In memory of Steve McKinney...

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tbag

Social climber

ny, ny

Dec 17, 2008 - 04:10pm PT

Q: in high school, I had a public speaking class. I did a number about speed skiing -- it was mostly about Steve, his innovations, and how it was home grown in California.

I remember that one of Mckinney's friends was killed in, I think, Chile. I believe the name was harold mussner. Does that sound familiar, or close?

Curious all these years later.

captain chaos

climber

Topic Author's Reply - Dec 17, 2008 - 04:38pm PT

Hi tbag... I don't recall anyone by that name, nor do I remember any of our friends dying in Chile. If you can you be more specific, I might be able to help you resolve your curiosity.

tbag

Social climber

ny, ny

Dec 18, 2008 - 12:09pm PT

There a chance the man was Italian? The story was that he caught an edge. and was torn up his groin to the chest. The article would have been in a magazine from '78. Or '77.

I even think a guy from Chile with the last name of Wilson (?) mentioned this. Rojas Wilson. A speed skier, too.

Not a pressing issue, but I'm curious.

tbag

captain chaos

climber

Topic Author's Reply - Dec 18, 2008 - 01:28pm PT

OK, now I know... it was in 1974, it was the first year we went speed skiing, the race took place in Cervinia Italy. The accident took place during the normal series race with 220's and regular dh helmets. The guy stuck his head between his legs and veered off the course and hit the timing post going around 100 mph. If I remember right, he was Swiss, but his name isn't coming to me right now. No one ever died speed skiing in Chile. As a matter of fact very few people have died speed skiing. More people die from racing downhill, and surprisingly enough more people die from recreational skiing then all the ski racing events combined.

tbag

Social climber

ny, ny

Dec 18, 2008 - 03:23pm PT

That sounds about right. I think I read that Steve got kicked by a horse once, and that did some serious damage. Only thing I wont' let my kid around is a motorcycle and horses. Nothing good ever comes of either one. Guns and pools seem safer to me.

Where was Steve interred? Does his kid have the ski gene?

sherry

climber

santa clarita, ca

Jun 1, 2009 - 01:17am PT

Wow, what a beautiful memorial and oh so apropos. I wondered to this site because I was looking for Karen Trask, one of the best friends of my life. Wouldn't you know, it would be Steve, who helped me find her. I remember looking at his trophies. There was one in general that caught my gaze. It was a triangle with several squares in the interior. He walked in behind me, and said "What does that mean to you," I remember thinking that for sure I would answer it wrong, I was so nervous, When suddenly there was this strange silence that fell over the room, It was so surreal. It felt , for a moment, that time had stood still. He just stared at me, almost as if he could see inside, as if he new, I knew. Suddenly, out of, what seemed nowhere, I said "Inner Strength". He promptly responded. "You are right!" I was so relieved, We all started to laugh and well, the rest is history! The time we spent, was magic! I remember the day he passed, it was clear & windy. When I went out to close my gate, it felt as if someone had shut it and was standing next to me. I remember thinking of him, but dismissed it. I must be losing it, it had to be the wind, I thought. It wasn't until several months later that I realized, he had passed on that very day. I had moved and lost touch with most. An unfortunate habit that I am now trying, (with, I believe, Steves help), to rectify. It has always haunted me that I did not listen, that fateful day. He truly touched the hearts and minds of all he met. He, Karen, Craig, and Tahoe in general will forever be weaved across mine. I will never forget him or you for giving me and so many others the opportunity to say, Thank-you for sharing your time on this earth, we are all the better off for it.

I'll see you on the other side!
Till Then,
Sherryan' Lima(sherryanlima@yahoo.com)

Lynne Leichtfuss

Social climber

valley center, ca

Jun 1, 2009 - 01:35am PT

A Very Special Tribute Sherry.....

janky

Social climber

innsbruck

Jan 15, 2010 - 04:42pm PT

guido

Trad climber

Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific

Jan 15, 2010 - 05:27pm PT

Just saw this for the first time.

Years ago while cruising through Fiji we had a young lady on the boat by the name of Rosalie Mason Van Ness and I remember she too was a cousin of Steve McKinney. Rosalie, aka Mimi, had grown up with my lady Nancy in Carpinteria and had some fascinating stories about the family history. If I remember correctly Baltimore was the ancestral center of the family?

Double D

climber

Jan 15, 2010 - 06:03pm PT

Nice photo janky. Stevie & Franz Webber?

If memory serves me right...which it often doesn't, his family was from Kentucky.

tbag

Social climber

ny, ny

Feb 3, 2010 - 04:08pm PT

Does anybody have an email contact for Dick Dorworth? He wrote an article in 1999 about S.M. It was in the third issue of Skiing History/Skiing Heritage.

Is this article available in a WORD doc?

Calls to the publisher are unanswered.

tbag

guido

Trad climber

Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific

Feb 3, 2010 - 04:13pm PT

You can find him here under- yeti

Doug Robinson

Trad climber

Santa Cruz

Feb 3, 2010 - 04:20pm PT

I skied with Dick on Shasta maybe 5 years ago. He used to post here, may still, not sure.

Best contact I can suggest is his latest book, Night Driving. Write c/o his publisher First Ascent Press, PO Box 2338, Livingston MT 59047.

Good luck and tell him hi.

rottingjohnny

Sport climber

mammoth lakes ca

Feb 4, 2010 - 01:23am PT

Chaos...whatever became of bill mckinley and his friend tim t? ....rj

Yeti

Trad climber

Ketchum, Idaho

Feb 5, 2010 - 05:49pm PT

Bill McKinley and Tim Tilton live in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, are involved in construction work and still ski

Yeti

Trad climber

Ketchum, Idaho

Feb 5, 2010 - 05:56pm PT

Here's something I wrote about Steve a few years ago as well as contact info for anyone tracking.....cheers....

Steve McKinney: a brief memoir of a friend
by
Dick Dorworth

I first met Steve McKinney in the winter of 1953. He was in his bassinet on the porch of the Sky Tavern Lodge at the Sky Tavern/Mt. Rose Ski Area outside Reno, Nevada, and I was a 14 year old ski racer. His mother, Frances, was a ski instructor at Sky Tavern, who made sure all of her seven children were, literally, born to skiing. Frances was a graceful woman of refined intelligence who loved life and her children with an intense passion which she passed on to each of them.
The last time I saw Steve McKinney was in October 1990 at the Squeeze Inn in Truckee, California. Steve and his son, Stephan, and me and my son, Jason, had breakfast together at the Squeeze and talked about our climbing expedition to Bhutan that had collapsed suddenly and unexpectedly a couple of weeks earlier. We exiled disappointment about not going to Bhutan through plans for future expeditions and adventures and with discussion about our present good fortune to be able to have breakfast together in a favorite restaurant with our sons. Steve McKinney loved his life and his son and family and friends with an intense passion that touched everyone who knew him.
A month later, November 1990, Steve was driving from southern California to attend a U.S. Ski Team fund raising function in San Francisco with his sister, Tamara. It grew late and Steve was tired and he pulled his small Volkswagen off the side of the freeway and crawled into the back seat to sleep. While he slept a drunk driver veered off the highway and crashed into the car and Steve was killed. Had we gone to Bhutan, he wouldn’t have been in that car by the freeway in the middle of the night.
But Steve was the sort of man who believed that when his time here was up it would not matter whether he was in California or Bhutan, and his time was up.
Between his birth in 1953 and his death in 1990 Steve McKinney lived a full life because he was the rare man who followed his passion. I was a friend to his family and we were all in the world of skiing, and so I followed his junior ski racing career and was aware of his extraordinary talent and athletic ability. By the early 1970s he was among the most promising young downhill racers in America. He was skilled, smart, strong and courageous. He was also ambitious and loved the game of competition. A fine athletic career as a downhill skier for the U.S. Ski Team was easily his for the taking, and many thought that would be his path. But Steve was restless and independent, and he was definitely wary of the kind of authoritarian politics that inescapably plague conventional organizations like the U.S. Ski Team. To some, Steve was considered a rebel, but, in my opinion, Steve was not so much rebellious as he was independent and proud. He had and knew the value of personal integrity.
In the spring of 1973 he bowed out of some World Cup races in California and went to Alaska in search of new adventures. Most young people who have spent their formative years in junior ski racing do not willingly pass up the opportunity to participate in World Cup races; but, as indicated, McKinney was unique and independent, restless and curious, always on the prowl for new horizons. When he returned from Alaska he showed up unexpectedly in Yosemite Valley where I was living and climbing. He was in the company of ex-U.S. Ski Team downhill racer and rock climber Craig Shanholtzer. Steve had decided to take up speed skiing and rock climbing at the same time, and with typical enthusiasm and intensity he committed himself to learning the basics of both. He planned on going to the Kilometro Lanciato in Cervinia the following month, and we talked at length about what he needed to do and know in order to be prepared.
Before that could happen, Steve returned to Tahoe and took a hundred foot leader fall attempting to climb a route beyond his novice experience called “Rated X” on Donner Summit’s Black Wall. He wound up in a body cast from his neck to his hips. Never one to let a broken back keep him down, Steve went to Cervinia anyway and skied in his cast and observed the speed skiers and what they were doing. Later that summer, he and I went climbing for the first time since his accident. After a couple of easier climbs we did “Rated X.” Steve did not lead it but he climbed it, and afterwards he was both mentally and physically back on track. He spent the winter thinking about what he had seen in Cervinia and getting ready.
The next summer, 1974, Steve and Tom Simons went to Cervinia. Steve was ready and won the KL competition, setting the first of his several world records. The world of speed skiing would never be the same. Steve was the right person in the right place at the right time to attract the media’s attention and give speed skiing a public profile it had never before known. Steve exemplified that elusive term “charisma.” He had the 6’4” 190 pound physique of a Viking warrior, the long blonde hair and good looks of a rock star, the confidence of a King, the personality of a fun loving sage, and he was THE MAN in an endeavor that answers a question that occurs to every person who has ever put on a pair of skis, even to those who do not wish to find out the answer: how fast can I go?
For the next ten years McKinney either held the world speed record or was very close to it. He either won every big speed race or he was one of the favorites. He was the first person to ski over 120 mph and the first to break 200 kph. He was instrumental in starting the first professional speed skiing circuit, and he was a principal in International Speed Skiing, the organizing body of that tour. More, he was the pace setter, the leader, the example and the inspiration for a generation of speed skiers. And despite the effects of age, numerous serious injuries and personal traumas, and the natural evolution of his sport which always leaves yesterday’s heroes behind, he invariably came through. He tried very hard to do his best and he inspired others to do the same.
Steve became a serious and accomplished mountaineer in the 1980s. He climbed 24,785 Mustagh Ata in the Chinese Pamir Mountains. After returning from the summit he turned around and climbed it again to help a British double amputee (both legs below the knee) accomplish his goal of reaching the peak. Steve was on two expeditions to Mt. Everest. On the first one he was instrumental in saving the life of John Roskelley, one of America’s greatest climbers who came down with pulmonary edema at 25,000 feet and was practically carried off the mountain by McKinney. On his second expedition he flew a hang glider off the West Ridge of Mt. Everest from 22,000 feet despite an earlier crash at a lower elevation on a trial flight.
Steve McKinney was my friend. He is known primarily as a speed skier, as well he should be; but he was also a talented writer, musician, horseman and climber; and he was a philosopher and thinker and seeker of the truth. Steve was generous, forgiving, funny and honest, and he was very easy to be with. We had a lot of fun together on skis, in the mountains, traveling, climbing and, yes, partying, all the while discussing the endless mysteries, impasses, challenges and ideas of what it is to be a human being. Like many others, I am grateful to have known him, but I miss his presence in this life. In my mind, Steve McKinney was a great speed skier because he was a great human being, not vice-versa.
END
Dick Dorworth
Box 4561
Ketchum, Idaho 83340
208-720-6718
dorworth@mindspring.com