In the early 1980s, cross country ski racers staged a novel event — a 50K (31-mile) marathon — that drew regional athletes to a Nordic course just west of Yellowstone National Park. A University of Vermont racer, Pam Weiss was living in Jackson Hole and decided to test herself at the race in West Yellowstone, Montana, even though she had not skied that distance before. A former collegiate competitor told Weiss of the competition while the two were training at Trail Creek Ranch at the base of Teton Pass. “I’d never skied, I don’t think, more than 20Ks in a day,” Weiss said. Nevertheless, when she heard of the marathon she said, “that sounds like fun.” Things can get bitter in winter up at 6,666 feet next to the Yellowstone supervolcano. On marathon day, the elements delivered “a really bad snowstorm,” Weiss said. She strode out along the undulating course and eventually found herself setting a pace. “I remember turning around and seeing there were about 30 guys in the line behind me.” A bicycle racer too, Weiss figured she’d share wind-breaking and pace-setting chores the way cyclists do in a peloton. So she moved aside briefly, ready to get back into the train behind a new leader. “Nobody would let me back in until the end of it, and then I had to fight my way in,” she said. “None of them wanted a woman ahead of them.” Weiss won the woman’s marathon that day, unseating the reigning queen, who was, Weiss said, “most upset.” Efforts like that marked Weiss’ path from a New Jersey home to Vermont ski slopes, Wyoming cross country tracks and international biathlon venues where she skied and shot for the red, white and blue. She carried the colors at world championships in 1985, ’86 and ’87 and to the cusp of Olympic competition. But just to the cusp. When it came time to add a new event to the 1988 Winter Games, women ski-shooters came up short. Instead of adding women’s biathlon to the schedule, the ultimate deciders of what constitutes athleticism chose … curling. For a finely honed skier, being upstaged by un-sculpted players pushing 44-pound Scottish granite shuffleboard pucks across ice was “majorly disappointing.” Be one with the bullet Despite the Olympic snub, Weiss found herself at the top of the world during her time racing and shooting for the first U.S. women’s biathlon team. In one world championship relay, she was among the four leaders going into the second shooting test at the standing, offhand 50-meter range. A Russian was just ahead of her, a Fennoscandian racer next to Weiss as they plinked away at their five grapefruit-size targets. Weiss was one shot better than her neighboring competitor. “So I got to leave the range and ski out ahead of her, and she never caught up with me.” “I was coming into the range with my pulse at 170 and while I was shooting, my pulse would drop, for say 30 seconds, down to 90.”Pam Weiss With Weiss, American women who were used to obscurity found themselves at the front of a huge European stage. “I would finish a race and there would be lines of people wanting your autograph,” she said. “Nobody in our country even knows what the sport is about,” she thought, “and over here I’m a hero.” Weiss explained the discipline needed to wed the vigor on the track to an unwavering shooting stance. “I was coming into the range with my pulse at 170 and while I was shooting, my pulse would drop, for say 30 seconds, down to 90. “You don’t hold your breath,” she said, “because then your muscles will start trembling. You try to get in sort of a zone or [create] a Zen-type feeling. My approach would be to just brush aside everything but me and the bullet going through the target. “Be one with the bullet” was her mantra. Nobody races Weiss’ father, a volunteer ski patrolman, started her shuffling around a golf course on wooden skis when she was about 6 years old. Once on the slopes, “I was bored just skiing,” she said. “I wanted to race.” Her parents were unmoved. “Nobody in our family races,” was the dictum. So, as she did for the rest of her life, Weiss found her own way, babysitting to raise enough cash to go to a training camp. At the University of Vermont, Marilyn Cochran, an Olympian whose sister won a gold medal, coached her and made Weiss part of her Thanksgiving family. At school, while majoring in botany and environmental studies, Weiss switched from alpine to Nordic racing. Her first job after school was in Wyoming with the Bridger-Teton National Forest where she ranged over the hills in a male-dominated profession. “I was always trying to prove myself as equal,” she said. “As a 22-year-old, I was quite fit.” She wasn’t fit for her first year of graduate studies in Vermont, however. Weiss met Jackson Hole ski coach Peter Ashley who was tapped to become the first women’s national cross-country coach. He told her to shuck her studies and race. “I hated the program,” she said of her graduate work. So she quit school, “much to my parents’ horror.” Again, she had to finance her way “doing odd jobs, waitressing — you name it — whatever I could do to make ends meet.” When the first national women’s biathlon team was being formed out of the field of cross-country racers, “I wrote my best letter I could,” she said, and earned a berth. “A lot of us had never really done any shooting before. I was lucky enough to pick up a rifle and have some instant good results.” Aside from the Cochran sisters, almost all of her coaches have been men and, save for a female shooting coach, that was the situation when the military ran the first women’s biathlon team. “They had no clue what to do differently for the women.” Soldiers had the idea that you got fit by exercising until you dropped, she said. That’s not good. “You have to be very smart about quitting before you’re overtrained.” While racing for a startup biathlon program, Weiss skied onto the world stage packed with professionals. “Their countries supported them,” she said. “It was a job for them. I was doing three jobs at a time, just trying to make ends meet and trying to train.” A car crash kept her out of the tryouts for the 1992 Olympics. By the end of her career, she had been a national biathlon champion and was inducted into the U.S. Biathlon Hall of Fame. Weiss, now 72, went back to school after her competitive ski career to become an accountant. The profession was “something that was a lot easier as a woman to get into.” “I was doing three jobs at a time, just trying to make ends meet and trying to train.”Pam Weiss She also was a partner with her husband at the New Zealand Kayak School in Murchison, New Zealand, which they operated for decades. Their son, Liam, became an Arctic and Antarctic sea kayak guide, a photographer and lecturer after graduating from college. In New Zealand, where Weiss lives for about half the year, she tells friends she is uncertain what young women in Wyoming face today. “I was explaining to them what’s going on in many parts of the U.S. and especially Wyoming where women trying to have children have all sorts of obstacles thrown at them,” she said. “If they want a family, they’re not well-supported in a state like Wyoming. “In certain jobs, women are still climbing a ladder to prove themselves,” she said of the Equality State. “But it has gotten a lot better.” In female athletes, Weiss sees “a younger version of me,” she said. “It’s just so cool to watch the opportunities and the goals that these women are setting for themselves. I just hope that there’s some inspiration from people before them. “There’s always the element of having to work through some of the obstacles, but sometimes that just makes you stronger.” The post The mountain elite: A Wyoming skier worked three jobs to be on the first U.S. women’s biathlon team appeared first on WyoFile . ...read more read less