winter 2011/12 the journal of the world's greatest skiing - Summit Tour

Canada’s original lodge goddess:
Lizzie von Rummel.
CHILLIN’ IN
THE LODGE, ‘65
GERMAN-SPEAKERS HAVE A FANCY WORD FOR IT:
Gemütlichkeit, meaning cozy, comfortable and convivial. Until
Canadians invent a more all-encompassing term, it’s as good a word
as any to describe the essential CMH lodge experience. At upper left
is one of the earliest surviving photographs from the super-rustic
Bugaboo sawmill camp where CMH was born in 1965. There’s Hans
Gmoser, dabbling at the zither. In red is Brooks Dodge, the New
Hampshire Olympic racer and extreme skiing pioneer who organized
the world’s first Heli-Skiing week. (They scored bluebird skies and
perfect powder, incidentally.)
Gmoser, of course, was adamant about maintaining the communal
nature of the lodge ambience. Even when accommodations improved,
he famously banned TVs, telephones and lightbulbs over 40 watts
in guest rooms, lest skiers be tempted to remain separate from the
effervescent action in the common areas. A relaxed, family-style
approach to dining is one of the key components, though it was not
something Gmoser grew up with back in socially rigid Austria. In
that nation’s alpine huts it was customary for small groups to keep to
themselves; fraternizing between social classes simply wasn’t done.
In Canada, however, the woman who would change that was
named Elizabeth von Rummel. The daughter of a German baron, she
was familiar with aristocratic ways, though she learned a hard lesson
about social mobility when the Great War wiped out the family
fortune. By then she was working in the Rockies as the quintessential
backcountry lodge hostess. Upon their chance meeting, she hired
Hans Gmoser as a guide and hut-tender. Lizzie, as everyone knew
her, would become his mentor, and it was she who inspired the legacy
of cheerful democracy by decreeing that, in her lodge, everyone from
the richest international visitor to the humblest local hiker would
dine together as equals. That tradition proudly endures—as gemütlich
now as it was a half-century ago.
WINTER 2011/12