From skiing and snowboarding to shopping at its famous discount retail outlets, recreation and fun centered around Cranmore Mountain Resort abound in scenic North Conway. The resort itself holds a long tradition of ski culture that dates back to the great Ski Meister Hannes Schneider in 1939.

Boston insurance man Carroll Reed was injured while skiing the Wildcat Trail in 1934, and as he recovered read an article about European ski schools. He became determined to bring the concept to the U.S., and convinced the innkeepers of Jackson, NH to fund the costs of hiring a ski instructor to teach their guests to ski. Reed’s ski school, the Eastern Slope Ski School, engaged Benno Rybizka of the highly respected Hannes Schneider Ski School of St. Anton, Austria for the winter of 1937.

In spite of poor snow conditions for much of the winter of 1937, skimeister Benno Rybizka, idealized here in the poster by Tyler Micoleau, taught approximately 6,000 lessons on the pastures of Jackson. He trained a group of local youths, mostly hockey players, to assist him in teaching ski lessons, and in the spring escorted his American protégés to Austria, where they passed the rigorous and prestigious Austrian State Ski certification exam. Tyler Micoleau, J. Arthur Doucette, Arthur Callan and Francis Savard were the local ski teachers of the ESSS who became Austrian-certified instructors.