Eighteen years ago, on a steep snow slope high in the French Alps, on skis nearly eight feet long, Ross Anderson of Durango set the American speed skiing record that still stands: 154 mph.
Across a career that spanned 17 years, he was the lone person of color in an obscure form of skiing in which competitors sheathed in aerodynamic suits ski straight downhill searching for maximum velocity, an experience he likened to jumping out of an airplane. His mother was Cheyenne and Arapaho, his father Mescalero-Chiricahua Apache.
“Before every competition, I would kneel down and pray with my medicine bag,” said Anderson, now 53. “I’d pray with snow in my hands to Mother Earth and ask for permission to be on the land, to make sure everybody is safe and has a good race.”
But becoming the Western Hemisphere’s fastest skier isn’t his greatest legacy, according to Dale Womack, a former speed skier from Durango who introduced Anderson to the sport. Womack says Anderson’s most significant contribution was the way he used his status as a Native American role model to organize and conduct dozens of ski clinics for hundreds of Native American youths.
“A lot of those kids had never seen snow, and the way the ski industry is pricing itself out of business, it is an unattainable prospect for a lot of them,” Womack said. “To make that happen is fantastic. That’s where a true champion shines, by making things happen for your community and your culture.”
Last March, Anderson was inducted into the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame. In September, he joined the Colorado Snowsports Hall of Fame. He is a member of the North American Indigenous Athletics Hall of Fame, and in October he was recognized with a lifetime achievement award by the New Mexico Ski Hall of Fame.
All four honors highlighted his work with Native American youth, which was a response to what he experienced when he took up the sport.
“What struck the young Anderson was that none of his heroes looked anything like him or shared his cultural background,” narrator Leon Joseph Littlebird says in Anderson’s Colorado Snowsports Hall of Fame induction video. “It was both a deep frustration and motivation for taking his training and performance to the top level of the sport and prove his detractors wrong.”
Anderson started his learn-to-ski programs for Native Americans because he believed everyone needs a role model.
“I know because I needed one back when I was a kid,” said Anderson, who now lives in Albuquerque. “Everybody needs that inspiration, that next level of knowing that you can do it without any barriers, you just need to make that effort and see what happens.”
Instead of watching cartoons
For his first speed skiing race in 1993, he drove all night from Colorado to California’s Donner Summit. He raced wearing a motorcycle helmet, but he removed the face shield at the starting line because it was fogging up. Somehow he squinted his way down through a “crazy” snowstorm and managed a decent result, qualifying for an upcoming race in Europe.
“That gave me experience, and I got hooked,” Anderson said. “It took off from the get-go, not realizing there were other things that were going to go with it like the kids’ programs, speaking engagements, being a role model. Even now I’m hearing from people who followed me way back when they were kids.”
Anderson was born in New Mexico at Holloman Air Force Base to parents who were 16 and 17. He was adopted by a white couple and grew up on a ranch 10 miles north of Durango. His adoptive father, an economics professor at Fort Lewis College, introduced him to skiing at age 3. Purgatory Resort became Anderson’s playground, but he also had a hill he could hike and ski near his house.
“I got up early in the morning, and instead of watching cartoons, I was getting my ski gear and using my sled to pull my stuff to the mountain, then climbed up the mountain and set up a small (race) course,” Anderson said. “I used trees as my gates and just practiced. I just kept going up and down, up and down, from early morning until I couldn’t see in the evening. That was my thing.”
He acknowledges there were challenges growing up as a rare person of color in Durango, feeling different from the other kids, but the Four Corners area had its advantages, too.
“There’s a lot of Anasazi ruins, like Mesa Verde,” Anderson said. “We had other Aztec ruins close by. From fourth grade on, we started learning and taking field trips to go to Mesa Verde or other areas within the reach of Native Americans back in the day. I was very fortunate to have that.”
There were kivas — ancient ceremonial structures — in the forest near where he lived, too.
“That was interesting,” Anderson said. “When you’re small, you’re like, ‘Why is this hole in the ground so big, yet formed so nicely like a bowl?’ not realizing this is what Anasazis did back in the day. That’s where I started learning – from books, and my parents reading about this history.”
The only person of color
He raced on the Purgatory ski team in the traditional alpine disciplines. Soon he began traveling around the state for races, always the only person of color.
“It didn’t bother me so much, because I had my friends, but I always had that visual of what’s around me,” Anderson said. “I knew I was going to stand out.”
Womack, who trained at Purgatory when he was an alpine racer for Fort Lewis College, became a coach at the ski area and took up speed skiing. He participated in the 1992 Olympics in Albertville, France, where speed skiing was a demonstration sport. Womack became Anderson’s mentor.
“He saw me race, and knew I went really fast — I wasn’t scared,” Anderson said. “I was a daredevil back in the day. As long as there was snow and it was fast, I’d go as fast as I could. Sometimes I wrecked, sometimes I didn’t, but I’d get back up.”
Womack saw raw potential for speed skiing, if not so much in the traditional alpine race disciplines.
“I told him, ‘You were always better at going fast, and not so good at making turns. I can hook you up with some gear. You should give it a shot,’” Womack said.
Anderson’s American record seems safe because few Americans compete these days on the speed skiing World Cup, which takes place in Europe. The sport never made another Olympic appearance.
Becoming a role model
Anderson started his first youth program at Purgatory in 1997, reaching out to the Southern Utes in Ignacio. The first year, there were 12 kids.
“I was looking particularly to the at-risk kids, the ones who needed that focus to maybe help them figure out what they wanted to do in life, to have a better vision and stay focused on something,” Anderson said. “It didn’t have to be skiing, but at least take them in the right direction.”
Legendary radio commentator Paul Harvey found out about Anderson’s program and mentioned it on his national program. PBS heard about Anderson’s program from Harvey’s show and sent a film crew to Purgatory for a segment that aired in 1999.
“Both of my tribes were warrior tribes,” Anderson says in the PBS spot. “Maybe it does go through my blood system. Maybe that’s why I don’t quit. Maybe that’s why I’m so competitive. But then, I want to be a role model, too.”
That year there were 82 kids in the program. Later in the PBS segment, he says: “When I’m first greeting these kids from Oklahoma, they got out of this van, and all you saw was big eyes, ‘ooh and aah,’ looking around like, ‘This is a different world. This is a different planet.’ They can’t believe where they’re at.”
In subsequent years, Anderson also conducted clinics at two ski areas in New Mexico. He estimates he has given more than 80 motivational speeches over the years.
Skiing was always an expression of his Native connection to nature, one he sought to share with all those kids he touched.
“I grew up in Mother Nature, in the forest,” Anderson said. “My backyard was miles and miles away from another house, so it was freedom. You could feel the wind with the birds chirping, the elk bugling, the wolves howling. Everything has a purpose up there. You appreciate everything you touch or you feel or you see.
“When it comes to getting on that ski lift and you’re in the mountains, it’s like heaven on earth for me, just feeling everything that Mother Nature has to offer.”