep asking me how many times you been in Tuckerman Ravine. I just told you how many times I've been in there. This is it. People think I used to camp in there. Live in there. Ski in there. You know, they'd say, you go in there every year. Hell, no, it's too far to walk. My god. How the hell could I get into there? They couldn't even drop me out of an airplane. So, anyway, that's my story about Tuckerman Ravine.

Does anybody have any questions, I'll be glad to answer them.

Clapping

SOMEONE: I think for the benefit of some of these younger skiers, you should tell us that your equipment was like. You didn't have any steel edges, I bet.

MR. MATT: Oh, yes, I did. No, no, we had great equipment.

SOMEONE: Toni, what kind of skis were you wearing?

MR. MATT: I had a pair of 225 Northlands that were laminated. They were like a 2x4. If you hung on them, they wouldn't bend, but they had steel edges. Screwed on steel edges. You know, the Lettner edges that they used to have in those days and they were offset, and I had a pair of high boots that just came up to your ankle. No double boot or anything. But, you know, people say how could you ski in those things. It's all relative. In those days, we thought, man, that's the best equipment we're ever going to have. You know, you didn't know. And then, of course, we had bear traps and cables or long thongs, whichever, and I don't think that the equipment made any difference because your ankles were in different shape than what skiers are now. Now all the races are downhill oriented. None of them ever walk. You see, in '39 when I raced here, we had to walk maybe, out of ten races, eight of them you had to walk up and so you train yourself walking up and you were used to it. So I don't think, I know that the equipment is a hell of a lot better today, but also the other thing is that with Mt. Washington, nobody can ever train on it. I don't care what it is, because the weather conditions aren't good enough. One day it's snowing, the next day it's raining, the third day it's cloudy, the fourth day it's foggy, and the fifth day you've got to be home seeing your mother. So there are all different things, but it's very hard to get anybody to train on it. Like when I came back here in '56 or '57, the Eastern Slope Ski Club tried to run a race again and we send out entry blanks in those days, and we got seven entries. Now, you know, you can't run a race with seven entries. It takes 50-60 people to run the race, so we sent out questionnaires wondering why they didn't want to race in it. Well, the racers said, first of all, they weren't used to climbing, they didn't want to race on anything they hadn't skied on, which, of course, Tuckerman Ravine, who the hell can ski on it, you know. Well, you can if the weather is good enough, but there are very few days that you can. So I don't think we'll ever have a downhill again. I don't know. I hope we do because I'd like to be the course setter. I'm going to set that gate much higher. So I hope all you people remember me as a course setter if anything happens. I'd like to get up there and show them where to go. They'll probably come down Hillman's Highway. But, it's been to me certainly a great experience. But one other thing I'd like to say, North Conway is my American hometown. I came here on the first day I came to the United States. I stayed here for five or six years and certainly enjoyed all the time that I have been here and always liked all the people. I have always been treated more than well. Actually, too much so. And I really love North Conway. So if there is anything I can do, besides giving money, because I don’t have any, I hope to hell we get this thing going and get it off the ground and do something over wherever it is. Is it Franconia? You know, I'm well informed. You know, they don't tell me everything. They wish for a few things and say it's the dummy that skied the Headwall. Who knows?

SOMEONE: Toni, there's one more thing. After the race, I talked with you about the sensation of coming to the floor of the Ravine. What was that like?

MR. MATT: Well, that's really the only sensation you get because, as you all know, on Tuckerman Ravine, there are no trees. You don't know how fast you're going. Like you may go by a tree at 60 mph and it feels like you're doing 90. On Tuckerman Ravine you may be doing 100 and it doesn't feel anything. So you don't know how fast you're going. So the only time you realize you're going fast is when you hit the transition. In other words, it's pushing you down in and you know that you're doing more than what you should be doing. So you're lucky if you are 19, stupid, and have strong legs. That's really the answer, you know, so you make it and say, well, I beat this thing, you know, and you zoom out and hit the Little Headwall and you're going up over there like crazy and you hit the Sherburne Trail and you still haven't walked. You've got it made. That's the sensation, but while you're going straight in the Ravine, itself, there's no sensation because there is nothing to gauge it by. Trees aren't going this way. You're going that way and they said there were two thousand people in the ravine and I never saw one. I wasn't looking for them. But I never saw one. So I meet people today who say, "I was there." I say, "Yeah, where were you? I didn't see you." So, I don't know, maybe they were. Who knows?

SOMEONE: What were the snow conditions like in the Ravine?

MR. MATT: Well, the ravine itself is, you know, like it always is. It blows in and it was good, I think.

SOMEONE: Corn or powder?

MR MATT: It wasn’t corn, it was powder.

SOMEONE: When you first went over the Headwall were your skis at any point in the air?

MR. MATT: No, I don't think so. You see, it's so gradual that I don't think it's like a jump or anything. I don't remember that day that we were off the ground. Of course, it was a few years ago. No, really, I don't think there were, frankly. I don't remember that they were off the ground. Anybody else?

SOMEONE: Has anyone else tried to schuss the Headwall?

MR. MATT: Hve they? I think so. I think people have tried it. I talked to a guy tonight who's tried it three or four times. He hasn't made it yet. You know, there are always people talking about this thing. They go into the Ravine. They say there was a crazy guy in 1939 who schussed this thing. They make a couple of turns and go down straight, you know, but maybe somebody has. Who knows? People think I camp in there and watch, but I really don't. First of all, there are no bars in there, so I wouldn't know. Any other questions? If not, don't forget to sign the checks.

Thank you.