The Alps, the pioneers and the first ski schools.

The first Alpine clubs and crossings

The compiled timeline of the International Skiing History Association (ISHA) records skiing taking hold in Central Europe in the 1890s. It credits Fridtjof Nansen's 1890 book on his Greenland crossing with inspiring many Central Europeans to try it (see Norway and Sondre Norheim).

• 1892 and 1893, Styria. The timeline lists Max Kleinoschegg founding the Styrian Ski Association at Mürzzuschlag in 1892 and the first ski competition in Central Europe there in 1893, a 700 m downhill. Both entries are uncited, so they are unconfirmed.
• 1893, Glarus. The first Swiss ski club, founded at Glarus on 22 November 1893 by Christof Iselin (credited to Mercier), and the first ascent of a real Alpine summit on skis, the Schild, by Iselin and Jenny.
• 1897, the Bernese Oberland. Wilhelm Paulcke's ski crossing of the Bernese Oberland glaciers in January 1897, followed by his book Der Skilauf in 1899.

Mathias Zdarsky at Lilienfeld

Austria-Forum, the Austrian online encyclopedia, gives Mathias Zdarsky's birth as 25 February 1856 at Kozichovice near Třebíč, now in the Czech Republic, and his death as 20 June 1940 at St. Pölten in Lower Austria. It describes him as a skiing pioneer, teacher, painter and sculptor, and credits him with the Lilienfeld skiing technique, based on the stem turn, and with the Lilienfeld binding.

The ISHA timeline lists 1889 as the year he withdrew to Habernreith and began experimenting with Scandinavian skis. It also gives 1891, inspired by Nansen, and 1895, his first pupil, for the start of his teaching at Lilienfeld; those two entries carry no source and are unconfirmed.

The year of his book is disputed. Austria-Forum says Die Lilienfelder Skilauf-Technik first appeared in 1897 and ran to 17 editions until 1925. The ISHA timeline lists the book in 1896 (credited to a 1966 source) and says 1896 also began his long dispute with Wilhelm Paulcke, who favoured the Norwegian method.

The 1905 gate race

The Lower Austrian state government said in a 2008 press release that Zdarsky held the first gate race in alpine skiing history on 19 March 1905 on the Muckenkogel near Lilienfeld. Austria-Forum gives 9 March 1905, calls it the first slalom in skiing history, and says 24 competitors took part. The day therefore differs by ten days between the two sources.

The government press release also describes a nostalgia gate race held near the Muckenkogel on 16 March 2008, on wooden skis without steel edges, with leather lace-up boots and replica hazel-pole gates.

Which race was the first slalom?

Two claims exist and both are given here. Austria-Forum calls Zdarsky's 1905 Muckenkogel race the first slalom. British and Swiss accounts credit Arnold Lunn with the first modern slalom, at Mürren in January 1922, judged on speed alone rather than style. The January 1922 timing and the 21 January date for Lunn's race rest on regional tourism material seen in search summaries and on a ski-holiday company's blog; no museum or FIS page confirming it was read, so both are unconfirmed. Lunn's part in getting downhill and slalom recognised is on alpine skiing and the Olympics.

Hannes Schneider and St Anton

The ISHA timeline gives Hannes Schneider's life as 1890 to 1955. Helen Olsson's 2023 article in ISHA's magazine, Skiing History, says he began teaching guests at the Hotel Post in St Anton in 1907. Olsson also says the Ski-Club Arlberg was founded in 1901, that St Anton held trial races in 1903, including races for women, and a first general race in 1904.

The ISHA timeline then lists, with its sources:

• 1910: Schneider creates the stem christie at St Anton (credited to Friedl and Fairlie).
• 1918: he returns from war service and teaches Swiss and British skiers.
• 1920 to 1924: he formalises the Arlberg technique (credited to a 1966 source).
• 1925: the book Wunder des Schneeschuhs (The Wonders of Skiing), by Schneider and Arnold Fanck.
• 1930, 13 March to 4 April: Schneider visits Japan to give ski lessons (credited to his own 1935 book on the trip).
• 1931: the film Der Weisse Rausch, a date Olsson also gives.

When was his ski school founded?

The founding year is given in four ways. Olsson's 2023 article says 1920. The ISHA timeline says 1921, when he separated his school from the Hotel Post, but cites no source. A local operator's heritage page also says 1921 and calls it one of the first organised ski schools. A search summary of other St Anton material gives December 1921, which is unconfirmed.

The date of Schneider's first ski-instruction film is also unsettled, and only secondary sources give it: a retro-skiing history site, seen in a search summary, dates Fanck's first instruction film featuring him to 1921, while Wikipedia, also seen in a summary, dates his appearance in a documentary on the Arlberg technique to 1920.

From Austria to New Hampshire

Search summaries of New England Ski Museum and U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame pages say Schneider was detained after the 1938 Nazi annexation of Austria, later moved to house arrest in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, and freed through the intervention of the New York banker Harvey Dow Gibson, the museum noting that the terms of the negotiation remain obscure. The same summaries say he and his family arrived on the Eastern Slope Express at North Conway, New Hampshire, on 11 February 1939, and that he ran the ski school Gibson put him in charge of until his death in 1955. Neither page could be opened (one returned an error, the other a redirect loop), so these details are unconfirmed. The ISHA timeline, credited to a 1966 source, independently lists 1939 for his arrival in the United States and for the ski school at Cranmore.

The Arlberg method had crossed the Atlantic before him. The ISHA timeline lists Otto Schniebs as the first Arlberg instructor in the United States in 1927 (uncited), and 1936 for Arlberg-school instructors reaching Jackson, New Hampshire (Benno Rybizka), and Mount Mansfield, Vermont (Sepp Ruschp).

The instructor associations

National teaching bodies came later. Each date below is the body's own or comes from ISHA, and none of these bodies is a ski school selling lessons.

The same search summary of PSIA-AASI's history page says seven instructors incorporated PSIA in autumn 1961 after a meeting at Whitefish, Montana, in May that year; the page itself returned an error, so the detail is unconfirmed. Internationally, the International Ski Instructors Association says its quality standard first took effect after approval at Jesolo on 22 May 2008. How these bodies certify instructors today is on how people learn.