Excerpt from Dick Vandenburg interview
Dick Vandenburg first skied at Bogus in 1941 at the age of 11. Later he ran the Mitey Mite program for over 20 years, from 1957 to 1977, and then returned in 1983 for three more years.
Vandenburg describes the early days of Bogus Basin, "when I was in high school in 1945-1947 they had a small lodge...and had a girls and boys bunkhouse. They had the little rope tow. In high school we would go and stay overnight and have dinner up there....We used to play crack the ship on that little hill."
In 1948 Bogus Basin hosted the first Junior National Ski race. Vandenburg was a freshman at Boise Junior College and was eligible to compete because he skipped third grade and was within the age qualification. Racers from the northeast rode the train to Boise and stayed with the local ski racers. It sounds like the curvy, narrow road made many of the out of town racers car sick. Vandenburg said, " The downhill race was held up at the cliffs where the number 3 chairlift ends (on the south face) where the rocky ledge is now. We walked up. There was no way to get up there, no snow cat, no nothing. So all the racers, 65 to 68 of them all packed the course, we side stepped up to where the start was. I can't remember how they started us. I can hardly believe they had timing or the wire, they might have done it visually or by waving flags." Dick Ireland from the northeast won the combined race, just beating Muddy Numbers, one of the top local ski racers.
Vandenburg described the early skis and how they painted on the base. "We had a base called Fast Ski, it was green and you painted it on. If your skis got all beat up you'd sand the base off and paint on Fast Ski. You'd put a couple of layers on...We used to ski down the road every night, until someone picked us up in the car. After a few days of that the Fast Ski was all worn off. We'd go over to the Taylor's garage and sand them all down and repaint them again for another three weeks. The Fast Ski was the best base then."
Dick continues to ski with the Prime Timers and he also skis with his adult children and his grandkids.