The Sami and Reindeer herding
I found this video the other day on Atlantic ( a great website). Sami (they use to be called Laps) are believed by many ski historians to have introduced the more modern Scandinavians (Norwegians/Swedish) to skiing. There are some ski researchers that have put forth the idea that traditional reindeer herding was only made possible […]
NYT Altai Skiers Article
NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE ON ALTAI SKIERS This article by Kade Krichko just came out (April 19th 2017) and is a fairly good discussion on what is going on these days in the Chinese Altai Mountains. I added a few pictures below from my trips to the Altai from the last 10 years.
Hoks in Mongolia
Skiing for Ethnoarchaeology in Mongolia In the summer of 2012, I initiated the Dukha Ethnoarchaeological Project. Ethnoarchaeology is the study of living people for the purpose of developing tools to aid in the interpretation of the archaeological record. I am an archaeologist at the University of Wyoming. I normally excavate sites of the first […]
Tiaks (single poles) Part 1
Tiak [tīăk] means stick in the local languages in the Altai Mountains of North Central Asia. Tiak is also the name for the single pole used in all the traditional skiing in that region. Prior to 1900, the single pole was used by pretty much all skiers in the world!