Cle Elum Ski Club
Cle Elum, Washington1921-1933
Order Cle Elum Ski Club tees, long sleeve tees, hoodies and crewnecks. The club held its first tournament in 1924 with 11 jumpers and billed it as the first organized ski competition west of Denver. By the early 1930s thousands came by train for the meets, and in 1932 the railroad ran a tram through a coal mine tunnel to get spectators close to the jump. Browse the styles below, and the full Cle Elum history is further down. Every shirt is printed to order in the USA and carries the memories of bygone places and teams.
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Cle Elum Ski Club History
The Cle Elum Ski Club in Cle Elum, Washington, started in 1921 as the Summit Ski Club, a group of local skiers led by John "Syke" Bresko who set out to teach the town's young people to ski. Its first hill was the Kiwanis course south of town, with a small jump and a toboggan run. The club then leased 40 acres of timber land from the Northern Pacific Railway on the ridge between Cle Elum and the Teanaway Valley, about two miles north of town, and called it the Summit course. Runs there went by Rocky Run, Camel's Hump, Devil's Dive and Hell's Dive. A shelter and jumps went up in 1923, and in 1926 the club built a two-story clubhouse with a big fireplace and bunkrooms upstairs. It incorporated as the Cle Elum Ski Club, Inc. in 1928.
Ski jumping was the main event. The club held its first annual tournament in 1924 with 11 jumpers and billed it as the first organized ski competition west of Denver. Cle Elum merchants paid for the jumps and put up the prizes, and by the early 1930s the meets drew thousands of spectators, who came by Northern Pacific train and then rode trucks and a tractor-pulled sled up the hill or walked the last stretch. For 1931 the club built a $5,000 jump, an open-frame tower about 80 feet high with a 46-degree ramp. In 1932, when Cle Elum hosted the Pacific Northwest championships, the railroad let spectators ride a tram through one of its coal mine tunnels to get close to the jump.
The tenth annual tournament, on February 19, 1933, brought clubs from Seattle, Portland, Leavenworth, Ellensburg and British Columbia, and a near blizzard. It was the last meet on the hill. The Snoqualmie Pass highway had been kept open in winter since 1931, closer ski areas were drawing the crowds, spectators did not want to make the climb, and downhill racing was replacing jumping. The club's team kept competing until 1936, and a 1934 plan for a new area with an aerial tram on the Cle Elum River was never built. A forest fire on the ridge in 1944 burned what was left of the jump and the clubhouse.