Alpenglow Magazine | Ski Champ Barney McLean

Barney: Life and Times
Of A Champion Skier
By Phil White

As a young boy, Barney McLean can recall seeing Karl Howelson, the father of Colorado skiing, on the jumping hill in Hot Sulphur Springs. Eight decades later, McLean would follow the career of World Cup Champion Bode Miller, marveling at the young racer's conditioning and athletic ability. McLean was not just a witness to the growth of skiing in America; he was an active participant. From his childhood in Grand County as a Nordic jumper, to an alpine racing champion as an adult, McLean used his considerable natural talent, a strong work ethic, and a love of skiing, to become a true legend of the sport. Before he was finished, he would claim nine national championships, be named to three Winter Olympic teams, and win ski races on three continents. As great an athlete and skier as he was, he was an even better person. Nearly everyone who knew him considered Barney McLean to be their best friend. This is his story.

A Skier's Journey
I met Barney McLean in 1999 at Middle Park High School in Granby, Colorado. I had arranged to meet him there in order to have him present an award named in his honor to a member of the high school ski team. McLean, a man small in stature but not in accomplishments, had retired from international ski racing nearly fifty years earlier. Now in his eighties, he was smaller than the five-foot-eight, 160 pounds of his youth. However, he still maintained his enthusiasm for life, and his love of skiing. He had been on snow for nearly eighty years, dating back to his youth in Hot Sulphur Springs. Barney McLean would ski for eighty-four consecutive winters, including his last in 2005, shortly before his death. His life would span two world wars, the Great Depression, and the creation of the Winter Olympic Games. Born Robert Lloyd McLean, on July 13, 1917 in Lander, Wyoming, he was the first child of Laura and George McLean. The McLean family moved back to Grand County in 1920, where Laura's family had settled in the 1870's. They lived east of Hot Sulphur Springs, near the Drowsy Water Ranch. By the late 1930's, the family had grown to include ten children.
When Jumping was King

Little Lloyd began skiing at age three, on skis made by his father. They were for jumping, the snow sport of choice in Colorado at the time. In 1923, Lloyd entered school in Hot Sulphur Springs. That winter, he also began competing with the Hot Sulphur Springs Winter Sports Club, one of the best ski clubs in the West. When a bowlegged ski jumper by the name of Barney Riley came to town to compete, local kids noticed the resemblance to Lloyd. The nickname stayed with him for life.

At the age of eight, Barney made his first trip to Steamboat Springs to jump at Howelson Hill. That same winter he also traveled to Genessee Hill in Denver and Homewood Park in nearby Morrison. He was the youngest competitor to jump off the 50-meter hill at Genessee, overlooking the present Interstate 70. At the age of 11, he took his first trip out of Colorado to jump, traveling to South Dakota in 1929.

In 1930, at the age of twelve, Barney qualified to compete at the 70-meter Ecker Hill in Salt Lake City, the biggest jump in the U.S. Later that winter he won his first regional jumping title, the Western Boys' Ski Championship, held in his backyard at Hot Sulphur Springs. He competed in the 12 to 15-year-old class, outjumping all of the older boys. By this time there were five younger siblings in the McLean household, and the depression took the local economy from bad to worse. Barney began driving for his father's trucking business, traveling over an unpaved Berthoud Pass to deliver oil, gas, and coal to Denver. He didn't even have a license yet. By the age of 16 he had left school in Hot Sulphur to drive full time, but he continued to jump on the weekends.

In 1932, Jim Harsh, a skier from Grand Lake, had been named as an alternate on the U.S. Olympic Team, which competed at Lake Placid, N.Y. Harsh, a Nordic combined (jumping & cross-country) athlete, came back to Grand County with tales of the winter games and the great European skiers he had seen. Barney was one of many young skiers who listened and dreamed of their chance to compete against the best in the world. That same winter, kids in Steamboat Springs also began to dream about the Olympics. One of them, Gordy Wren, would compete in Hot Sulphur that winter where he jumped against Barney McLean. They became lifelong friends, and eventually Olympic teammates.

First Trip to the National Championship
In 1935, Barney competed at his first national skiing championship in Canton, South Dakota. Since he was seventeen, and unknown to most officials and competitors, he was placed in the Class B event. Years later, Gordy Wren reminisced about that first national meet. “I just knew he was going to win...He just oozed confidence in that quiet way of his.” On his first attempt, Barney outjumped the field by 20 feet, and won easily. After that he would never have to jump in Class B again. That same winter, he would jump 220 feet at Howelson Hill in Steamboat, nine feet short of the hill record. In Salt Lake City for the Olympic Trials, he placed fifth, and was told by officials that he would be named to the Olympic team for the 1936 games. Later that winter, at a meet in Anaconda, Montana, he had a bad crash and suffered back and ankle injuries. Despite the injuries, which kept him out of competition for nine months, the 17-year-old was still named to the Olympic team. However, he did not make the trip to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany the following winter.

The Winter Olympics
At the time, the injury was given as his reason for not competing in the Games, and all the historical records have kept that myth intact. In an interview conducted a year before his death, Barney told me the real reason he never made the trip to Germany — money. It was the middle of the Great Depression, and times were particularly lean in Grand County. The U.S. Ski Team had very little money, so athletes were expected to find their own financial support. Many skiers at the time came from the Midwest and the Northeast, where large population bases meant plenty of resources to draw from. Most American jumpers were from the Midwest, where Scandinavian immigrants had established their national pastime on U.S. soil. A typical ski club might have several thousand dues-paying members, generating more than enough income to finance a few top competitors in their travels to Europe.

In contrast, the small mountain towns of the Rockies had neither the people, nor the money, to fund Olympians. They tried, nonetheless. Fundraising dances were held around the county, including Hot Sulphur Springs and Grand Lake, the skiing centers of the county at the time. Funds were to be raised to send local star, Barney McLean, to Germany for the Olympics. When the money was all counted at the end of the evening, they had raised just enough to pay the band. Barney would have to wait another four years for his chance to compete in the Games. He had hoped to jump against Birger Ruud, the Norwegian Olympic champion of '32, whom he had met at a meet in Colorado. Unbeknownst to him at the time, the four-year wait would become 12 years, as war would put the Olympics, and almost all ski competition, on hold.
Transition to Alpine Skiing

The winter of 1937 would be Barney's last year of training for ski jumping. Still a teenager, he jumped 235 feet at Ecker Hill in Salt Lake. It was his longest jump yet. He continued to compete in jumping events after '37, and was undefeated through the 1938 season, a three-year run where no one out- jumped him. Changes in his life, and in the sport of skiing, left him no time to practice jumping after 1937.
One of those changes took place in the summer of 1937, when he proposed to Margaret Wilson, whom he had met in
elementary school in Hot Sulphur. They eloped to Denver in their newly purchased 1934 Ford coupe. The other major change in Barney's life, as far as skiing was concerned, was his switch to alpine, starting in the fall of 1937. Ski jumping was on the way out in America, and alpine was the new snow sport of choice in the country. European racers and instructors were promoting the new sport, having fled their native Alps, one step ahead of the Nazis.

“Thor Groswold and Florian Haemmerle convinced me that alpine skiing was the wave of the future, so I decided to give it a try,” said Barney years later. Groswold, a Norwegian, was a ski manufacturer in Denver, and Haemmerle, a German, was a house painter, artist, and ski instructor. Groswold first met a very young Barney McLean while driving near Hot Sulphur in the 1920's. After watching Groswold's car spin its wheels trying to make it up a muddy hill, the young boy suggested to the driver that he turn the car around and go up in reverse, since the lower gearing would give him better traction. Groswold took the boy's advice, and a life-long relationship was formed. During Barney's jumping days, Groswold had helped him in a number of ways, including with equipment. In referring to his relationship with Groswold, Barney would say that, “This stubborn, honest, warmhearted Norwegian skier and ski manufacturer was largely responsible for much of the modest success I enjoyed.” Groswold supplied Barney with alpine racing skis, and Haemmerle gave him his first lesson on Berthoud Pass in October of 1937.

Barney won the first alpine race he ever entered, a slalom at Berthoud, in January of 1938. From there, it was all downhill, so to speak. He was invited to the Southern Rocky Mountain Ski Association championship in Aspen that winter. The Hot Sulphur Springs ski club paid for his gas, and the Aspen ski club paid for him to stay at the Hotel Jerome, which cost all of a dollar a night at the time. Barney won the slalom, and was second in combined. His prize was four nights of lodging at the Sun Valley Lodge, and an invitation to race in the Harriman Cup there. At that time, it was the most prestigious alpine race in the U.S., even more important than the national championships. Although he had a place to stay in Idaho, getting there was another matter. He and Margaret left Hot Sulphur with $50 and drove to Montana. In Bozeman, Barney jumped in a meet and won a set of luggage, which he traded for gas. In Anaconda, he won more prizes, which he turned into gas again. Finally, they made it to Sun Valley.

They Speak English in Idaho, Don't They?
When the McLeans arrived at the Sun Valley Lodge, a man handed Barney a box lunch and told him to grab his skis, because the bus was leaving in 10 minutes for downhill training. Margaret remembers that when he got back to the lodge at four o'clock, he said “get your bag packed, we're leaving.” When she asked why, he told her “because I understand the menu's in French, and I don't read a word of French, and I want to go home.” Margaret informed him that she had made it through lunch, so he could certainly make it through dinner. They stayed for the races. In the room next to theirs was Norma Shearer, one of Hollywood's leading ladies.

The first event in the Harriman Cup was the downhill, Barney's second start in the event. It was held on an open slope above Sun Valley, with no control gates. It was snowing, raining, and everything in between, leaving an icy course consisting of crud and powder. He fell five or six times, but finished the race. The slalom was held on Dollar Mountain, site of the world's first chairlift. Barney skied much better, moving up to tenth in the combined, third among the Americans. Dick Durrance won the Harriman Cup that day, beating the entire German Ski Team. Durrance was clearly the best American ski racer at that time, having grown up with the sport and raced at Dartmouth College. However, in his first winter on alpine skis, Barney McLean was already closing the gap.
Time for a New Job

In the summer of 1938, Barney took a desk job as the deputy treasurer of Grand County. Up until that time, he had been driving a truck for his father, working up to 16 hours a day, six days a week. It certainly wasn't the best way to train for ski racing. The new job allowed him a lot more time to train and race. He saw immediate improvement the next winter, as he won the SRMSA combined at Aspen, and also took the jumping title at Steamboat. Later that winter, at the Jeffers Cup in Sun Valley, he took second in the downhill. He was unable to return for the Harriman Cup in March because of his work schedule back in Hot Sulphur. Despite this, he was still named to the 1940 Olympic Ski Team, this time as an alternate in alpine. He had only been on alpine skis for two winters. Once again, Barney missed his chance to compete in the Games. They were canceled after Japan invaded China and Germany invaded Poland, marking the start of World War II.

In the summer of 1939, Barney helped members of the Arlberg Club widen the Hughes Trail for the new ski area, Winter Park, which would open the following winter. In 1940, he would win the first races ever held there. Up until that time, he had been training on Berthoud Pass, riding the rope tow. But that was a 35-mile drive from Hot Sulphur, so he could only make the trip on weekends. During the week, he created a training solution that was closer to home. He would pound holes in the snow on the hill across the road from the courthouse in Hot Sulphur, then set up 8 to 10 gates and practice slalom in the evening. There was a street light at the top of the hill, and one at the bottom. He would ski down and walk back up. “I did that quite a lot,” he reminisced sixty-five years later. Barney McLean possibly spent more time on snow in Hot Sulphur Springs than anyone who ever lived there. As a boy, he would go to the jump hill from dawn to dusk. He would walk home at night, soaking wet and cold. His mother would find him on the porch, crying because he couldn't get his boots off. All that time on skis certainly paid off, though. Meanwhile, his competitors were skiing the slopes of Aspen, Sun Valley and Alta in the Rocky Mountain sunshine.

Success on the National Stage
The winter of 1941 saw alpine nationals held in Aspen for the first time. Barney couldn't afford to stay in town for an entire week, but fortunately he was invited to stay at the home of Darcy and Ruth Brown. Darcy was a state senator, and Ruth was the namesake for Ruthie's Run, one of the best known trails on Aspen Mountain. In the years to come, Barney would stay with them often on his trips to Aspen. On the hill that week, he was sixth in the downhill, and then won the slalom, or so he thought. He had the fastest time of the day, but received a mysterious disqualification (DSQ) for supposedly missing a gate. The announced winner was Aspen racer Dick Durrance, who used his home field advantage to take the combined title, as well. At the award ceremony, Durrance, who was seated at a table with Barney, let it be known that “the man who really won the race is sitting across from me.” Despite this admission, Barney had his first two national alpine titles taken from him, due to a less than ethical gatekeeper (with the slalom win, he would have also placed first in the combined). Not one to com-
plain, Barney took it in stride at the time.

The Winter of '42
In June of 1941, Barney’s luck would change for the better. “Thor (Groswold) offered me a really good job at his ski factory, and he told me ‘if you come down and go to work, I’ll make sure you get to go to all the major tournaments. I’ll make sure you get time to train,’ and he gave us a heck of a lot more money than I was making, so I took him up on it. That year, 1941-2, turned out to be the best season I ever had.” Barney was a quality control supervisor in the Groswold ski factory in Denver. As he said, the winter that followed would ultimately be his best. He won every major title in American alpine skiing.

After jumping in a midwinter meet in Duluth, Minnesota, Groswold decided to send Barney back for the Eastern Championships in Stowe, Vermont. Groswold entered Barney in the Class A category, but the Eastern officials told him that Western skiers weren’t as good as the East’s Class B skiers, so they couldn’t enter him. As Margaret McLean remembers, Groswold was fuming. “The red flag was waved; he probably bet his (ski) factory on Barney.” The officials reluctantly entered Barney in the top class, probably figuring on the easy money they would collect from Groswold. It was definitely not Rocky Mountain conditions. Barney says “it was my first encounter with ice. I remember those seven turns up at the top, it was all I could do to stay out of the woods and avoid the trees. I had seen a little ice in the Midwest while jumping, but that was it.” Unlike the wider slopes of the West, Eastern trails are notoriously narrow, icy and treacherous. Control gates weren’t even needed in most downhills, you either turned or ran into a tree. Not only did Barney win the race, he broke the course record by 19 seconds on the infamous

Nosedive Trail at Stowe.
The trip east was a sign of things to come. Barney would go on to sweep alpine nationals at Yosemite, winning the downhill, the slalom, and therefore, the combined. After that he went to Sun Valley, where he won the opening downhill, then finished second in the slalom to his best friend, Gordy Wren. He claimed the overall Harriman Cup based on his combined results, beating Dick Durrance in the process. To finish the season, Barney won the Alta Cup combined title in Utah, beating Durrance again. After only five years on alpine skis, Barney McLean was clearly the best male racer in the country. His skiing career was taking off, and he would be in his prime for the 1944 Olympic Games. However, events larger than ski racing were beginning to take precedence on the world stage.

The U.S. had entered World War Two in December, and all major ski competitions were canceled until after the war. When the winter of ‘42 was over, Barney enlisted in the Army Air Corps (predecessor to the Air Force), where he was trained as a pilot, then became a flight instructor at Randolph Field in Texas. Eventually, he was transferred to the Air Corps Arctic Survival School in Edmonton, Alberta — an assignment more fitting for a kid from Grand County.

Editor’s Note: Barney went on to captain an Olympic Ski Team, win races all over the world including every important competition in North America and to devastate race course records everywhere.

Even in failing health, he never missed a year without skiing. His daughter, Melissa McLean recalls one recent trip to the slopes of Mary Jane: “When we got to Empire he said he wasn’t feeling all that well. I told him we could turn around. He thought about it and said, ‘Well, let’s go on up and make at least one run so I can keep my streak going.’”

Barney had never missed a single day of skiing since he was four years old.

They made a half dozen runs that day — and Barney skied the next few seasons until he died in the summer of 2005 at the age of 88.

“He was such a good skier,” his daughter marveled. “He could barely make it from the car to the lift — but when he got on the slopes he was still a great skier.”

“It was like he was 20 years old again,” she added.