7-10 thousand pairs of skis: Bob Bolduc may have largest collection in the world

GILFORD — Bob Bolduc has been working with skis since he was a teenager, having gotten his start in the business by installing bindings, tuning skis and grinding edges for Piche’s Ski Shop in the 1950s.

Over the last 50 years he’s seen just about every innovation that came along and witnessed the transformation of skis from wood to metal and then to fiberglass and during that time has amassed a collection he estimates is between 7,000 to 10,000 pairs of skis, which may qualify as the world’s largest individual collection.

"I'm not really sure how many there are. They're stored in three different places and I haven't done a hand count of each storage area because it would take so much time,'' says Bolduc.

He doesn’t know whether it’s the world’s largest collection, but says that several years ago he had a visit from a California man who was attempting to have his 700-ski collection entered into the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest.

"He told me people had said he should check out my collection. After he looked around a little he said there wasn’t any point to him pursuing that honor any further,’’ says Bolduc.

His collection includes hundreds of old wooden skis dating back to the 1920s and 1930s, many of which were actually built at the Northland Ski Manufacturing Company in Laconia, a branch plant of Northland in Saint Paul, Minnesota, which was at that time the largest ski manufacturer in the world.

"The skis were made out of hickory and they were all hand made," says Bolduc, whose collection includes dozens of skis which were once used as rentals at the Muehlke Farm on Belknap Mountain Road, where ski bunkhouses were set up in the 1930s for skiers visiting the ski slope run by the Gunstock Lift Company, which had a 3,100 foot rope tow up Gunstock Mountain. The area, which was on the west facing slope of Gunstock Mountain, closed in 1940, unable to compete with the Belknap Mountain Recreation Area, today’s Gunstock Mountain Resort, which was on the east-facing side of the mountain and was built as a WPA project in 1938.

He also has eight-foot long wooden skis used for ski jumping and numerous other older skis, many of whose age can be deduced by the types of ski bindings used.

"They’re really things of beauty," says Bolduc of the older wooden skis. And he says they were faster than you’d think. In 1955 American skier Ralph Miller was timed at over 100 mph on a downhill course in Portillo, Chile, racing on Northland Monarch skis.

Bolduc even has the machinery used to produce those skis at the 40,000-square-foot Northland plant on Fair Street in Laconia, where skis were made from 1938 into the 1960s, when Northland was sold and ski production ceased.

"After they closed I was able to get some of the machines they used to bend and shape the skis. Some day I’d like them to part of a museum devoted to the history of skis," said Bolduc, who five years ago stepped down as head of Piche’s Ski Shop after 30 years and turned the everyday supervision of the shop and screen printing business he started over to his sons, Pat and Robby.

He says that over the years he saved about half of the skis taken as trade-ins and stashed them away in order to amass a collection which shows the evolution of skiing technology and the wide variety of skis produced over the years.

His collection includes Head skis from the 1950s, the world’s first successful metal ski, which were made of a sandwich of wood, aluminum top and bottom, plastic sides and one piece step edges. Heads could be turned out on a production line, unlike handmade, and by the early 1960s accounted for nearly half of all ski sales.

There’s also early K2s, one of the most popular of the early fiberglass skis from the early 1960s, as well as the Rossignol Strato, a fiberglass sandwich ski with a stiff tail soft-tip pattern which starting in 1966 became the premier women’s racing ski. It was popular with racers and recreational skiers alike and was for 20 years a best seller says Bolduc.

There are also army skis, used by the 10th Mountain Division in World War II, as well as modern cross-country skis, including a pair signed by Olympian Bill Koch of Vermont during a 1988 visit to Piche’s.

One of the more unusual skis in his collection is a 1956 Italian ski, made by Ferruccio Lamborghini’s firm in honor of Italy hosting the 1956 Winter Olympics at Cortina. Only 50 pairs were made (this was before Lamborghini started making luxury sports cars) and Sig Jensen of Gilford bought a pair, which he presented to Penny Pitou, who had skied for the U.S. Women’s Team at Cortina and went on to win two silver medals in the 1960 Olympics.

He also has a rare early snowboard, signed by Jake Burton Carpenter, which dates to around 1979 and was one of the first ever made at his Vermont workshop.

Bolduc says that the shaped skis which came into vogue in the early 1990s and are used by the likes of Olympian Bode Miller of Franconia, represent a new generation of innovation. He says that the latest trend in skis, which is just hitting the East in full force, are the so-called park skis, which have identical tips, back and front, and are popular in terrain park skiing, where many maneuvers call for skiing backwards as well as forward.

CAPTION

Bob Bolduc holds different generations of skis, a shaped ski, popular since the 1990s and used by ski racers like Bode Miller; a park ski which has identical tips back and front, and is a favorite of terrain park skiers, and a wooden ski made at the Northland Ski Factory in Laconia in the 1930s. (Roger Amsden Photo for the Laconia Daily Sun)

Bob Bolduc of Piche's Ski Shop has what is possibly the world's largest ski collection, estimated at between 7,000 and 10,000 pairs of skis. (Roger Amsden Photo for the Laconia Daily Sun)

Bob Bolduc holds a K2 ski from the early 1960s, the first commercially successful fiberglass ski. (Roger Amsden photo for the Laconia Daily Sun),