Dick Dorworth
Dick Dorworth has skied and climbed in Europe, Asia, Alaska and South America; but he’s spent most of his life in the mountains of the West. He ski raced extensively from 1950 through 1965 and set the world record for speed on skis in Portillo, Chile in 1963. Dick taught and coached skiing for years,served as coach of the U.S. Ski Men’s Team, and later Directorof the Aspen Mountain Ski School.
Dorworth’s writing has appeared in Ski, Skiing, Powder, Snow Country, Mountain Gazette, Men’s Journal, Climbing, New West, Mariah, Wild Duck Review, Summit, and Backpacker.
Today he is a reporter and regular columnist for the Idaho Mountain Express in Ketchum, his home base. Most winter days he skis, either on his favorite mountain, Baldy, or in the backcountry. In summer he climbs.
Night Driving, Dorworth’s first book, was published in 2007 by First Ascent Press. The Perfect Turn, a collection of Dick’s ski writing, ranging from expedition accounts, to biographies of remarkable and particularly engaging skiers, to ski fiction was published by Western Eye Press in 2010 and immediately won the Ski History Association prize for the best new ski book of the year. Dorworth’s next book, The Straight Course, a memoir of speed skiing adventures around the world in the 60s was published the following year, also by Western Eye Press.
“Now I know that strange things happen to your body when it meets the snow at 100 mph, no matter what the position. In the twinkling of hitting the snow I regained a proper respect for speed. If you are inattentive, as well as somewhat stupid, you may breed a contempt for big speeds, forgetting respect through the grace of being atop your skis each run. No one on his back at 100 mph will ever after have contempt for speed.”
“I found in myself the ability to give everything, to lay the whole show on the line. In that ability is hidden happiness, and all men have it, lurking somewhere..”