Cheers to the folks at Warren Miller Entertainment who just unearthed a vintage clip from the 1978 film “Ski Ala Carte” featuring a long lost piece of ski training equipment. The four-wheeled contraption known as The Techni Ski looked vaguely like a skateboard but was designed to punish riders who didn’t turn it like a pair of skis.
The device sent skiers carving back and forth across pavement while facing straight downhill, with their feet planted side by side rather than standing sideways like a skateboarder. Miller’s segment makes the whole thing look equal parts legitimate training tool and 1970s ski-industry fever dream.
It Looked Like A Skateboard, But Didn’t Ride Like One
The Techni-Ski was essentially a short metal platform riding on four polyurethane wheels, but its widened wheelbase, low center of gravity and unusual steering characteristics were intended to recreate the movements of alpine skiing. In Ski Ala Carte, Miller explains that the device only behaved properly when the rider used skiing technique.
“It only works if you turn it exactly like you turn your skis.”
Putting too much weight on the inside foot could cause the Techni-Ski to slide out from underneath the rider, providing a fairly immediate lesson in weight distribution. The footage shows riders making sweeping linked turns down pavement with ski poles in their hands, using the road almost like an empty groomer. At one point, Miller spots a manhole cover and delivers one of his trademark one-liners:
“There’s a round very flat mogul”
A Ski Crash Helped Inspire The Techni-Ski
The device was invented by Brooks Thomas in the late 1970s.
An archived 1979 United Press International report traced the idea to Thomas’ own experience learning to ski. According to the report, Thomas crashed into a tree and ended up recovering in a San Diego hospital, where he began thinking about whether there was a better way to learn ski technique away from the mountain.
The resulting Techni-Ski used a magnesium platform with molded areas for the rider’s feet and four skateboard-style polyurethane wheels. Thomas’ Techni-Ski instruction manual was copyrighted in 1978, the same year Warren Miller featured the device in Ski Ala Carte.
Skiers Were Actually Training On These Things
By the summer of 1979, the Techni-Ski had made its way to the Mt. Whittier ski area in West Ossipee, New Hampshire, where skiers were using the device on a six-degree asphalt slope. Several hundred people tried the Techni-Ski during its first week there. Among them was U.S. Olympic alpine skier Abbi Fisher, who reportedly used it as part of her off-season training.
The facility promoted the Techni-Ski as both a teaching tool for beginners and a way for experienced racers to continue working on turns when the ski slopes were green. The theory was unforgiving but simple. On snow, a skier can sometimes get away with poor technique, On the Techni-Ski, not so much.
Warren Miller Captured The Device At The Perfect Moment
Ski Ala Carte is very much a snapshot of skiing in the late 1970s. The film travels from Mammoth Mountain to ski areas across Colorado, Utah, Idaho and beyond, mixing racing, freestyle skiing and Miller’s trademark commentary with some decidedly experimental corners of ski culture including what some may consider an accidental proto-snowboarding segment:
You Can Still Techni Ski If You Wanna
The Techni-Ski may have faded from ski culture decades ago, but it never disappeared completely. You can still pick one up on eBay.
We recommend wearing a helmet, knee pads, elbow pads and bell bottoms! Here’s Olympic halfpipe skier Alex Ferreira giving the Techni Ski a whirl on the roads of Vail:
