Lakes Region Legends: Olympic skier Penny Pitou carves her own path in life

Ready to celebrate her 85th birthday in October, Penny Pitou is dialing back on her adventurous life. However, the Olympic medalist once described as “a perky blonde” is still as perky as they get.

Last winter, the Lakes Region celebrity led her final skiing and hiking trips in the Italian and Austrian Alps. Yet, chances are you'll still spot her hiking Gunstock, Belknap and Piper mountains with her dog, and she still mows her own 3-acre lawn.

“You can’t give up just because you’re old,” she said.

That emblematic comment comes from the spirited, twice-divorced Pitou, a woman who grew up in a modest household. With heart and spirit, she's used grit and determination to build a rich life as an athlete. She's been dubbed the best woman skier in history, and also, subsequently, a state tennis champion. She’s also been a model, world traveler, entrepreneur, wife, mother and grandmother to three young people who are all great skiers — and one of whom made it all the way up to the U.S. Ski Team.

Mastering the slopes

Pitou's life took a dramatic turn when her father inherited some money when she was three. He left his job selling vacuum cleaners in New York and relocated his family to the Granite State, where he and Pitou’s mother had honeymooned in a cabin on Lake Winnipesaukee. They bought a property on 120 acres near Lake Waukewan in Center Harbor, where Pitou began learning to ski using skis her father made from barrel staves. Five years later, they moved to Potter Hill in Gilford.

They had no running water because plumbers were hard to find after the war, and their bathroom was a two-seat outhouse, but Pitou could put on her donated, secondhand skis and boots whenever she wanted. On weekends, she blasted down the hill all day long with a group of friends and their parents. One parent created a rope tow powered by a Ford engine, and the building that served as the Pitou family outhouse was hauled to the mountain to serve as a warming shack.

This was in the mid-1940s, when Pitou was in second grade. Soon, she was beating the boys down the hill.

She was around 8 when her father took her to Gunstock Mountain for the first time, warning her about the rope tow, which was much faster than the one to which she was accustomed.

“Dad said to grab it slowly, which I didn’t do, and I fell flat on my face three times in a row,” she said, noting she also had a $2 ski lesson but didn’t learn anything. She flew straight down the mountain because she was still learning how to turn.

A decade later, she still hadn’t learned that technique and wasn’t afraid of speed, so she skied the downhill event in the 1956 Olympic Games in Italy. She fell, then dragged herself and her wooden skis on the pavement back to her hotel, where she stumbled upon her idol, double-medalist Andrea Mead Lawrence.

Lawrence was sipping hot cocoa at the bar, and the two began a conversation. Pitou told Lawrence she was going to quit.

“You had the fourth-fastest time when you fell,” Lawrence pointed out. “You ought to keep going.”

So Pitou did, encouraged by her mother, who told her school could wait while she trained.

“My father was very proud of me, but my mother was the one who kept saying, ‘Keep going. Follow your passion.’ She opened my eyes to the fact that I could do something different than what I was programmed to do, which was do well in five subjects at school and babysit,” Pitou said.

At the Olympic trials in Stowe, Vermont, Pitou wore wooden skis that her coach — who was also her neighbor — had to carve to adapt to the icy terrain, creating an edge. She commanded attention and became a competitor to watch.

Pitou took two Olympic silver medals in 1960 in downhill and giant slalom events in California. She stayed in Europe for roughly 18 months, racing and developing lifelong connections, including with Egon Zimmermann, an Austrian alpine racer whom she married in 1961.

Pitou and Zimmermann met in 1958 at the Alpine World Ski Championships in Austria. She practiced how to say, “You skied very well today” to him in German and was grateful he actually did; she wouldn’t have been able to come up with anything consoling in his language. She eventually became fluent in German and French.

Pitou decided to give up downhill racing, as it was too challenging to compete as an unpaid, amateur athlete. She and Zimmermann returned to the States, but her life didn't go downhill from there.

She traveled as a public speaker, talking about her training and success as a skier. She designed clothing and modeled for White Stag and Montgomery Ward. And she and Zimmermann settled in Gilford and ran a ski school at Gunstock, where a ski lift is named after Pitou and a carpet lift is named for Zimmermann.

The couple had two sons, Christian and Kim, and were together for a decade before divorcing in 1968. Pitou found herself in her early 30s with one year of education at Middlebury College. She attended a career development school in Concord and came up with three options that felt like a good fit: running Outward Bound programs, being a forester or guiding tours. She chose the latter.

Pitou bought a travel agency for sale in downtown Laconia, and Milo Pike of Pike Industries, her then-beau, purchased the building for her in 1974. Lakes Travel became Penny Pitou Travel, and in 1981, she bought the building from Pike.

“It was good to have someplace to go in the mornings,” Pitou said, noting she ran from home on routes that spanned 5 to 8 miles. “I stayed in shape, but after a few months, I bent over and had trouble getting back up. I realized I wanted more exercise in my life. I didn’t want to work in the office.”

That prompted her to offer guided skiing trips in the Alps. In 1975, she took a group to Avoriaz, France, and the next year to Kitzbuhel, Austria. For 44 years in a row, minus one COVID year, she took travelers hiking in the summer in three separate trips, and skiing in the winter over five to seven weeks. “I had so many repeat clients, oftentimes I was sold out by April of each year,” she said.

A time of transition

Almost 50 years ago, Pitou hired Kim Terrio to run the travel agency. Today, Terrio is the owner, and Pitou is set to retire in August. Pitou has sold the building, and Terrio will move the business across the street next to Trillium Farm to Table restaurant.

Even though she grew up ahead of the feminist movement, Pitou was a career woman before that was the norm.

“There was a lot of wasted talent with women staying home,” she said. “Men didn’t want women working. It was an embarrassment for husbands to have people see their wives working. It made people think the family needed the money.”

Her independent spirit was innate. She always pushed to get what she wanted. As a high school skier, she hid her hair under her hat so she could compete on the boy’s team.

“I blew my cover by falling on my face in front of a gatekeeper,” she says. “I was kicked off the team because parents complained — there was no chaperone on the team bus. It was silly. I’d played with those same kids on the mountains my whole life. Then I thought, ‘Well, I’ll just have to beat all the girls.’”

Later in life, she advocated for other young girls, like Amy Richardson, who wanted to play baseball but was sent home because she’s a girl. Pitou took Richardson back to the field. “I said, ‘She’s a girl, but she throws and catches better than any boy on this field.’”

When she didn’t triumph with the coaches, Pitou helped the community start a girl’s baseball league, putting a blurb in a local newspaper, seeking young girls who wanted to play. “Sixty-five little girls showed up with their parents,” she says. “Most of them really couldn’t throw or catch, but the coach taught them.”

A woman of admiration and love

Because he knows these stories about his mother — and has countless others of his own — Christian Zimmermann says words he conjures up when thinking of his mother are “committed,” “driven,” “disciplined” and “competitive.”

“Mom was my rock,” he said. “I always knew she would be there for me when I was growing up. Mom always made me feel safe.”

Pitou took her boys on four-day, hut-to-hut hiking trips in the White Mountains, and 250-mile bicycle excursions to Maine, always staying just far enough ahead that she couldn’t hear their complaints.

“I also remember coming back from a 12-hour workday, having dragged brush to a chipper all day long at 16 years old. I had worked 60 hours that week and was miserable. My friends were all hanging out on the beach. I pleaded with her to let me quit my job, but she said, ‘You made a commitment; you are going to stick with it!’"

“So I did,” Zimmermann added, “and I learned what work ethic really means.”

Kim Terrio said she had no idea who Pitou was when she was hired at 18 years old, but her mother did.

“Penny set a standard of excellence in the workplace as she had in her skiing career,” she said. “I admired that and found my work-home here. We have had many adventures together over the years in the mountains of Switzerland and Austria as well as at 55 Canal St. I will always be grateful for the trust Penny had in me that allowed me to guide the business through all the changes, upheaval and triumphs over the past 48 years.”

Gil Schohan, a hiking buddy of Pitou’s who traveled with her on several trips, said, “Penny inspired me to leave my comfort zone while hiking in Nepal or skiing and hiking in the Alps. She has the ability to calm you fears with her stories. She’s a true friend.”

Pam Merrill, a ski escort in Europe for seven years, said, “I think what stuck out with me was how hard she worked to make the trips close to perfect. Meticulous in detail. She checked everything five times, and things flowed totally smoothly, which is why she had such a huge return business. She has an amazing personality. She wants everyone to have a good time.”