On Route 16 heading north out of Berlin, New Hampshire, is the Big Nansen. If you've not been around skiing and ski jumping, this sucker will impress. One family story: none of us ever went off this monster, but brother Fred went over for a championship meet with friends and carried the large jumping skis of one of his Rumford teammates. Somewhere on the climb up, Fred fell and injured (broke?) his coccyx (a.k.a., his tailbone).
On this summer's day, I hadn't planned on climbing the thing, but one step led to the next, and off we trekked up what used to be the landing hill's staircase. Steep, smooth dirt, crisscrossed with thorn bushes, the pathway had a few spots that were tricky for Bailey. But, he managed. At the top, there's a road way that I opted to take back down figuring it would land somewhere not too far from the outrun of the jump. It did, maybe .8 of a mile south.
Three years back, US Ski Jumper Sarah Hendrickson went off the jump to celebrate Nansen and to bring attention to the fundraising needed to restore and maintain the historic jump. Hendrickson, the first female jumper to compete in the Olympics, became the first jumper in decades to soar off the iconic hill where the first-ever US Olympic Jumping Trials were held in 1937. A recent news article states that the jump is being prepared for a competition in 2021, but looking at the structural issues, I'm not sure how that will happen. Time will tell.
Back in 1981, Don Towle and I held what proved to be the final high school ski jumping meet in Maine at Pettengill Park in Auburn. I was Rumford's last high school ski jumping coach. The sport died at the school level, and became a sport of selected clubs around the US because of insurance costs, lack of interest, and time to maintain the hills. At the time, I wrote an article for Maine Life magazine titled "The Death of Ski Jumping" c. 1982. In 1980-81, I wrote a poem titled, "Summer Jump," that landed in several publications including my book, Words for a Mountain. I've included that poem below.
Rich, thank you for the pictures, history of the ski jump, & your excellent poem!
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