Pikes Peak Region Trail Finder

Photo by Kristin Anderson, Vail Daily

By SCOTT N. MILLER, VAIL DAILY

VAIL — For the length of a song, Earl Clark and Dick Over were in their 20s again, loaded down with gear and equipment, ready to ski or climb to fight whatever enemy stood in their way.

Clark, 92, and Over, 88, were the strong-voiced singers of a 10th Mountain Division marching song, “90 Pounds of Rucksack,” for an appreciative audience at the Colorado Ski and Snowboard Museum in Vail Wednesday. The song came at the end of a presentation about the history of the 10th that included Clark and Over's first-hand tales of how this country's first “mountain infantry” came to be.

With Clark a little woozy from his trip from Denver to Vail, Over took on most of the story-telling. It started with group of young skiers including Charles Minot Dole, talking about how winter-camouflaged Finnish ski troopers had held off a vastly superior Russian force during an attempted Soviet invasion of Finland.

Dole and his compatriots tried to convince U.S. Army brass of this country's need for ski troopers, and got nowhere fast. But a letter from Dole to President Franklin Roosevelt finally got the army's OK for an experimental 1,000-man unit, with soldiers coming from the still-small U.S. skiing community. Every prospective member needed three letters of reference to get into the new unit.

“It's the only time in history someone ever needed three letters of reference to get into the army,” Over said.

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