This summer’s issue of Skiing History Magazine is honoring the rich, almost outrageous history of the French-Swiss Ski College at Appalachian Ski Mountain in Blowing Rock, NC.
With now millions of ski lessons taught, and the recent retirement of co-founder Jim Cottrell, Skiing History and High Country ski writer Randy Johnson were inspired to tell the story of the “The ‘College’ That Taught the South to Ski.”
In the mid-1960s, Boone native Cottrell learned to ski at the Blowing Rock Ski Lodge, today’s Appalachian Ski Mountain, North Carolina’s second ski area (1962). He took a phys-ed ski course at Appalachian State Teacher’s College (later Appalachian State), the only college ski course then offered in the South.
As southern skiing blossomed in the late ‘60s, Cottrell, was a long-haired community college accounting instructor at CPCC in Charlotte. Then he met a marketing genius named Jack Lester, and one of the country’s craziest ski schools was born.
Appalachian Ski Mountain owner Grady Moretz gave their idea a chance, and before long, mass marketing of ski lessons through university phys-ed programs was teaching thousands of new southern skiers. French-Swiss even attracted the US military. Green Beret ski students were routed away from Europe to … North Carolina!
When Lester met the world’s most famous skier, Jean-Claude Killy, at a Charlotte bank promotion, something clicked. Almost unbelievably, Killy became an honorary director of the French-Swiss Ski College, bringing the premier of his first feature film, Snow Job to Boone in 1972. In 1973, Killy won an early High Country pro ski race, going on to win the national competition that crowned his post-Olympic comeback.
Lester soon passed away, but the French-Swiss story went on to include a decade of artificial snow ramp-skiing shows at Southern shopping malls, starting with the grand opening of Charlotte’s South Park Mall. Cottrell staged the nation’s first regional Winter Special Olympics, attracting a visit by founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver, and establishing national protocols and programs still in use. Last year saw the 46th winter games at Appalachian Ski Mountain.
With Cottrell’s 2022 retirement, French-Swiss was purchased by Appalachian Ski Mountain owner Brad Moretz, son of early owner Grady Moretz. Benjamin Marcellin, a French-Swiss veteran, and a Frenchman, heads the ski school.
That is just some of what distinguishes the heritage of French-Swiss Ski College and Appalachian Ski Mountain. It’s a head-shaking tale you couldn’t make up if it wasn’t true.
Skiing History magazine is published bimonthly (six times a year) by the International Ski History Association (skiinghistory.org), a non-profit public charity dedicated to the discovery and preservation of skiing’s colorful past, a topic of great interest to High Country ski pros.
Randy Johnson’s nearly fifty-year career chronicling skiing in the South and the High Country spans national publications like SKI, SKIING, OUTSIDE, SNOW COUNTRY and major regional newspapers including the Charlotte Observer. His recent book Southern Snow: The New Guide to Winter Sports from Maryland to the Southern Appalachians won an award from the International Ski History Association.
In summer 2022, Johnson wrote “Pioneers of Southland Skiing” for Skiing History, featuring the founding of the Blowing Rock Ski Lodge by Bill Thalheimer, and the role played by Thomas “Doc” Brigham and Gunther Jochl in High Country skiing. Visit—randyjohnsonbooks.com
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