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Update for 2007: Ski for SIDS came back in new format with teams skiing at Keystone Resort. $41,000 was raised for SIDS research. Go to news2007. Update for 2008, the event continued in the new team format on March 2. Over $50,000 was raised.
SKI FOR SIDS A Fundraiser to raise research money to combat Sudden Infant Death Syndrome--
March 29, 2006: 75,000 vertical feet skied down in one
day by one person! A world record was set! Go here for photos. Freda Skiing down 75,000 feet in a day is several times more than almost anyone of any age is capable of skiing in one day. Just how much skiing is that? Freda's course at Keystone utilized its River Run gondola to access her route. She came down from the 11,640 foot Summit House atop Dercum Mountain to River Run base at 9,300 feet altitude, a difference of 2,340 vertical feet. Thus she made over 32 trips down from the top to add up the 75,000 feet! This is over 14 vertical miles. Of course because she skiied a sloping descent, she skied 3 or 4 times that many miles. And she took some 32 trips back up the gondola and chairlift, at about 10 minutes each, consuming about 5 hours there alone. Yet no one who knows Freda doubted she would succeed in her quest, and least of all ddi Freda doubt she would. For when at age 70 Freda initially retired from teaching alpine skiing at Keystone Resort after 30 years, she did so with a burst of enthusiasm that culminated in her skiing 70,000 vertical feet in one ski day of 8 hours. That event raised $13,000 to fund ski equipment for local school children who would not otherwise have had the opportunity to ski even though they were growing up in ski country. She said about her former 70,000-foot event, “Well, hey that wasn’t too hard to do—I wasn’t any more tired doing that than teaching beginners.” And she said this about her 75,000-foot event for SIDS, “God gave me strong legs, and I’ll use someone else’s brain for the research.” Freda came to the United States from her native Norway as
a young girl skiing on the Norwegian team and winning the NCAA American
championship, but she was injured just before the Olympics and missed that
opportunity. She landed in Summit County, Colorado, and began teaching skiing in
a career that lasted some 30 years, becoming a fully certified instructor and
even an examiner of Nordic technique instructors seeking certification. Her
motto was, "Your students won't care how much you know if you don't show how
much you care", and her name was placed on the “Freda’s Way” ski run (now
"Freda's Incubator") at
Keystone. She became beloved to generations of skiers from near and far. Except
when teaching she
never did slow done much on the ski slopes and came to be known as “Fast Freda”.
An organizer, she developed a concern that older ski instructors, as she was
becoming, needed to keep current with advances being made in technique and
equipment. So she started Freda's "Flying Fossils" at Keystone Ski Resort, 1999 Then the clock somehow registered 70 years for Freda, and she felt the time to end her career had come. And so she retired in the fanfare of her 70,000-foot ski day. Well, she sort of retired. Freda started teaching cross-country skiing at a local center a few days a week, skied for fun, and spent time being a grandmother. And that’s when this story actually started, for her little grandson, Zachary, succumbed to SIDS. His demise touched a common chord among the locals of her home Summit County, and hundreds came with their grief to the funeral honoring Zachary's short life. Freda’s 75,000-foot SIDS event was heartwarming and meaningful and, expectedly, productive in its purpose to raise funds. She offered a slogan for those with the means--donate “a penny a foot”, but of course pledges of any and all amounts were accepted. Watch for Freda’s ski event in 2008. Meanwhile, you can talk to Freda directly at 970/468-8242 or mail her at Freda Nieters, PO Box 4847, Dillon, CO 80435-4847. Or, contact me, Bill Jones (see below), for I know Freda well and wish her great success in this undertaking, and am on Freda's SIDS skiing team. The SIDS Alliance website is www.sidsalliance.org. The fund-raising is sponsored by First Candle, 1314 Bedford Ave., Baltimore, MD 21208; 800/221-7437 at www.firstcandle.org. Bill Jones
No right is granted to reproduce any portion of this site without written
permission This "Ski for Sids"page last modified 06/19/2008: \SkiMyBest\ski4sids.htm. Copyright 2008 © William R Jones. |
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SkiMybest.com:
"Learn to Ski/Ski Better" 
Langell Nieters staged an event to both
remember her little grandson Zachary, lost to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome
(SIDS) in 2005, and to provide a means that others might avoid such a
loss. 75 years old, Freda “unretired” to resume her alpine ski-teaching
career, now at Arapahoe Basin Ski Area in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. She has used her teaching wages as seed money for a
fund-raiser to support research by 
“Freda’s Flying Fossils” for the over-50s to explore
the changes taking place and update themselves. They skied moguls and powder
snow as well as the groomed runs and ran race courses, and they played
with skis of various shapes and lengths as well as the equipment beginning
skiers used. An end-of-year party became a looked-forward-to event. Some younger instructors—jealous
of the training and socializing the “fossils” were getting—claimed elevated
fictitious ages to join in! 