Hannes Schroll

Hannes Schroll
Hannes Schroll onboard the ship the Saturnia coming from Trieste, Italy
Born	13 June 1909
Died	5 April 1985

Hannes Schroll (June 13, 1909 – April 5, 1985) was an Austrian Alpine ski racer and founder of the Sugar Bowl Ski Resort in Norden, California.

Schroll grew up in an Austrian village near Salzburg, called Bischofshofen. Later on he began helping his mother run a small in the mountain village of Alpbach in the Tyrol east of Kitzbuhel, attending to guest. After his father fashioned a pair of barrel-stave skis for him, he won his first village race, receiving his first pair of hickory skis as a prize. Unconfirmed reports by Newspaper and Magazine articles have stated that Schroll had won up to 100 ski races, before arriving in America.

Schroll has been characterized as being very charismatic, funny and a larger-than-life social person that would often be heard Yodeling during skiing competitions. After winning the steepest race in the Italian Dolomites in 1934, the Marmolata, he was elected by Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg to represent Austria at the 1935 U.S. National Downhill Championships and given a ticket to come to America. When he arrived by boat he did not speak any English.

Schroll then went on to win both the U.S. National Downhill and Slalom open combined category at Mt. Rainier, Washington in 1935, on wooden skis. It was the first international race of its kind, held in the US to include both European and American skiers. Seven thousand people attended that year, as radio broadcasters carried reports of the events and the skiing conditions all across the US. Schroll was awarded the Silver Skis trophy.