Summit County lost one of its modern founding fathers this spring.
Trygve Berge, the co-founder of Breckenridge Ski Area known for his silky-smooth style and kilowatt smile, died on April 2. He was 93 years old. He would have celebrated his 94th birthday on April 19.
“My dad loved the mountains of Colorado and truly made Breckenridge his home after moving from Norway,” his son, Jan Berge, tells Krystal 93.
In a memorial post on Facebook, Jan Berge continues, “For all of his contributions to the ski industry, he was better known to me and my siblings as dad. He taught me how to ski at an early age, as well as my kids. He was a loving father who also loved his many friends. He will be missed immensely!”
Trygve’s ties to Breckenridge run deep. His ties to skiing run even deeper, beginning in the 1930s as a toddler in his native Norway. By 1954 he joined the Norwegian national ski team and won the country’s downhill title. Two year later he competed at the 1956 Winter Olympics in Italy.
“(After that) I decided to see the world,” Trygve told the Colorado Snowsports Museum Hall of Fame. “Stein Eriksen invited me to come teach for him at Heavenly Valley in California. In 1960 I went to Breckenridge. We met some people from Wichita that had bought a bunch of land around Breckenridge.”
The Wichita developer was another local legend, Bill Rounds. Together, Rounds and Trygve designed the runs and layout for a two-lift operation above Breck. The next season, in December 1961, they opened Peak 8 Ski area, soon to be known as Breckenridge Ski Area. Lift tickets on opening day were $4 for adults.
In that same ‘61 season, Trygve opened the first ski school at Breck with his Olympic teammate, Sigurd Rockne.
As Trygve once told the Summit Daily, his green run on Peak 8 earned its name from those early days, when “they told everybody in ski school to go over to Trygve’s run. That’s how it became mine.”
“Whenever anybody would come to Breckenridge they wanted to see him,” oral historian Jim Beck told the HoF. “I’m sure many remember the big billboards along the highway that had his name and his famous reverse-shoulder turns in it.”
Trygve and Sigurd ran the ski school for its first decade. Skiing was slow to gain steam in Breck, Trygve told the Summit Daily, but when it finally took off in the ‘70s it sent the town soaring – and made its co-founder a local star.
Over the following decades Trygve opened and operated nine local ski shops. He appeared in several Warren Miller films, including a 1960s featurette on Breck, and became a regular on Breck posters and videos, throwing front flips on racing skis and showing off his signature turns with a trademark smile. In 1999 he joined the Colorado Snowsports Museum Hall of Fame. Nearly four years ago, for his 90th birthday, he invited the whole town to make a few turns with him.
“The name Trygve Berge is always going to be synonymous with the town of Breckenridge, Colorado, and the ski resort itself,” longtime local Terri Edwards Shannon told the HoF. “Every skier in Colorado should be extremely grateful for the contribution he has made to the sport of skiing.”
Trygve’s family is planning a local memorial for their father “most likely in September to give relatives in Norway an opportunity to travel,” Jan Berge tells Krystal 93.