Ski legends inducted into Hall of Fame
The Flathead Ski Heritage Center has announced the second class to be inducted into its Ski Hall of Fame. Honored this year are George Prentice, Karl Hinderman, Gary Tallman and Dale Evenson.
An induction ceremony and reception will be held during Ski Heritage Days on Friday, March 13 at 6 p.m., at the Hellroaring Saloon at Whitefish Mountain Resort.
George Prentice
George Prentice’s dream was to come to Whitefish and start a ski resort. And that’s just what he did, along with his friend, Ed Schenck. But because life’s circumstances forced Prentice to leave while Big Mountain was still in its early years, few people today know much about his part in the resort’s history.
As a young man, Prentice used his knack for math and business to train as a civil engineer at a Great Falls trade school. Meanwhile, he and his friend Schenck volunteered to help build King’s Hill ski area, later called Showdown, east of the Continental Divide. In the early 1940s, he went to work in the mining business in California, and his new wife Phyllis taught school in a mining camp. Then in 1947 Prentice and Schenck, answering a summons from the people of Whitefish, started Winter Sports, Inc., with Prentice as president and Schenck as general manager.
The early financial struggles of Big Mountain are legendary. Prentice, who had a family to support, left to join the estimating department of a company called Ebasco Services, which worked on nuclear projects and sent him to countries around the world. After his retirement in 1974, he and Phyllis headed immediately back to Whitefish and, as his son said, “came alive.” He was placed in charge of ticketing on the mountain, and he skied until shortly before his death in 1993 at age 84.
Karl Hinderman
Karl Hinderman learned to ski growing up in Whitefish, where his father was superintendent of schools. Karl was one of a hardy group that pioneered skiing on what was later to become Big Mountain, hiking up to the infamous Hellroaring Ski Cabin in the days when lifts were just a dream.
On graduation from Whitefish High School, he attended the University of Montana for a time, then joined the Army, where he became a member of the storied 10th Mountain Division. He was one of the Army’s first ski instructors. After World War II, he taught survival training for the Strategic Air Command in Colorado Springs and Alaska.
Moving on to Sun Valley, the first big ski resort in the country, he became an instructor in the ski school along with the legendary Toni Matt. Matt subsequently left Sun Valley to run the fledgling ski school at Big Mountain, and Hinderman succeeded him in 1956, after Matt was seriously injured and returned the East Coast.
Karl and his wife Nina owned and operated the Big Mountain Ski School and Shop until his retirement in 1972. He directed the ski school, and she maintained a shop that became known for its fashion-forward ski clothing.
Hinderman died in 1989 at the age of 74.
Gary Tallman
A longtime Whitefish ski enthusiast has described Gary Tallman as “the best skier I’ve ever seen.” Few would disagree.
Growing up in Whitefish, he hiked from downtown to the top of the mountain for skiing when he was 12. By the time he was in high school he had become an avid ski racer and won several national junior titles despite starting out on white Army-surplus skis.
After graduating from Whitefish High School, Tallman entered the University of Washington, tried out for the U.S. Olympic Ski Team, and eventually earned a degree in animal husbandry from Fresno State University. As a 1st lieutenant in the U.S. Marines, he served at Quantico, Va., and on Okinawa, where he was commanding officer of an engineers’ company.
Skiing drew Tallman back home to Whitefish in 1958 when he joined the Karl Hinderman Ski School as head instructor and later managed the Big Mountain Lodge. He went on to coach youngsters from all over northwest Montana in the Kalispell Ski Club Junior Program. Subsequently, he started a popular Saturday ski program for kids on Big Mountain. Later, Tallman became famous for his annual “Wild Game Dinner” fundraising event, for which he helped provide and clean the game and emceed the program.
Seeing a need to help talented youngsters who struggled to raise money for skiing and racing, Tallman and five other local men set up the Flathead Ski Foundation, of which he was the first president.
Tallman later went into the construction business, constructing and renovating homes and business buildings in Whitefish. In 1993, he and his wife moved to a home outside Monarch, Mont.
Dale Evenson
For Dale Evenson, skiing wasn’t just about carving turns as he skimmed down the mountain. It was about the mountain itself.
Evenson, a Whitefish kid, taught himself to ski near his home at age 5. Big Mountain hadn’t yet been developed. By the time he reached his teens, Whitefish’s new ski area was in operation and ski racing was growing in popularity. During his high school years, Evenson was selected for the National Junior Championships three years in a row, and raced in two of them.
After high school, while working for Pacific Power, he was a volunteer ski patrolman. By 1960, he had been hired as a paid patrolman and also worked in the Bierstube. Then he became patrol chief and after two years, moved on to the job of hill manager.
Back then, an enormous amount of manual labor was involved in keeping the slopes skiable. He watched enviously as a government soil-conservation crew used a Thiokol snow tractor in their work. One morning he looked up at Hell Roaring Slalom and lo and behold, “it was packed from side-to-side.”
He lobbied successfully to get the tractor for the mountain, and “we ran that thing day and night.” Meanwhile, the mountain had bought a used mogul-cutter with a blade that had to be raised and lowered by hand, using a pipe wrench. Evenson’s ingenious crew developed a hydraulic system to replace the pipe wrench.
Evenson subsequently moved on to Mount Hood Meadows, Schweitzer Basin and Discovery Basin. Then from 1976 to 2002, he didn’t ski at all because he was too distracted by “what might go wrong on the hill”.
In 2001, he and his wife Trudy opened the Wild Horse Hideaway bed-and-breakfast on Flathead Lake. Today they are both avid skiers at Blacktail Mountain and Whitefish Mountain Resort.