Freeheeled and Free-Spirited
By Peggy Shinn
[img_assist|nid=619|title=Kare Anderson|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=166|height=250] Kåre Andersen is 92 and still going strong—downhill
Stratton’s veteran ski instructor Armin Bischofberger didn’t learn to telemark ski in his native Switzerland. He picked it up after he came to the United States in the early 1980s and saw a Norwegian man, then in his mid-60s, carving elegantly on bended knee through the snow.
That Norwegian was Kåre Andersen, who came to the U.S. in 1958 not to bring his country’s sport to an alpine-skiing nation, but to work as a tailor in New Haven, Connecticut. Only on weekends would Kåre (pronounced Corey) drive north to ski, at least until he retired.
Bischofberger remembers watching Kåre, clad in a red sweater and wool knickers, gracefully turning on his skinny skis and decided to give it a try. He asked Kåre if he could borrow his equipment, and Kåre said sure. It probably never occurred to him to say no.
The Swiss skier quickly mastered the freeheel style and became one of the top telemark skiers in the East (if not the country). But he still considers Kåre one of his heroes. “Kåre is Kåre,” he says. “He’s an inspiration. In his 80s, he’d just go and go and go.”
Now 92, Kåre hasn’t stopped. Last summer, he traveled to Oregon with the American Union of Swedish Singers, a group to which he has belonged for 50 years. He is a tenor and often breaks out spontaneously into song. From Oregon, he went up to Victoria, British Columbia to visit a niece. Then in October, he returned to Norway for his oldest nephew’s 80th birthday. And every summer, he works Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 11 a.m., tending the greens at Tater Hill Golf Club in Windham.
“I’m really buzzing around,” Kåre says with a smile.
Come winter, he still telemark skis. Always telemark. He wouldn’t clamp his heels down if you paid him. When asked about his age, he says, “I don’t even think about it, I’ll probably drop dead here on the slopes one day.”
Over the past half-century, Kåre has not only helped revive telemark skiing, but he has been its most ardent promoter, leading some to call him a televangelist. He has pursued his country’s sport with such passion and enthusiasm that he has become a legend. Among the growing number of telemark skiers, he is known simply as Kåre (for proof, check the credits of the ski movie “Unparalleled”).
Kåre still teaches telemark skiing by appointment at Bromley, and he runs a popular race, which over its 24-year history has become a reunion of freeheel skiers, (called freeheel because telemark bindings leave the boot heel free to lift up from the ski). At last year’s race, 40 people registered, from ages 14 to 76, including one woman (who—a-hem—shall remain nameless) racing in a floral bridesmaid dress, flowers stuck in her helmet.
