WPL: Tracks in the Snow

04 Dec WPL: Tracks in the Snow

Former Telluride skier, writer and head of Ski School Peter Shelton recently released his seventh book. “Track in the Snow: Stories from a Life on Skis” is a collection of short essays, memories, and reflections on the magic and addictive pleasures of sliding down snow-covered mountains on skis. Shelton will be at the Wilkinson Public Library at 6 p.m. on Tuesday to discuss the book. 

“A skier’s progress from boyhood to old-man-of-the-mountain … In a career spanning five decades, [Shelton] has acquired a following among readers who take sensuous pleasure in the way his sentences work … These essays explain to us our own gob-smacked passion for the sport, and bring vividly alive what it was to live for skiing in the last third of the 20th century.” —Seth Masia in SkiingHistory.org

Peter Shelton was born and raised in California, and attended the University of California, Berkeley, before skiing drew him to Colorado. He and his wife, Ellen, met teaching skiing at Keystone in the early 1970s. Ski school brought them eventually to Telluride, in 1976, where Peter was briefly (you’ve heard of the Peter Principle) director of the ski school there.

A career in freelance writing followed, with assignments to mountain ranges across the U.S., the Alps, Norway, Alaska, Canada, the Himalayas, and the Andes. Along the way he won the North American Snow Sports Journalists Ski Writer of the Year Award four times.

“Tracks in the Snow” is his seventh book. He was a contributor (when freelancing for print magazines was a viable pursuit) to: LIFE, People, Outside, Men’s Journal, Ski, Skiing, Powder, High Country News, Mountain Gazette, and Universal Press Syndicate, among others. Beginning with a two-year apprenticeship at The Telluride Times in the late 1970s, he contributed a stream of weekly columns to just about every Telluride-area newspaper up to and including The Watch.

He and Ellen live in Bend, Oregon, where they chase two of their grandchildren across the snows of Mt. Bachelor.